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Week 3: Writing Skills
What is an essay?
An activity to sharpen your thinking and improve your writing.
Develop your generic written communication skills.
Writing with a particular purpose, structure, and layout, typically in response to a question.
Written in a formal, academic style.
these skills will be needed to further our psychological careers.
Week 3: Writing Skills
Essay Marking Criteria
Knowledge and understanding (accurate terminology etc)
Critical Analysis (break down research)
Reading and referencing (independent reading - is it relevant + referred to appropriately)
Essay structure
Use of language (tone / no colloquial language)
Week 3: Writing Skills
How to write an essay
Analyse the essay title
Check the ‘process’ word
Develop the main argument (or thesis)
What is the big message I want to communicate to
readers?
• What is the overall point I am trying to make that
underpins what I say throughout my essay?
Organise your essay in a way to best convey
the main argument.
Week 3: Writing Skills
Knowing what to write about
Knowledge and understanding:
• The essay demonstrates evidence of sound knowledge of the topic and makes accurate use of the appropriate terminology
• 2(i) “Shows evidence of relevant and sound knowledge and understanding of the topic.”
Example: ‘Assess the usefulness of adult attachment theory for understanding experiences in young adults’ romantic relationships’
• “Shows evidence of relevant and sound knowledge and understanding of
• Adult attachment theory
• Experiences in romantic relationships in young adulthood
Lectures and essential reading as important starting points.
Week 3: Writing Skills
Essay Structure
Structure The essay is structured so as to make the argument and discussion clear and coherent.
• 2(i)
“Structure is clear and supports coherent discussion and argument.
Is basically logical, but could be more persuasive in places.
Introduces the aim of the essay, but this may be done
in a perfunctory manner.
Comes to a conclusion which follows from the main points of
the essay, but may not be fully justified or may not fully address the essay title.”
Should balance word counts well:
intro = 10%
main body = 80%
conc = 10%
references
Week 3: Writing Skills
The Introduction
Explain how you interpret the questions
Summarise the conclusion
Identify issues that you are going to explore
Give a brief outline of how you will deal with each issue and in which order.
Define terms where necessary
Week 3: Writing Skills
Main Body
Basic Paragraph Structure:
1. Introduce the point
2. Discuss the evidence that supports the point
3. Restate the point and relate it to the thesis / section of the main body
Integrated Paragraph
• Transitional phrase or sentence linking paragraph to previous paragraph or thesis
• 1., 2., and 3. of basic paragraph structure
• Transitional sentence or phrase linking paragraph to next paragraph or thesis.
Transitional words/phrases to start a sentence e.g.:
To illustrate = specifically, for example, as one example, in particular.
Transitional words/phrases to start a paragraph e.g.:
To present own idea = it seems plausible that, it seems reasonable that, it seems logical that, it could be argued that.
Week 3: Writing Skills
Synthesis
Combining separate elements to form a whole
Separate elements e.g.,
• Research studies
• Concepts
• Points in an essay
The whole e.g.,
• Summary of what is known
• Conclusion in an essay
Week 3: Writing Skills
Knowledge and Understanding
Implications:
How and why are the research findings important?
What do they mean?
Could be:
theoretical
practical
social
political
technological
Week 3: Writing Skills
Implications and Recommendations
State what a study found
e.g. McDaniel (2013) found that learning items over time improves memory.
What the results suggest
e.g. results suggest memory is better when spread out, may be due to memory consolidation.
Recommend something based upon this
e.g. students should avoid last minute revision.
Week 3: Writing Skills
The Conclusion
Summarise the argument and main themes
State the general conclusions
Make it clear why those conclusions are important or significant.
In the last sentence, sum up the argument very briefly, linking it to the title.
