AQA A-LEVEL PSYCHOLOGY SPEC 2019
WHERE TO START
The first place to start studying A-level psychology is to locate the specification for the exam board of your course.
Below, I have an abridged version of the AQA A-level 2019 specification. I have excluded all the material meant for teachers. and have stripped the specifications down to expose only the material students need to know. But if you would like to view the AQA specification in completion, please click on the link below:
https://filestore.aqa.org.uk/resources/psychology/specifications/AQA-7181-7182-SP-2015.PDF
Your course specification is your definitive guide to what you need to know - textbooks can be very misleading as they usually include, research studies and other content not required by the exam board Therefore, one of the most important things to look at, when starting your journey into higher education, is to know exactly what is required from you and this means understanding the specification. The specification tells you what you need to learn for each paper and all the possible questions that can be asked or not asked; including the names of researchers, theories and studies that you are required to learn. Once you understand what is compulsory, you can then focus on learning those elements and not be misdirected by studies that may not be necessary to learn.
The bottom line is, that if it is not on the specification, you cannot be asked about it. For example, although Michael Rutter did the majority of research on Romanian orphans, he is not named on the specification., therefore you do not need to know his name or quote his research, this means other research on Romanian orphans would be creditworthy too. Another example is Milgram‘s original electric shock study; most students unfamiliar with the AQA specification don’t realise that they should not use this study for AO1 because the focus is on Milgram’s variations and/or his agent state theory. As a result, students who describe his original study in examinations receive zero marks.