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Guide To Writing Your Stage 2 Psychology Investigation With Help Notes
Guide To Writing Your Stage 2 Psychology Investigation With Help Notes
STAGE 2 PSYCHOLOGY
INVESTIGATION
Assessment Type: Layout (pages)
Investigation Practical Report
1. Title Page
15%
2. Proposal (group)
Part 1 - Collaborative Component
3. Introduction
Proposal: word count 250
maximum 4. Results (group)
5. Discussion
Part 2 – Individual
Component 6. Conclusion
Report: 1,500 words
(excluding the proposal) 7. Bibliography
Page 1: Title Page
o Needs to include your name, SACE ID, Title of investigation and your hypothesis.
Summary of results (using numbers) and statement of whether results support the original
hypothesis. You are extending what your graph shows the reader here.
Include as many relevant numbers/descriptive statistics as you can in this paragraph. If numbers
appear in your table/graph in your results section, you should also explain their impact on results
here in this paragraph of your discussion.
You then MUST interpret what your results suggest about your hypothesis – What did the results
suggest? Is there a difference between the groups? No differences? Data is too close together? E.g.
(a mean difference of 5 hours sleep indicates that listening to white noise does in fact increase
hours of sleep over the week.
You could include: Are your results consistent with this past research/theories? If not, why not? If
they are, explain the link to your reader. Only one sentence should be about past research – the rest
needs to be explaining the meaning of your own findings
State how your study has added to the broader body of knowledge in this area of Psychology (if at
all).
Paragraph about representativeness and sample size (or lack thereof). How big was the sample you
used. Does this represent your population? (gender, age etc)
Make sure you focus on YOUR hypothesis here – if you looked at experimental, you discuss the
sample used for that. If you looked at quantitative observational, discuss the sample used for that.
Will your results be the same for every single person in the world? Generally, no – so you need to
tell your reader about this.
Explicitly discuss whether or not your results can be generalised to: Both genders, all age groups, all
cultures, vulnerable groups (sleep disorder patients, young children, school students etc.)
If they cannot be generalised, explain why using specific examples your sample/design/hypothesis.
Could also explain your design used here (what are some limitations of using that design?) eg.
experimental- not applicable to real world.
Did all participants complete the data collection at the same time under the same conditions with
the exact same instructions?
How appropriate were the measures used for what was being collected?
Was the research design appropriate for what you wanted to measure?
Participant availability (recruits)? Can all of the results be verified? Why? Why not?
Causation or merely generalisations?
Replication?
Applicability to real-world?
Control over extraneous variables?
(if no to these things – it is a limitation)
Need three well explained limitations that apply to your hypothesis/variables.
You can briefly discuss what validity and reliability are and how they are important in an investigation.
Validity:
External validity:
Can the results be generalised beyond this study or not? Explain why: Gender and age bias? Randomness in
selection? Structured or non-structured in design?
Internal validity:
Did the investigation actually measure what it says it is measuring? How can you be sure? Talk about the
handouts/tasks/etc.
Are there any other possible extraneous variables that could have been measured instead of your IV?
Reliability:
Would measures vary if circumstances changed? Why? Why not?
Would the results be the same if repeated under similar conditions at another time? Why/why not?
PARAGRAPH 7: IMPROVEMENTS
PARAGRAPH 8: ETHICS
MUST discuss at least three to show broad/range depth. It is important that you are specific to this
investigation, and not general in this paragraph i.e. do not just define what informed consent is –
apply it to our investigation (if necessary).
Only discuss the obvious ethical issues/dilemmas that apply to your variables/hypothesis.
Discussing all of them generally is not clear, thorough or concise.
Conclusion
Re-state what the aim of the investigation was
Summarise the results (using numbers)
State whether the results support he original hypothesis or not
Summarise whether your results were consistent with past research or not
Conclude with a sentence explaining that further research is still needed in this field (or something
similar) include word count.
Last Page: Bibliography
o If you included any research reference it here.