Week 3: Writing Skills
Referencing: How to indicate your sources
In-text citation:
Parenthetical citation:
(Fletcher-Watson & Bird, 2020)
Med or end of sentence
Narrative citation:
Fletcher-Watson and Bird (2020)
Start of sentence
Reference - Journal article:
Surname, firstname initial. (date of publication). Title. Publisher. Link
References (not bibliographies)
Diff formats for sources e.g. books, specific chapters, websites
Stay consistent
Week 3: Writing Skills
How to write an essay (self-assess)
Self-assess the essays structure:
Is the thesis clearly stated in the inro?
Does each paragraph address on key point?
Is the link between each para and the main argument explicit?
Have the paragraphs been organised in a meaningful way?
Is there evidence of synthesis throughout the essay?
Does the conclusion address the essay title?
Are the references complete and consistently formatted?
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Academic Integrity
Academic Integrity is a set of values that we uphold to ensure that our work is honest, fair and original.
Plagarism is a form of academic misonduct
It involves copying someone else’s work/ideas without acknowledging them.
Presenting someone else’s work as your own.
Week 4: Academic Integrity
‘My academic integrity will only be challenged if i have consciously and with clear premeditated intent, copied the work of others’ = FALSE
Week 4: Academic Integrity
issues may arise from
Poor paraphrasing
Trust your own intellect
Poor citing / referencing
Check lecture notes/library resources
Poor note taking
Use Academic Skills Centre
Rushing
Plan ahead / request extensions
Poor understanding of academic integrity
Check through the resources on Canvas
Poor understanding of subject
Use lecturers’ office hours / discussion boards etc
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Text Overlap
They use Turnitin to check work against:
All reports in the same assignment
All past reports from all assignments to UoB
Past reports to all unis using Turnitin
All books in electronic format
Most books not in electronic format (through past assignments)
Big part of the internet
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Accidental Overlap
Some overlap is accidental:
Minor part of the sentence
Multiple sources
Minor overlap from each sentence
We ignore:
Instructions
Citation names
Everything you say is no yours (e.g. in quotation marks)
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Poor Paraphrasing
What is it?
When you rely too much on the original source, borrowing instead of paraphrasing text.
Example of poor paraphrasing:
Use of the same text
No quotation
Citation is not enough
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Good writing process
Read a source (article, chapter etc)
Write notes about it on a separate document
write the key message in your own words
don’t need every detail
just notes to explain to yourself
NEVER copy and paste from a source into notes
Create bullet point structure for essay
complete essay using only notes
NEVER use original source and essay together
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Tips to avoid poor paraphrasing
Always go from source to notes (paraphrased), then to assignment.
NEVER copy with intent to paraphrase later.
NEVER write something you do not understand.
Always quote + cite when using the exact same words.
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Self plagarism
Should not re-use material.
NOT allowed to use a past essay / post you wrote a few years ago etc.
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Collaboration vs Collusion
Collaboration is to enhance learning but there are limits
Submit work that is your own
Don’t share drafts of your writing with others in your group.
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Commissioning (buying) essays
Submitting an assessment you have not completed yourself.
An attempt to deceive the marker.
Serious plagiarism + academic misconduct
Will be referred to a College Misconduct and Fitness to Practise Committee.
Can lead to failure of the programme.
This also applies to Generative AI.
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Advice/Warning Letters
Helps students realise that it is wrong without a penalty.
What to do:
Read report carefully
Figure out what lead to the text overlapping.
Re-read material and ensure that you know what you did was wrong.
Talk to your personal tutor.
Use the resources signposted in the letter.
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Invitation to an interview
There is no assumption of intent to plagarise.
Meant to be productive + student learn from it.
What to do:
Read material and report before meeting.
Make sure you attend the meeting,
Make the most out of it even if it a mistake.
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Plagiarism Penalties
Reduction of mark decided by 2 staff members.
Marker is not aware at the time, eliminating unconscious bias.
Week 4: Academic Integrity
Professional
Responsibilities in international academic community:
Undertake research honestly + credit others for their work.
Do original work for each class.
Demonstrate your own achievement.
Accept feedback and corrections from your tutor as part of the learning process.
Week 7: Reports
Scientific Report
What is a scientific report?
