Category Archives: Research Methods & Stats.

All about research methods and stats.

PsychBLOG guide to A2 Coursework.

A new addition to PsychBLOG. Over the summer I have written a guide to A2 coursework which should help you get your head around the two pieces that you have to write. There’s plenty for you to read.
As part of the OCR A2 course you have to complete 2 pieces of coursework [...]

4Teachers: Statistics Masterclass

I’m a bit of a statistics anorak but a new series of “Introduction to Statistics” posts over at Mixing Memory caught my eye. It’s an excellent introduction into statistics, especially for any teachers who are a little rusty. I think that some of it might be a little too heavy for A-Level students [...]

Do bad guys lie? Social desirability on self-reports

When researching crime (and most other things come to think about it) in psychology we tend to have to resort to self-report measures. The gut reaction to any self-report measure when thinking about evaluation issues is that the participants may give socially desirable answers - especially when asking about offending behaviour.
The Deception Blog has recently [...]

Correlation and Causality

When teaching psychology and health I have found that a top evaluation issue that students can really get their teeth into and discuss well in part B essays is the issue of correlation and causality (or more accurately lack of causality).
Because of the practical and ethical problems of studying health and illness this tricky little [...]

MEG Scan Development.

Studying the brain has always been problematic as there were few ways of investigating what part of the brain was functioning at a particular time. Over the last few decades many different types of brain scans have been developed (MRI, PET, MEG) which mean that we no longer have to wait for a [...]