The Sociological Detectives: Trial: And Error

The latest addition to the burgeoning Sociological Detectives™ Universe is a role-playing simulation of the Research Process – and Popper’s Hypothetico-Deductive Model of Scientific Research in particular – that uses the analogy of a criminal investigation to help students understand and experience how and why the research process is structured. The simulation takes the students […]

Using Animals in Psychological Research

Short film covering the ethical questions surrounding the use of non-human animals in psychological research.

Psychology Film Club

Membership of the Psychology Film Club (just £25 + VAT per year) gives you unfettered access to a wide selection of our films specifically tailored to the needs of A-level teachers and students. Membership gives you complete on-demand access to the films across all devices (destop, laptop, tablet, mobile…) – plus automatic access to new films we publish during your […]

Research Methodology: Neo-Positivism

As Jurgenson (2014) notes, positivism reflects the idea that, “if enough data can be collected with the “right” methodology it will provide an objective and disinterested picture of reality” and it is, in this respect, based upon two fundamental beliefs about the social world: 1. It involves patterns of behaviour that are capable of being […]

Revision Mapping Research Methods

While I’ve previously posted a Revision Map on Sociological Perspectives I never, for some reason, got around to posting further Maps (at least, not in pdf format – there have been Flipbook versions). Until now. In order to remedy the omission, therefore, I thought I’d start with a range of Maps dedicated to Research Methods. […]

Of Mice and Monkeys: Ethical Issues in Animal Research

Over the course of the last century, psychological research has become increasingly governed by a strict code of ethics that cover things like obtaining participants’ consent, protecting them from possible harm and allowing them to withdraw from the research at any time and for whatever reason. But there’s also a class of “research participant” who […]

Psychological Research Methods: A Practical Approach

I know I said the Teacher Guides were the “third and final” post in this series of Psychology Lesson Elements and Delivery Guides but I may have been caught up in the moment and hence guilty of slightly over-exaggerating things, vis-à-vis the finality angle. In other words, I’ve found another OCR Resource that both complements […]

Psychology: Lesson Elements

As with its sociological counterpart – except more-so, this set of resources from the OCR Exam Board is designed to support teaching and learning for their A-Level Specification and while some of the resources may fall outside the scope of other Specifications there will probably be plenty here that doesn’t. In other words, you can […]

Of Methods and Methodology 6 | 2: Ethical Research Considerations

Ethics refers to the morality of doing something and ethical questions relating to sociological research involve beliefs about what a researcher should – or should not do – before, during and after the research in which they’re involved. This will, as a matter of course, include a consideration of both legal and safety issues: for […]

On Being Sane in Insane Places

David Rosenhan’s “pseudopatient experiment” is a classic study for both sociologists and psychologists, that raises a range of interesting questions relating to areas like mental illness, labelling theory and ethics. Rosenhan’s research was designed to discover if doctors could correctly diagnose mental illness. If they couldn’t, this would tell us something very important about the […]