Concise + objective + precise account of an empirical research project.
Aims to:
Describe an experiment conducted in the lab.
To communicate the results of this .
Qualities of scientific writing:
Objective
Clear
Accurate
Knows audience
Appropriate terminology
Follows style guidelines
verb tenses + active/passive voice
self-reference
bias-free
parallel form and repetition
numbers
Week 7: Reports
Introduction
Presents the scientific background + rationale + hypothesis.
Introduce research problem / question
Cite an event/ create fictional scenario
Identify scope of previous research
Present statistic
Cite quotation
A concise literature review
Summarise knowledge
Emphasise relevant findings
Highlight methodological issues + major conclusions
Brief summary of research (e.g. in a sample of A, method B produced result C)
Present study / introduce project
Brief overview of your own study
State rationale: use previous research to make critical arg for our hypothesis.
Week 7: Reports
Method
A comprehensive description of how you conducted the study.
Written in past tense
Detailed enough to permit replication
Be specific about:
ppts, materials, equipment etc
the steps in the process (chronological order)
Qualitative Reports | Quantitative Reports |
|---|---|
Epistemological + ontological position | |
Participants | Participants |
Data collection | Materials / Measures / Stimuli / Equipment |
Data analysis | Procedure |
Ethical considerations | Ethical considerations |
Reflection | Data preparation |
Week 7: Reports
Results
Describes the findings of the data analysis
Restate hypothesis in conceptual terms
Reword hypothesis in operational terms
State findings plainly
Summarise what was found
Supplement the text with tables and figures as appropriate.
Describe the findings, but do not interpret them.
It was hypothesised that 1st year students would have more
difficulties settling into the first semester than 2nd year
students. Specifically, 1st year students were expected to have
lower CAT scores than 2nd year students. As shown in Table 1,
1st year students had higher CAT scores than 2nd year students,
on average, t (85) = 5.38, p = .005. Thus, although a
significant difference was found the hypothesis was not
supported.
Week 7: Reports
Discussion
Interpret the results.
Address the research problem / question
General statement of the findings in conceptual terms
State whether the hypothesis was supported or not
Don’t include statistical information here
Account for the findings
Compare your findings to those cited in the introduction
Implications - Explain what your findings mean: How do they fit with existing
theoretical ideas? What new knowledge has been gained?
Offer tentative explanations for unexpected findings
Limitations: Evaluate your study
Discuss threats to the study’s internal validity, inadequacy of measurement,
etc.
Discuss the extent to which the findings are generalisable
Future research directions
Conclusions
State the potential implications for research, theory, and/or practice
Link back to the research question or problem.
Directions for future research
Propose specific and original directions
Examine limits of the findings
Test implications of the findings
Apply to a different area of investigation
Week 7: Reports
The Abstract
A brief but comprehensive summary of the key elements of the study.
Must be able to stand alone
Write 1-2 sentences about:
Key aspects of the lit review
Research problem
Hypothesis
Methods used, sample size, design etc
Study results
Implications - importance, applications
Week 7: Reports
Title
Captures topic area, aim, and research question
Informative and specific, includes key words
Concise (approx. 10-15 words)
Week 11: Learning from feedback
What is feedback?
What is feedback:
A process '“through which learners make sense of information from various sources
and use it to enhance their work or learning strategies”
Aim:
To reduce the gap between current and desired performance.
Week 11: Learning from feedback
Different types
Formative:
Provides indicators on your performance and helps identify areas for improvements
Received before you submit the assignment.
Summative:
Is evaluative and measures your performance against the module learning outcomes.
Is usually accompanied by a mark or grade and is used to determine degree classification.
Feedback used as feed-forward:
Helps identify what you need to do to improve in future assessments.
Week 11: Learning from feedback
How will you receive feedback?
Specific, targeted tutor feedback, e.g.:
Written summative comments on an essay.
Indication of achievement against various criteria on a rubric.
Whole class feedback e.g.:
Post-summative submission.
Responses to exercises.
