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Individual Research Project
In your second year, when you are familiar with a broad range of
psychological areas, you must carry out an individual research
project under supervision. This should be a piece of original
research carried out within ethical guidelines.
This involves deciding on a topic, reading relevant literature, designing the experiment, collecting and analysing the data and writing the project report, up to a length of 5,000 words.
The individual research project is an opportunity for you to use your imagination to investigate all sorts of interesting aspects of people's behaviour. Although hard work, many students find their research project the most rewarding part of their course. Titles of various recent projects done by 2nd-year students include the following examples:
- Perceptions of cigarette smoking and risk-taking behaviours in male and female smokers and non-smokers
- A study of cross-cultural perceptions of human mate poaching behaviour
- Ageing and encoding in memory: the effect of contextual information on recall
- A comparison of health locus of control and self-efficacy beliefs in multiple sclerosis patients and controls
- Recall of English and Chinese words under articulatory suppression
- A study of moral development in primary school children
- The effect of humorous advertising on recall and recognition of brands in TV compared to radio advertising
- The effects of blood type on personality
The project is assessed as follows:
- 75% on the written report (5,000 words)
- 10% on the project proposal and ethical considerations
- 10% on the oral presentation in the Autumn Term
- 5% on general organisation and attitude towards the project
Although texts will depend on the research topic chosen, the following core texts should be useful:
- Coolican, H. Research methods and statistics in psychology (4th ed., London: Hodder & Stoughton, 2004). ISBN : 0-340-81258-3.
- Forshaw, M. Your undergraduate psychology project: a BPS guide (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004). ISBN : 1-4051-1936-5.