Coursework Checklist
Below is the correct way to format your coursework – section by section! Go through the list
and look at your coursework draft – if you see anything you have ordered incorrectly or not
included highlight it on the list. This will then become your action plan of things you need to do
in the next week!!
Title Page
This needs to include your name and candidate number (if you know it). Also needs a clearly
worded title which indicated the IV and DV or your investigation. E.g.:
“An investigation to test whether male participants consider physical attractiveness as more
important, thus awarding it a higher rank, than 4 other factors associated with interpersonal
attraction, compared to female participants”
OR
“An investigation to test whether participants who experience retroactive interference in the
form of music being played between the learning and recall phase of a list of words will recall
fewer words than participants who experience no interference”
Contents Page
A page detailing each section and the correct page number
Abstract
This comes at the front of the report and summarises your whole investigation, however, it is
usually written last. Order it in the following way you must include a sentence on every point
below:
 The main study yours was based on (brief method and findings)
 Your experimental design and hypotheses
 Your sampling method, size and who the participants were (age range etc)
 The IV and DV and how the change in this was measured and level of measurement used
 The task – explain what participants had to do exactly
 State the main result (report the test result properly) including significance level
 State clearly, which hypothesis was supported and / or rejected
 State the conclusions you drew – include whether your data has agreed/disagreed with
the original study.
Note: If you leave any of these out YOU WILL LOSE MARKS! Write this very carefully and
present as one flowing paragraph (no subtitles).
Introduction
This contains the theoretical background to your study. It should mention relevant previous
research and describe similar studies. You might also include relevant definitions. Make sure
the psychological literature is carefully selected, and has a coherent structure.
This section should finish with an appropriate aim which should follow logically
from the last study discussed (the study yours is based on) and links your
research to main study and a prediction of the results, then the null hypothesis
and alternative hypothesis. Remember hypotheses should include the word ‘significant' and be
fully operationalised and testable. The format for the introduction should ideally be:
Paragraph 1 – Introduction to the overall topic being studied. E.g. ‘The topic of relationships
is an important area for psychological study because …’
Paragraph 2 – Narrow down the topic area to the specific area you are investigating. E.g.
‘Within the topic of relationships, psychologists are particularly interested in how
relationships form, what factors specifically cause you to become attracted to on person over
another ….’
Paragraph 3 – AMFCE of Study 1 – this is a relevant study but the least like yours
Paragraph 4 – AMFCE of Study 2 – this is a relevant study, more like yours than study 1 but
not the study yours is based on
Paragraph 5 – AMFCE of study 3 – this is the study yours is most like and based on
Paragraph 6 – State your aim, alternate hypothesis and null hypothesis – these need to be
detailed and outline your IV and DV. E.g. of alternative hypothesis:
“Participants who experience retroactive interference in the form of music being played
between the learning and recall phase of a list of words will recall significantly fewer words
accurately than participants who experience no interference”
E.g. of null hypothesis:
“There will be no significant difference between the ranking given to physical attractiveness
among 5 factors of interpersonal attraction between males and females. Any differences will
be due to chance factors”
REMEMBER – when writing about your studies you need to include the date of the study by
the researcher’s name!!
Method
This is a detailed account of the way your study was carried out. Anyone should be able to
read this and replicate your study exactly so detail is crucial. Divide it into the following
labelled sub-sections:
Design
Which experimental design was used justify your choice? Explain the 2 conditions/groups that
you used State the independent and dependent variables and how the DV was
measured/scored. What level of data was collected and why? Which statistical test was used
and why?
Controls
State at least 3 potential confounding variables/ sources of potential bias and how you
overcame them – detail and evidence will be needed here
Participants
What was your target population? ( gender, age, students in a specific area? (A sixth form
school in Warwickshire ) What sampling technique did you use and why? What are the
limitations of this technique? How many participants did you use and how many were assigned
to each condition? You need to use 20 participants if using an independent measures
design or 10 participants for a repeated measures design otherwise you can’t successfully
conduct inferential statistics on your data!!!
Materials
What materials did you use for your study? (include examples in your appendix) – This includes
brief, consent forms, standardised instructions, debrief and any word lists/materials used –
all must be present in the appendices.
Procedure
What did you do? Give enough details so that any other person could replicate your study. It’s
best to put it in chronological order and insetting all standardised instructions etc STEP-BYSTEP. Type out any materials used, standardised instructions, signed consent forms and
debriefing. Put copies of everything in the appendix. Make sure you write clearly enough so
that ANYONE would be able to follow the instructions and complete the study exactly as you
have. It should be like a cooking recipe.
It should start with how you selected and approached your participants, read them the
brief, got their consent via signed consent form, took to testing area, read standardised
instructions, answered any questions, explain procedure, debriefed participants. You could
input brief, consent form, instructions and debrief into main body of text.
