Posted: September 13th, 2017

project participant information for Part 2 of TMA

Write the Design, Participants and Materials subsections of the Method section of your DE100 project report.

use only the data provided in the word document, breaking the essay down to 400 words in three parts as explained in attachment TA03.

DE100 project participant information for Part 2 of TMA 03 Cut-off;

When you write the Method section of your report for Part 2 of TMA 03 you will need to use the data supplied in this document in order to describe the participants.
These data have been supplied by the module team. For the purpose of writing this report you may assume that relevant ethical procedures were followed.
When you write about how participants were recruited, we suggest that you describe how your own participants were recruited.
If you were unable to recruit participants, please contact your tutor for advice.
Condition (C/E)     Participant’s gender (M/F)     Participant’s age

Contents
The assignment 4
Student notes for Part 1 5
Student notes for Part 2 7
Student notes for Part 3 9
Learning outcomes 10
Checklist 11
3 of 12 Monday 5 January 2015
The assignment
Cut-off date: 12 noon on 30 June 2015
Important: These pages provide guidance on how to write your assignment. Please
ensure you read all of this information, right through to the checklist at the end.
Before you start work on this assignment, make sure you have read the Assessment
Guidance specific to this module.
Additional support and guidance, including advice on plagiarism, referencing and the
marking system, can be found in Social Sciences Assessment Information.
Please consult your tutor if you are unsure about anything related to assessment, as
failure to comply with relevant guidance could result in the loss of marks or other
penalties.
There are three parts to this assignment (all of which must be submitted). One whole
study week is allocated to completing it.
Part 1 (essay)
Evaluate the usefulness of Harlow’s work for understanding human attachment.
70 per cent of the mark
Word limit: 1000 words
Part 2 (DE100 project report)
Write the Design, Participants and Materials subsections of the Method section of your
DE100 project report.
30 per cent of the mark
Word limit: 400 words
Part 3 (reflective component)
Reflect on your writing skills and consider how they are developing as you progress
through the module.
Not graded, but 5 marks deducted if not completed.
Word limit: 100 words
On the following pages you will find:
l student notes for each part
l learning outcomes addressed by this assignment
l a checklist to ensure you have done everything required.
The assignment
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Student notes for Part 1
You are asked to ‘evaluate the usefulness of Harlow’s work for understanding human
attachment’.
The main difference between the type of essay which you will be writing for this
assignment and that which you wrote for TMA 02 lies in what is expected of you. The
essay for TMA 02 required you to outline the similarities and differences between two
studies. This time you are expected to begin to engage in the more advanced activity of
evaluation. The ability to evaluate material is an important skill, both in academic study
and in many occupations. This part of the assignment gives you an opportunity to develop
this skill.
Before you start work on your essay, you need to make sure you understand exactly what
the question requires. This means identifying and understanding the process and content
words.
Process and content words
In this question there is one process word: ‘evaluate’. It is this process word that directs
you to more than just describing something. Evaluation involves constructing an argument
about the importance and/or implications of the points being made. Further, evaluation
requires you to consider arguments both for and against a certain question/claim; for
example, in this case, whether Harlow’s work is useful for understanding human
attachment. As with all academic writing, your points should be supported with evidence
and referenced appropriately.
The content words are ‘the usefulness of Harlow’s work for understanding human
attachment’. This means that the essay has a very specific focus on the work of Harlow,
which you came across in Chapter 5 of Investigating Psychology.
Note: Although this research is now considered unethical, Harlow’s research on animals
should be treated as part of your study of the development of research theory and method
in psychology, the contribution it has made to understanding of human behaviour and the
ethical debates that have emerged from all that at different times. It was partly in response
to work such as Harlow’s that psychologists have been prompted to review and improve
ethical standards.
Relevant material
You will find relevant material in Chapter 5 of Investigating Psychology. There is a great
deal of potentially useful information in this chapter, so you will need to be selective about
which points you want to focus on. Section 1 introduces the concept of attachment and
discusses early theories of the parent–infant bond. Section 2 is particularly important as it
describes Harlow’s key study; Section 2.2 discusses the research method employed.
