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Foundation topics you have to incorporate into any well-developed psychological analysis
- Approaches
- Debates
- Issues
- Reliability and Validity
There are many approaches to psychology as you will have realised during your earlier studies. The four that are usually concentrated on are; biological, psychodynamic, behavioural and cognitive, but there are other approaches you may have already studied, or are going to this year, these may include; evolutionary, humanistic and social constructivist. When you are asked to discuss or analyse theories / research, you will need to show how the various approaches would explain the subject area. You will need to know about several approaches well, to provide a fully developed argument and gain the best marks.
These are where there are unresolved arguments about why people do what they do, where there are valid arguments of both sides and no set conclusions have been drawn. The debates include nature vs nurture, free will vs determinism and reductionism. Again you need to be aware of these debates, so you can give a nice rounded analysis when asked in your A2 exams.
These are areas that could have an impact on how research is interpreted. They include; gender and culture bias, along with the ethics of using human and non-human participants in research and theorising about them. The ethics you studied in your earlier course develop into issues and exploration of the effects on participants and others, during and after studies have been completed.
You may have met reliability and validity in your earlier course, these are very important aspects of research and its interpretation.
Of course you will not use all the areas covered in one question, but you need to have a broad knowledge of all these aspects to be equipped to answer questions well and achieve the best grades.
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