TMA 04

On the following pages, you will find:

• learning outcomes addressed by this assignment

• student notes for each part of this assignment

• a checklist to ensure you have done everything required for this assignment.

Knowledge and understanding

• Recognise and describe research methods employed by psychologists and identify the merits of qualitative and/or quantitative approaches.

• Recognise the role of evidence in building psychological knowledge and how this relates to, and can be made relevant to, everyday experience and real-life contexts.

Cognitive skills

• Select and interpret key information from a range of sources, and represent it accurately and appropriately.

• Analyse and interpret different forms of data, including qualitative data, descriptive statistics and inferential statistics.

• Interpret and integrate a range of evidence to develop an argument, including some primary sources.

Key skills

• Write using a clear and logical sequence of sentences and paragraphs appropriate for the level of study, subject, purpose and audience.

• Plan and organise an essay, research report or presentation using appropriate structure and referencing.

• Interpret information from tables, graphs, charts and diagrams.

• Demonstrate skills in the use of basic ICT to support distance learning (e.g. email, forum, web pages, office software, VLE, online TMA/EMA service) and subject-specific tools (e.g. software for statistical analysis, online experiment participation).

Practical and/or professional skills

• Plan study sessions to manage a sequence of work that meets a deadline and complies with relevant academic conventions.

• Reflect on and evaluate own learning, both individually and through discussion with peers, and engage in development planning.

• Engage with ethical issues in psychological research.

• Recognise how psychology, and the skills acquired when studying psychology, can be useful in the workplace.

Part A: Produce the Results and Discussion section of a research report

Analyse the provided data and write both a Results and a Discussion section based on the material supplied.

Word limit: 800 words (200 words for the Results section, 600 words for the Discussion section).

Weighting: 60% of the marks for TMA 04.

Results

Your first task for this assignment is to analyse the data provided to you by the module team. First, you need to have an understanding of previous research on the research topic, why the research was conducted, what the research (alternative) hypothesis is, and the methodology used to test the hypothesis. To achieve this, you should read the Introduction and Method sections in the template document  provided by the module team. Please check your downloads folder if the template document does not automatically appear.

Once you have read these sections, you then need to download the SPSS file containing the data. Please check your downloads folder if the file does not automatically appear. You will need to familiarise yourself with the data contained in the file (i.e. what information has been recorded for each participant) and then perform a chi-square analysis in SPSS. Once you have analysed the data, you will need to interpret the SPSS output and write a Results section.

As you learned in Week 17, the Results section should report findings in a clear, concise way using both words and relevant statistical notation. It should explain to the reader which analysis has been carried out and what the key findings are, but it should not provide any detailed interpretation or discussion of the findings as that information should be provided in the Discussion section.

Discussion

Having completed your analysis and written your Results section, you need to move on to writing the Discussion. As you learned in Week 17, the Discussion is the concluding section of a research report, in which the authors of a study interpret and give meaning to the results, draw conclusions from the findings, relate these findings back to the theories and research presented in the Introduction, and consider the limitations and strengths of the study.

From the activities you have completed on the different sections of a research report, you will remember that the Introduction and Discussion are not stand-alone entities: they are sections of a report that need to ‘speak’ to each other. Bear this in mind as you write the Discussion, ensuring that you revisit the provided Introduction section as you write. Once you have completed the Discussion, read through both sections to ensure that they are consistent and that they tell the same ‘story’ about the study.

Relevant material

The following materials will be useful to you as you complete Part A of this assignment:

• Week 17 contains comprehensive information on chi-square analysis in SPSS and the interpretation of findings. It also provides a guide on how to report findings in a results section and how to make a table in Microsoft Word.

• Section 2 of Week 17 provides detailed information on report writing, including specific guidance on what to include in each section of a research report.

• Activity 17.14 in Week 17 will be useful for assisting in the writing of your Discussion section.

You should also look back at the feedback you have received from your tutor on your previous assignments on the module to see if there is any advice that you could apply to this one. Although writing the Results and Discussion sections of a research report is different from writing an essay, there may be some generic feedback about your writing and communication skills (including referencing) that you may want to consider.