Section 3 is also directly relevant as it provides an evaluation of Harlow’s work.
You may also find the audio Harry Harlow from week 15 useful.
The content words specify that the focus is Harlow’s work and its usefulness for
understanding human attachment. However, in showing how, and where, Harlow’s work
is, or is not, useful for understanding human attachment, you will probably need to draw
on other studies described in Chapter 5. Section 4 discusses Ainsworth’s research on
Student notes for Part 1
5 of 12 Monday 5 January 2015
human infant attachment and Section 5 covers a range of studies exploring the long-term
effects of deprivation on human attachment. If you draw on this material you should avoid
lengthy descriptions which will not be directly relevant to the focus of this essay. Rather,
you should use any additional material as a way of providing evidence in support of your
evaluation of Harlow’s work.
There is a lot of information which you could include, so you will need to be selective in
what you choose. You cannot cover all of the possible points and you are not expected to.
Therefore keep the precise wording of the essay question in mind and focus on selecting
those points you consider to be most important and for which you can provide evidence to
support your argument.
Below you will find tips for writing your essay, but before you start working on this part of
the assignment, you should make sure that you have completed these online activities:
l Online Activity 13.2: Constructing an argument. This activity deals with how to
present material in an assignment in a logical and coherent way, so that it addresses
the question. This is especially important when writing an essay that focuses on
evaluation.
l Online Activity 18.2: Preparing for TMA 03 (Part 1) takes you through the process of
gathering, selecting and evaluating evidence.
Before you begin to plan this essay, it would be good to review the feedback you received
from your tutor for your essay in TMA 02, to see if there is any advice about the essay
structure/content etc. that you could apply to this essay.
Tips for writing your essay
Having worked through the online activities, and having identified the process and content
words in the essay, it is useful to reread the relevant material and make notes with the
particular essay question in mind. When making notes, it may be helpful to specifically
label which points support the idea that Harlow’s work is useful for understanding human
attachment, and which points suggest otherwise.
As with Part 1 of TMA 02, it is advisable to use an essay plan to help to organise the
points yuu want to make into a logical structure. Constructing an essay plan will help you
to ensure that the essay is addressing the evaluative component of the question.
Remember that while you are required to consider alternative sides of the argument, it is
not necessary to have equal numbers of points supporting both sides.
If you are unsure of what to include in the essay, it may be useful to consider the following
questions:
l Who and what did Harlow study?
l How did he carry out his research?
l How can Harlow’s findings be applied to human attachment?
l What are the limitations of Harlow’s work for understanding human attachment?
l How has his work been taken up by other researchers?
Remember that the task of the essay is to ‘evaluate’; so while you may want to include
some background information, it is important to consider carefully how much background
information the reader requires. The bulk of your essay must be directly focused on
evaluating the usefulness of Harlow’s work for understanding human attachment.
Student notes for Part 1
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Ensure that:
l you pay attention to signposting your essay – make it clear whether you are making a
point suggesting Harlow’s work is useful to understanding human attachment, or
whether you are making a point which shows limitations; a balanced essay will
consider both before you come to a conclusion
l once you have completed your essay, you go back to your introduction and make
sure that it sets up your essay well and accurately outlines how you will be
addressing the question and what you will be arguing
l your conclusion, whatever that conclusion is, provides a clear and direct response to
the essay question set and follows from the evidence you presented.
With all assignments, taking the time to reread the essay prior to submission is of great
value in helping to pick up on minor spelling and grammatical errors, while also helping
you to check that your argument is coming through clearly. If you are still unsure whether
you have responded directly to the question, it is worth challenging yourself to consider
whether you would be able to guess the essay question simply from what you have written
– you could perhaps ask a family member or friend to test this for you.
Remember that references should be included both within the essay and at the end. Also,
remember to distinguish between primary sources (those you have read yourself, such as
the textbook chapters) and secondary sources (those you have read about in the
chapters). This is another area where reviewing the feedback you received on previous
assignments is recommended. If you are still unsure how to reference, you should revisit
Online Activity 7.3: Referencing (Part 1) – Why reference? and Online Activity 8.3:
Referencing (Part 2) – How to reference.
