Undergraduate Course: Psychology Mini-Dissertation (PSYL10131)
Course Outline
| School | School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The project provides students with experience of small-group collaborative research work. Students will review an area of the psychology literature relevant to the research interests of the staff member who supervises the project, before designing and conducting a psychological study in that area. The project will be written up in the form of a journal article.
The small-group nature of the course will provide an opportunity for students to engage in discussion with a staff member for 5 hours in semester one (3hrs - literature review, 2hrs -planning project) and 5 hours in semester two (research design, analysis and interpretation). Students will be required to spend approximately two hours per week in semester one, and three hours per week in semester two, to research the literature, design the study, and successfully complete data collection, analysis and write-up of the work. |
| Course description |
This is a course in which the majority of staff-student interaction will be in small groups (around 6-10 students), with a supervisor. Supervisors will offer projects in a range of areas of psychological research, which could at any given time include qualitative or experimental studies, surveys, or meta-analyses. Subject to availability, students will be asked to indicate their preferences of topics/supervisors.
In the first semester, students will write a literature review on the topic of the research to be done in the second semester; a draft of this review, which will eventually form the Introduction of the final report, will be submitted towards the end of semester one, with formative feedback provided by the beginning of semester two.
In the second part of the course, the students will, with the guidance of the supervisor, develop their research design as a group, and then conduct the research. A draft of the complete report, including detailed methods, results, and a discussion, will be submitted mid-semester 2, and students will receive formative feedback on the draft from their supervisors prior to the assessment due date. The final assessment will consist of a complete report in journal article format (including discussion), together with a brief document outlining how previous feedback has been addressed (this is similar to the process of peer review for journal articles).
Finally, students will present their research orally at a Year 3 Conference held towards the end of semester two.
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Course Delivery Information
| Not being delivered |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Develop skills in structuring and writing a critical literature review.
- Gain experience of collaborative team research.
- Further develop existing skills in designing and conducting psychological research.
- Further develop existing skills in analysis and writing up of research results.
- Gain experience of working with electronic bibliographic databases.
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Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Research methods,literature review |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Elena Gherri
Tel: (0131 6)50 3340
Email: Elena.Gherri@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Ms Alex MacAndrew
Tel: (0131 6)51 3733
Email: alexandra.macandrew@ed.ac.uk |
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