CASE STUDIES OF PRACTICE: PSYCHOLOGY

Title of Practice/Project: Psychology Research Project

Published: March 2008

Reason for selection: Students acting as researchers, transferable skills, assessment of poster presentations

GENERAL BACKGROUND

School
PSYCHOLOGY / Subject
PSYCHOLOGY / Module Title (if applicable)
RESEARCH PROJECT
Lead person / Brian Young (Module Convenor)
Others involved / Other staff in the School of Psychology
ABOUT THE PRACTICE/PROJECT
Type of activity
eg. Single session, project, module, other / Research Project led by students, either individually or in small groups
Focus for activity
eg. Active learning, students as researchers, key skills, etc /

The focus of the project is on enquiry-led learning with students acting as researchers, working independently or in small groups. Key skills include: design, analysis, interpretation; critical understanding/evaluation; problem-solving; group work; information management; and time management

Size of student group / Students work primarily on an individual basis with some group work. Up to 80 or 90 students take this module at any one time.
Full description of practice / The module follows an apprenticeship model of research training. Regular meetings are held with the supervisor throughout the module. Each member of staff contributing to the module offers a set of Research Project topics. Students select a subset of these and are assigned a topics and supervisor on the basis of the initial choices made by the students. Students then research the literature relevant to the topic and produce a formatively assessed research proposal. After consideration of this proposal with the supervisor students then make a submission to the School Ethics Committee, data collection cannot begin until this submission has been approved. Students then conduct the Research Project and report the findings in a scientific report and in a poster session. Deadlines for all submissions are set at the end of the previous academic session.
What was the rationale for
introducing the practice? / To enable students to develop their knowledge and understanding at Level 3 of the problems and complexities of conducting empirical research by requiring them to complete the full process of designing and running an empirical study.
To enable students to develop skills of quantitative data analysis and practical work to an advanced level and apply them in a supervised research study.
To enable students to develop to an advanced level their skills in searching and reviewing large bodies of literature on the selected topic, and in writing scientific reports and preparing a poster presentation.

ASSESSMENT

Assessment - Formative / Project proposal, 1000 words
Submission to School Ethics Committee
Assessment - Summative / Research Project report, 8000 words maximum (89%)
Poster presentation (11%).
Assessment criteria (Web link if available) / Qualitative Descriptors for the marking Scale (Research Project) can be found at
Qualitative Descriptors for the marking scale (Poster Presentation) can be found at

Assessment Procedures for Psychology can be found at

FEEDBACK
Feedback - Student comments / Final year project evaluations report 2005/06

Means for the overall sample

Number of respondents: 83 (29 – individual project, 53 – team project)
Items about supervisor’s help and handbook information were measured on 5- point scale with 1 being the optimum. Item about supervisor’s accessibility was measured on 4-point scale with 1 being an optimum. The rest of the items were measured on 5-point scale with 5 being an optimum.
Item / overall mean / own / team
Supervisor’s help / 1.83 / 1.89 / 1.79
Handbook Information / 2.26 / 2.34 / 2.21
Supervisor’s accessibility / 1.60 / 1.93 / 1.42
Enjoyment / 3.51 / 3.75 / 3.37
Reading guidance / 3.78 / 3.79 / 3.77
Hypotheses guidance / 3.79 / 3.75 / 3.81
Methodology guidance / 4.16 / 3.89 / 4.30
Getting participants / 3.51 / 3.25 / 3.64
Analysis guidance / 3.59 / 3.62 / 3.56
Discussion guidance / 3.34 / 3.23 / 3.40
In summary, the results are not counter-intuitive. It is easier to get participants and there is better guidance on methodology if working as a team – it’s easier to see your supervisor and more enjoyable if on your own. (Unable to obtain significance measures from this data).