Remember to state the word count at the end of your answer.
When marking Part 1 your tutor will be looking for:
l evidence of understanding of the relevant material
l evaluation of the material
l good paraphrasing skills and evidence of writing in your own words
l the ability to follow a logical structure for an essay
l clear and concise writing
l points and arguments that are backed by evidence
l referencing of sources
l keeping within the word limit of 1000 words.
Student notes for Part 2
You are asked to write the Design, Participants and Materials subsections of the Method
section of your DE100 project report.
By this point you should have run the DE100 project experiment on two participants,
collected the data and submitted it to the collaborative forum to be combined with data
from other students. You do not need to have analysed the data in order to write your
Method section. You will be conducting the analysis in the weeks ahead.
Student notes for Part 2
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Note: As part of the DE100 project, you were required to collect data from two
participants. This was to enable you to gain experience of running an experiment and to
give you a clearer sense of the design of the experiment, the materials used, the
procedure involved, and how it is to conduct research with participants.
Note, however, that for this part of the assignment, you are required to write the Methods
subsection based on participant data supplied by the DE100 team, not on data that you
and other students in your group collected. The data for this assignment is set out in TMA
03: DE100 project participant information, located in the Assessment resources section of
the module website.
The Method section of a research report usually comprises four subsections: Design,
Participants, Materials and finally Procedure. For this assignment you are only required to
write the first three.
Subsection Contents Source of information
Word limit
Design Details of the design
and number and type
of variables.
DE100 project online
activities (see below).
150
Participants Details of who the
participants were, how
many there were and
how they were recruited.
DE100 project online
activities (see
below).
TMA 03: DE100 project
participant information.
100
Materials Details of the stimuli
and any materials
used to record the
responses of participants.
DE100 project online
activities (see below).
150
Total 400
Relevant material
The most important source of information for this part of the assignment is Online Activity
18.3: Preparing for TMA 03 (Part 2), which provides examples of a Design subsection, a
Participant subsection and a Materials subsection, along with a detailed account of what
information you should include in each. The summary to the online activity contains a
checklist to help you ensure you have covered each point.
Some of the other DE100 project-related online activities which you completed in previous
weeks also contain useful information, including:
l Online Activity 14.4: DE100 project – Introduction
l Online Activity 16.2: DE100 project – Procedure
l Online Activity 17.2: DE100 project – Collecting data.
Student notes for Part 2
8 of 12 Monday 5 January 2015
If you have not already done so, you should complete these online activities before you
attempt this part of the assignment.
In addition, you will need to access the document TMA 03: DE100 project participant
information, which contains the details of the participants (the overall number, age and
gender) which you will need in order to write the Participant subsection. When you write
about how participants were recruited, it is advisable to describe how you recruited your
participants. If you were unable to recruit participants please contact your tutor for advice.
For the purposes of writing this report you may assume that relevant ethical procedures
were followed.
Tips for writing
You will need to write concisely, as the word limits for each subsection are tight: Design,
150 words; Participants, 100 words; and Materials, 150 words. In the first draft of your
answer, use the summary checklist in Online Activity 18.3: Preparing for TMA 03 (Part 2)
to make sure you have covered all the relevant points for each subsection. Then check
your word count. It is likely that you will need to redraft the subsections several times
before they fit within the word limits while ensuring that your account remains clear.
Note that you do not need to submit a copy of the stimulus materials.
Remember to state the word count at the end of each subsection.
When marking Part 2 your tutor will be looking for:
l evidence of understanding of the relevant material; in particular, what information is
required for each subsection
l good paraphrasing skills and evidence of writing in your own words
l logical structure that follows the conventions of a Method section of a report
l clear and concise writing
l keeping within the word limit for each section.
Student notes for Part 3
Your task is to reflect on your writing skills and consider how they are developing as you
progress through the module.
You should have reviewed the feedback you received on TMA 02 before attempting this
assignment. Write a few sentences (not more than 100 words) on the following:
l What aspects of my writing did the tutor comment on in the feedback on TMA 02, and
how have I tried to address this in TMA 03?
l What else could I do to improve my writing in the future?