Automated feedback e.g.:
Tests on Canvas.
Feedback from others e.g.:
Peer or self-feedback.
Informal feedback e.g.:
Comments from lecturer at end of lecture.
Comments from a lecturer via canvas.
Week 11: Learning from feedback
Effective feedback
What can effective feedback do?
Raise your consciousness of the strengths of your work.
Boost your confidence and self-concept regarding your personal strengths and abilities.
Provide guidance on areas for further development of skills and enhancement of work.
Enhance your own judgment, understanding of assessment criteria, and ability to self-audit your own work.
Week 11: Learning from feedback
Feedback literacy
Features underpinning student feedback literacy (Carless & Boud, 2018)
Appreciate feedback (recognise the forms) + make judgements + manage affect (avoid being defensive)
= Take action (draw inferences from range of feedback for continuous improvement).
Week 11: Learning from feedback
Assessment process
EoSW: All submissions logged.
Module lead organises marking loads.
Marking team calibrate; marking scrutiny panel reviews feedback.
Marking.
Module lead reviews marks, writes report.
Quality advisor moderates sample.
Administrators log marks.
Marks and feedback returned to students.
Week 11: Learning from feedback
Using tutor’s feedback
Check you understand why the tutor wrote each comment. Highlight comments that could be useful for other assignments.
Create a table with major issues and minor issues as the column titles.
List the comments from 1. under the different columns (major vs minor issues).
Compare the list to previous work.
Number the items in order of priority.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Observation - Pros and Cons
Observe behaviour
either in real time
or by examining record e.g. newspapers, ads (archival)
Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
Ecological validity (what is observed will also be true in natural settings). | Some behaviours are difficult to replicate. Can’t infer causal relationships. |
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Surveys - Pros and Cons
Lots of people asked questions about their thoughts or behaviour.
Need a representative sample.
Framing of questions important.
Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
Used to measure unobservable behaviour. | People may give inaccurate responses (on purpose or do not know answer) = reducing ecological validity. Difficult to infer causal relationships. |
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Experiments - Pros and Cons
Generate conditions that differ in only one respect (IV)
Investigate impact of these manipulations on another variable (DV)
Change in IV = Change in DV
Advantages | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
Can examine a causal relationship (because we manipulated) | Participant effects: Ppt performs in the way they think the researcher want them to or in a way that is more socially desirable. |
Experimenter effects:
| |
External validity: How general are the conclusions that can be drawn from the exp? |
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Experiments - summary
Ensure observed effects are only due to the IV - not another factor.
e.g.
Random selection: every ppt has an equal chance of being selected.
Random assignment to condition: ppts are randomly allocated to groups.
Summary:
There are many pitfalls that we must aim to avoid with experimental investigation, but the tool it gives us for examining causal relations makes it invaluable to psychologists.
This is why interpreting experiments constitutes the vast majority of this course.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
What about Children / Special Populations
SEE LECTURE
Considerations for children:
Boredom / motivation
understand instructions
motor skills / language skills
cognitive capacity
special populations:
domain-specific knowledge is useful here
e.g. autism and attention
matched controls? matched on what? representative sample.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Establish causality (Hume)
Hume:
ASSOCIATION: C and E must have temporal and spatial contiguity
DIRECTION: C must precede E temporally
CONSTANT CONJUNCTION: If C, then E for ALL situation
however this is not always the case:
The effect of something can be caused somewhere far away, e.g. by pressing a button / making a phone call.
E.g. sending an email but setting a timer for it to be sent in a year.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Establish causality (Kenny)
DONT UNDERSTAND SEE LECTURE VID
David Kenny:
Time Precedence
Relationship - C and E are variables with at least 2 states.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Adopting the Critical Stance
Can a published piece of research be trusted?
NO - something published in a peer-reviewed journal = other scientists judged it suitable for publication.
However:
they may be biased (e.g. friends)
may not have spotted the errors
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Adopting the Critical Stance: Passive vs Active Reading
Passive: Accept the article at face value.