Ethical Considerations
State at least 3 relevant ethical considerations which are applicable to your study and state
how you dealt with each one. Note – you need to make sure that your participant response
sheets don’t include names, ethnic origin or personal details – these must be
deleted/made un-readable otherwise you are violating confidentiality and privacy!!
Results
You need to keep an accurate record of the raw data (Participant response sheets must be
included in the appendix as evidence) and any calculations conducted for the study (again
kept in appendices). These should be kept in an appendix in a clearly labelled table, but
referred to in your results section. You should write your results section in the following
format:
You put in the full label here
e.g. retroactive interference
condition / no RI condition
A) Put in a summary table as below:
Label your summary table
as shown
‘ A summary table to show… ’
Condition 1
Measure of
central tendency
e.g. mean, mode,
median
Measure of
dispersion e.g.
range or
standard
deviation
Condition 2
Note: refer to
appendix for
evidence of
calculations – there
should be no raw
data (individual pp
scores) in the results
section
You must offer full commentary on the data and what it shows – paying special attention to
any differences (or not) your data shows between the 2 conditions. You can refer to individual
participants scores here but say see appendix __ so readers can cross reference.
B) A simple, clear graph / chart which depicts the main finding (from the hypothesis)
FULLY LABELLED and good commentary along side. A bar chart is the best thing to use
and will look something like this:
This graph shows the difference in the mean
number of words accurately recalled by
participants who experienced retroactive
interference in the form of music between the
learning and recall phase and those who did
not. As is clearly shown, retroactive
interference had a detrimental effect on recall
and caused less words to be accurately
recalled.
C) Report the RESULT of the inferential analysis test here. You must report these clearly
and accurately in a specific format. E.g.
“ As the observed value of U (7) is less than the critical value (27) for a one-tailed test at
the p< 0.05 level of significance, we can reject the null hypothesis and accept the
alternative hypothesis which stated …”
(Keep the record of doing the test (calculations) in the appendix). You must also explain
here why this was the appropriate test to use.
D) Include a summary table of the inferential statistics
Test used
Result
Mann-Whitney U test U = 7
(NaNb = 20)
E.g.:
Significant?
Yes
P< 0.005
Include a very clearly worded conclusion about what this means in terms of the hypothesis e.g.
the results of the Mann-Whitney U test has shown this data supports the investigative
hypothesis and we are therefore able to reject the null hypothesis.
Discussion
It makes sense to do this as follows:
Paragraph 1 - Start by stating clearly what your hypotheses were and which has been
supported / rejected including significance levels if appropriate. If non-significant, state this
clearly and be ready to discuss possible reasons why.
Paragraph 2 - Now compare your findings to every study cited in the introduction – did your
data support them or not? Can you suggest why?
Paragraph 3 - Now think of a real-life implication of your results and discuss it fully, e.g. “
this research data may have important implications for helping students to use memory
techniques to improve their revision skills in that…”
Paragraph 4 - Discuss at least 2 limitations for generalisation. This is usually to do with your
sampling technique or target population.
Paragraph 5 - Now suggest at least 2 improvements you could make to your design. E.g. a
change in the task or how the DV was measured.
Paragraph 6 - Lastly, suggest where this research could go next. Suggest a new study
(possibly changing the IV) and give a brief description for how this could be carried out and
say why this would be useful for us to build understanding about the topic.
This should take at least one whole side of A4.
References
Every study or psychologist that is mentioned in your report should be credited in the
references section. This is a list of all the journal articles (studies) that are listed in your
introduction and discussion sections. This needs to be in alphabetical order.
This is the correct format for writing your references:
Peterson, L.R & Peterson, M.J. (1959). Short-term retention of individual verbal items. Journal
of Experimental Psychology, 58, 193 – 198.
The reference should be set out as above, so it includes the name of the researcher(s), the
year it was published, the article title, the Journal it is in, the volume number and the page
numbers in that volume. (You should find this in the back of the textbook that you used).
Include a bibliography which is a list of all sources (texts) you used (including any websites –
with the date you viewed it and printout attached). It must be in alphabetical order by author
and remember to state the edition used if applicable:
e.g. Pennington. D. (Ed.) (2002), Introducing Psychology: Approaches, Topics & Methods.
Hotter & Stoughton.
Also include here, any video clips with timings or music with track numbers used here.
Appendix
This section contains copies of everything that isn’t in the main part of your report. For
example, things that were used in the study such as word lists to remember, pictures, etc. It
also contains evidence that you gave standardised instructions to participants, gained inform
consent from them and debriefed them. Without all this information, you will lose marks in
various sections of your coursework. This is your only written proof that you really did carry
out the investigation yourself!!
You also need to include all your raw data and calculations from your results section. Again,
without this you will lose marks in the results section.
This section still needs to look neat and tidy yet will contain handwritten pages (e.g.
calculations) and each item should be clearly titled ‘appendix a,’ ‘appendix b’ etc. You should
refer to these throughout your study. E.g. see appendix
for standardised instructions.
You also get marks for your report style.