Psychology MRes
1 Year Full-Time | September Start

Academic skills when studying away from your home country can differ due to cultural and language differences in teaching and assessment practices. This module is designed to support your transition in the use and practice of technical language and subject specific skills around assessments and teaching provision in your chosen subject. The overall aim of this module is to develop your abilities to read and study effectively for academic purposes; to develop your skills in analysing and using source material in seminars and academic writing and to develop your use and application of language and communications skills to a higher level.

The topics you will cover on the module include:

• Understanding assignment briefs and exam questions.
• Developing academic writing skills, including citation, paraphrasing, and summarising.
• Practising ‘critical reading’ and ‘critical writing’
• Planning and structuring academic assignments (e.g. essays, reports and presentations).
• Avoiding academic misconduct and gaining credit by using academic sources and referencing effectively.
• Listening skills for lectures.
• Speaking in seminar presentations.
• Presenting your ideas
• Giving discipline-related academic presentations, experiencing peer observation, and receiving formative feedback.
• Speed reading techniques.
• Developing self-reflection skills.
• Discussing ethical issues in research, and analysing results.
• Describing bias and limitations of research.

This module will enable you to design and develop a piece of psychological research whilst embedded within an established research group. You will gain knowledge of the skills, techniques and theories relevant to the research group and you will critically evaluate relevant literature in order to develop your own research project. You will reflect on the necessary time-management skills required in order to plan a feasible project and you will understand the ethical issues relevant to the domain area and apply these to the submission of your own ethics application.

This module will build on skills developed in PY0767(Research Experience: Design and Development) in order to allow you to carry out your planned research and to disseminate the results. Normally it is expected that you will continue to work on the project developed alongside the research team in PY0767 (Research Experience: Design and Development). As you implement that research study you will contribute to the creation of new knowledge and practical applications and also personally reflect on the ways in which empirical research can be applied to inform theory, policy and practice. You will develop the capacity to work autonomously and collaboratively to achieve successful research outcomes.

On this module you will have the opportunity to independently conceptualise, plan and undertake a novel piece of research that contributes to psychological knowledge and understanding. You will critically evaluate current theories and evidence in order to generate your own research question. You will engage with the relevant ethical guidelines to design a feasible project plan. You will develop your independent research skills during this module as well as identifying points of collaboration with supervisors, research staff and other potential stakeholders. You will have the opportunity to communicate your research plans in both written and oral form and then use a variety of relevant skills, techniques and research methods in order to implement your study. Finally you will have the opportunity to disseminate your findings in written form.

The module is designed to give you a theoretical and practical knowledge of more advanced quantitative and qualitative methods for analysing data in psychology. A range of methods will be studied and relevant hardware and software will be used in exercises. The communication of findings according to the most recent conventions and with due regard to the audience will be addressed. The approach is to provide a theoretical background for each technique, so that you are not simply capable of carrying out and reporting analyses, but also capable of reflecting critically on their appropriateness in psychological research and practice.

This module introduces you to a range of research skills and practical techniques which are essential for academic researchers. In semester 1 you will focus on specialist hardware and software techniques specific to psychology. Techniques will include the use of EEG, eye-tracking, near infra-red spectroscopy, and motion capture. Sessions will cover the rationale for the use of particular techniques, and the associated practical and methodological issues. Furthermore, you will spend several sessions learning how to implement your research designs and craft experiments using experiment building software as well as tackling issues such as millisecond precise timing in the programming language Python using the PsychoPy libraries. In semester 2 you will learn about the practicalities of being a researcher, including an overview of research funding, project planning and managing time, participant recruitment research ethics, the peer review process, responding to referee comments, and conference presentation skills. You will also be encouraged to self-reflect as a researcher, considering for example your media skills, employability prospects and your research career.