You will need to review the feedback you were given on TMA 02 and identify one or two
aspects of your writing which your tutor suggested could be improved. For example:
l Was your referencing adequate and accurate?
l Did you provide evidence for the claims you were making?
Student notes for Part 3
9 of 12 Monday 5 January 2015
l Did you write clearly?
l Was your essay well structured, and your introduction and conclusion clear and
appropriate?
l Did you cover appropriate material, or were key points omitted or too much
unnecessary information included?
When you have identified one or two aspects to focus on, explain how you have tried to
improve. For example:
l Did you go back to any of the online activities to clarify any misunderstanding?
l Did you contact your tutor for further advice?
l Did you allow yourself more time to complete particular tasks?
l Did you spend more time planning or editing what you have written for TMA 03?
It is important that you complete this reflective activity. Developing your writing skills will
benefit you over the remaining assignments, and reflecting on your progress or any
challenges you face will also help your tutor to provide feedback that addresses your
specific needs.
Remember to state the word count at the end of your answer.
Note that you will lose 5 marks if you do not attempt this part of the assignment.
Learning outcomes
Each TMA is designed to help you to develop particular skills and knowledge. These are
referred to as learning outcomes. By completing this assignment, you will have an
opportunity to demonstrate the following learning outcomes.
Knowledge and understanding
l Define key concepts and describe key theories, studies, methods and debates within
psychology.
l Show awareness of the ways in which psychological knowledge is embedded in the
historical, social and cultural context, and the way in which it develops through a
process of questions, arguments, evidence and evaluation.
l Recognise and describe the main research methods and procedures undertaken by
psychologists, and identify the merits of qualitative and quantitative approaches.
l Recognise the role of evidence in building psychological knowledge and how this
relates to, and can be made relevant to, everyday experience and real-life social
phenomena.
Cognitive skills
l Select and interpret key information from a range of sources, and represent it
accurately and appropriately.
Learning outcomes
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l Analyse and evaluate types of evidence and methods, and identify some of their
strengths and weaknesses.
l Interpret and integrate a range of evidence to develop an argument, including some
primary sources.
Key skills
l Write using a clear and logical sequence of sentences and paragraphs appropriate
for the level of study, subject, purpose and audience.
l Plan and organise an essay and a research report with an appropriate structure and
referencing.
l Demonstrate basic skills in the use of ICT, including accessing and searching web
pages and using ICT tools appropriate to support distance learning (accessing email,
learning from online-based study materials and using the eTMA system).
Practical and/or professional skills
l Plan study sessions to manage a sequence of work that meets a deadline and
complies with relevant academic conventions.
l Reflect on and evaluate own learning, both individually and through discussion with
peers, and engage in development planning.
Checklist
Have I: Yes No – where can I look for
guidance?
looked at the feedback on my
previous work?
Your tutor will have commented
on your previous TMAs to
provide you with some guidance
about how to do better
next time.
read all of the guidance notes
for this assignment?
Read through these assignment
notes to check you have
followed all the advice and
instructions.
written in my own words? See Online Activity 8.2:
Writing in your own words.
Also, Online Activity 3.2:
Summarising information in
your own words contains
useful information about how
to avoid plagiarism.
Checklist
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referenced my sources? See advice on referencing in
Online Activity 7.3: Referencing
(Part 1) – Why reference?
and Online Activity 8.3: Referencing
(Part 2) – How to
reference, and check the
summary sheet in the Study
resources section on the
DE100 module website, under
‘Instructions and guidelines’.
checked my word count? Remember a penalty will apply
the second time you exceed
the word length by more than
10%. An answer that is shorter
than the word length by more
than 10% is likely to be too
short to have fully answered
the question. For further information
on writing to length go
to
Social Sciences Assessment
Information. Please submit all
three parts of your TMA in one
document, not in separate
documents.
written the word count at the
end of each part of my TMA?
Check the word count and
write that figure clearly at the
end of each part of the assignment.
set out my assignment properly
and in one document?
Read the conventions for presenting
work in Section 3 of
the Assessment Guidance.
completed each part of
the TMA?
Read through these assignment
notes carefully to check
you have followed all the advice
and instructions.
Checklist
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