Active reading:
Each section in article creates expectations in reader (author wants you to believe the message)
The active reader is aware of these expectations
The active reader checks that all expectations are fulfilled.
Critical appraisal requires active reading - note what ISNT there as well as what is.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Adopting the Critical Stance: Domain Independence
Knowledge needed to produce research:
Domain knowledge
Methods knowledge
Knowledge needed to critique research:
A sound understanding of the limitations and strengths of the methods used.
In depth knowledge of the research domain is not required.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Adopting the Critical Stance: Learning by doing
Critical analysis is a practical skill:
Learning theory only goes so far
Practical aspects only learnt through practice
That’s why the course is mix of lecture and active critical thinking
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Three Tasks of Critical Appraisal
Establish the facts:
What did the researcher do?
Evaluate the article against its central themes, with a balanced commentary
Does the data support the article’s conclusions?
How would you improve it?
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Three Tasks of Critical Appraisal (1 + 3)
Establishing the facts
Intro: What research question is paper addressing? Does it specify a hypothesis?
Method: What variables are investigated? What did the subjects actually do? How were subjects selected?
Results: Draw up table summarising results. What analyses were used? What was main result?
Discussion: What conclusions were drawn?
How would you improve it? Use knowledge of the shortcomings to reduce them.
sample size (is bigger always better?)
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: Examples of things to look out for according to type of question
Existence Questions
Examples:
‘Can neonates perceive colour?’
‘Can chimpanzees communicate with symbols?’
Establish an effect and rule out rival explanations for that effect.
Can chimps communicate with symbols:
Demonstrate passing of info between chimps
and that info was passed via symbols
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: Examples of things to look out for according to type of question
Description Questions
Examples:
‘What are personality characteristics of anorexic girls?’
‘What are the child-rearing practices of drug-addicted mothers?’
These surveys are typically addressed through survey research.
Research must show that characteristics are peculiar to the thing being described.
child-rearing in drug-addicted mothers and not addicted mothers should be contrasted.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: Examples of things to look out for according to type of question
Composition Questions
Examples:
‘What are the components of personality?'
‘What factors make up executive functioning?’
These questions require the whole being broken down into parts.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: Examples of things to look out for according to type of question
Relationship Questions
Examples:
‘Is honesty related to socioeconomic status?’
‘Is performance on the Tower of London Task related to executive functioning?’
Relevant statistical techniques include correlation and multiple regression:
Many ppts required
Sample must be representative
Interpretation must remain cautious (correlation is not causation)
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: Examples of things to look out for according to type of question
Comparison Questions
Example:
‘Do younger people have better memory than older people?’
Groups under consideration differ by one variable related to an attribute of the group (e.g. by age)
Identified but not manipulated by researcher.
Statistical tests for comparing means (e.g. ANOVA)
still, correlation does not equal causation.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: Examples of things to look out for according to type of question
Simple Causal Questions
Example:
‘Does taking ecstasy affect executive functioning?’
the exp group should be under control of experimenter but assignment to it = random.
Control group should be treated equally
Standard statistical tests for comparing means
Samples may be small, but must be representative.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: Examples of things to look out for according to type of question
Causal Interaction Questions
Example:
‘Does counselling prevent delinquency more than group activity in girls but not boys?’
Causal interaction qs = introduce a 2nd IV
Statistical analysis normally takes the form of ANOVA
Care is required in interpreting results:
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: general things to look out for
Participant Variables
Demographics:
Are all groups matched on age, sex, ethnicity etc.?
Extra-experimental changes in ppts:
in longitudinal studies, are any groups more prone to extra-experimental changes?
Motivation and role perception:
Did all ppts receive the same reward?
Did all ppts perceive their role similarly?
Communication between ppts may influence results.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: general things to look out for
Stimulus and Situational Variables
Ppts in all treatment groups should have the same experience (as far as possible):
is the experiment of similar duration for all groups?
were all groups tested at a similar time of day / location?
could procedure / wording influence the diff groups in diff ways?
