Study

Classed as an A Level Science, this is a well recognised and applied course.

Students will study:

• Research Methods: planning research, experimental and non-experimental methods, representing data, descriptive statistics and ethics in psychological research.
• Social Influence: why do we obey authority? Why do people ‘follow the crowd’?
• Attachment: the influence of attachment on childhood, animal studies on attachment and cultural variations in attachment
• Memory and Forgetting: models of memory, the working memory model, explanations of forgetting and eyewitness testimony.
• Psychopathology: what is abnormal behaviour? How do we treat phobias? Explanations for depression and OCD.
• Forensics: Offender profiling, how do we identify offenders? What makes a person commit crime and what theories of offending are there? How do we treat offenders and is custodial sentencing effective?
• Schizophrenia: what is Schizophrenia and how do we treat this disorder?
• Gender: explanations of gender development and gender dysphoria (relationships topics may replace gender)
• Issues and Debates: socially sensitive research, forms of bias in research, key debates such as Free will v Determinism and further research methods including the features of science and inferential statistics. Key approaches including biological, social learning theory, and behaviourism are embedded throughout the course. There is 10% of the course that includes Mathematical content.

Please note some topics such as Psychopathology and Attachment are sensitive in nature.

Assessment

There are three exams for the full A Level award lasting two hours each paper.

What Next?

Related degrees include Educational Psychology, Criminology, Science related degrees as well as Business and Sport. Future careers include Forensic Scientist, Criminologist, Psychologist, Teaching, NHS and Public Services.

Psychology Subject Leader: Mrs A Richardson

Syllabus: AQA

Course Specification: 7182

Qualification: A Level