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: general things to look out for
Instrumentation Variables
The same measuring instrument should be used for all groups:
We need to be sure that the measuring instrument does not introduce systematic bias.
Where judges are required to rate a behaviour:
They should be adequately trained to ensure they can discriminate behaviours.
They should be unaware of the hypotheses or the treatment groups.
More than one judge should be used and inter-rater reliability should be reported.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: general things to look out for
Nuisance Variables
Some variables are completely beyond the control of the experimenter:
perhaps one ppt has a toothache, while another lost his watch that day.
Random allocation of ppts to treatment groups should ensure that such variables:
are distributed similarly across treatment groups.
are sufficiently rare that any effects amount to noise in the data.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: general things to look out for
Order Effects
Practice: could performance in a second condition improve because of task practice?
Fatigue / Boredom / Motivation: could performance in second condition decline because of these?
Multiple Treatment Interference: Could performance on one condition interfere with performance on the next?
Counterbalancing order can limit these effects.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: general things to look out for
Regression to the Mean
Select participants based on unusual performance in one test.
Apply treatment then retest ppts
Performance may now be closer to the OG group mean but not due to the manipulation.
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Critique: general things to look out for
Data Analysis
Statistic Selection and Presentation:
The reader should be able to guess which test will be used from the method section (have they?)
if not, have convoluted procedures been used to get a specific result?
Multiple analyses and Type 1 Error
Planned Comparisons and Post Hoc tests
were additional stats test exploratory or based on hypotheses?
Presentation - distortion of scale / meaning
scale - Y axis being spread out shows a larger difference
meaning - using percentage higher rather than numerically show different graphs
Week 9: Critical Analysis 2
Why do we need critical thinking (last yrs) + what is critical thinking
Why do we need critical thinking?
need to be able to sift through info / args to choose the best ones.
We need to be sure we are not accepting an account that is untrue.
We need to be sure we are not allowing our biases to influence the facts / evidence.
We need assurance that we are not deluding ourselves over the evidence.
To decide whether to adopt / reject ideas or opinions we have to consider only whether they are likely to be true or not.
What is critical thinking?
Critical thinking is about applying a level of ‘constructional doubt’.
Method to examine and evaluate.
Week 9: Critical Analysis 2
Aims when criticising paper
What question are they trying to answer / what are they trying to do? Is there existing work? Are their criticisms of other work justified - otherwise why are they doing this?
What did they do? What is not their? e.g. exactly what instructions did the ppts get? How were they greeted?
What did they find?
Are their claims justified?
Week 9: Critical Analysis 2
How to spot fake news
Are you familiar with the source? Is it legitimate?
Has the source been reliable in the past?
Read further - headline does not tell whole story.
Check your biases.
Check a fact-checking website.
Week 11: Learning from Feedback
Cottrell Textbook: Making improvements
Making improvements:
Select a few priority issues from each list (major vs minor) to work on in next piece of work = realistic targets.
Consider how to deal with each item on the list.
Understand why you received the feedback.
Re-read the guide.
Ask tutor if you do not understand comments.
Ask tutor how to improve ‘priority areas’.
ask what gets good marks.
Ask your tutor for examples of work they’d like you to produce.
reflection:
how well do you use your tutors’ feedback?
Is there feedback for whole class?
How can you make better use of all of the advice and feedback?
Week 7: Reports
Essential reading - Field (2016)
lab report = communicate in a clear, systematic and standardised way. Should include:
Why did I do this?
How did i do it?
What did i find?
So what?
Format of lab report:
Title - max 12 words
Abstract - 150-250 words
Intro
Method
Ppts
Materials (opt)
Design (opt)
Procedure
Scoring (opt)
results
Discussion
References
Appendix (opt)
Week 8: Critical Analysis
Reliability vs Validity vs Accuracy
Reliability = get the same result over and over again
Validity = does it measure the thing you think it does?
Accuracy = does it give you the right answer?
Note 
Flashcard (37)