Psychology MSc
2 Years | Distance Learning | Conversion Course | Upcoming Intakes - Academic Year 23/24: October 2023

You will learn about two key perspectives within the discipline of psychology and how they provide an understanding of how biological systems and social processes contribute to human behaviour. ‘Biological Psychology’: This component will cover the fundamentals of biological psychology and demonstrate the importance of biological systems in human behaviour. This will include knowledge of the biological systems of the body (the brain and nervous and endocrine systems) and communication between these systems via neurons, and hormones; the techniques used to assess brain structure and function; individual differences in their functioning and pharmacological interventions that can affect the functioning of these systems. ‘Social Psychology’: This component will provide you with an understanding of the human as a social being. Topics may include some of the most renowned studies in psychology regarding issues of conformity, aggression, prejudice and interpersonal relationships. Methodological and ethical issues related to the studies that inform social psychology will also be explored.

In this module you will have the opportunity to learn about two key fields within the discipline of psychology and gain an understanding of how cognitive and developmental processes contribute to human behaviour.
Developmental: This component will cover the historical foundations of child development and fundamental aspects of social and cognitive development in young children and adolescents. Topics may include research methods and ethics, cognitive development, theoretical perspectives including Piaget and Vygotsky, emotional development, attachment theory and developmental disorders. Learners will have the opportunity to develop their research critique skills within the context of an oral presentation.
Cognitive; This component will familiarise students with the core areas of cognitive psychology and will demonstrate the importance and relevance of cognitive processes when trying to understand human behaviour within both theoretical and applied contexts. Topics will be drawn from; perception; attention; memory; problem solving; decision making and language. As in the Developmental component there will be an initial emphasis, where relevant, of the historical development of the constructs discussed.

In this module you will have the opportunity to learn about psychological approaches to intelligence and personality, and how psychologists have evaluated the methods and tools employed in their assessment. The intelligence component will examine a range of topics, e.g. historical approaches to intelligence with an emphasis upon contemporary cognitive approaches such as working memory, intelligence and cognitive interventions, and individual differences in cognition such as lifespan differences. Personality topics will consider the construct of personality, factors in personality, and applications. Psychometric aspects of the module will consider topics such as test classification and development, standardisation, reliability, validity, interpretation and applications.

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 use a variety of relevant skills, techniques and research methods in order to implement your study and finally you will have the opportunity to disseminate your findings in written form.

This module provides you with an introduction to quantitative and qualitative data analysis. The main focus is on the analysis of quantitative data, which arise from measurement. Quantitative analysis, also known as statistics, makes up about 75% of the module. In this part you will gain a good understanding of fundamental concepts and principles in statistics. These include levels of measurement; standardised effect size measures; sample distributions, standard errors and confidence intervals; and statistical significance testing and the problems it causes. This basic understanding will allow you to independently read advanced literature on statistics to further your own understanding. In addition to basic principles, you will also learn about a range of frequently used techniques for data analysis. For each of them you will learn to identify when it is suitable to use; how to run the analysis; how to report its results to experts and lay people; and how to use these result to inform your critical judgement about your own research and that of others. The techniques you will learn about include the estimation of standardised effect sizes; meta-analysis; ANOVA and ANCOVA; multiple regression; and chi-squared to analyse proportions. Finally, you will learn about the limitations of statistical inference in some important real-world settings.
In the qualitative data analysis part (about 25% of the module) you will learn about thematic analysis to analyse verbal data, from interviews, panel discussions and similar.

You will learn how knowledge in psychology is developed through research. You will learn how to design and carry out research studies using a range of methodologies. The analysis and interpretation of data that you collect will build on knowledge acquired on other modules. The skills in writing reports in line with current conventions in the psychological literature will be developed through practice and detailed formative and summative feedback. The importance of ethical considerations will be constant theme throughout the module and the completion of documentation required for ethical research will be covered in depth.

This module firstly brings you a historical perspective on psychology. It introduces the research approaches and techniques in the different branches of psychology as a precursor to a process of developing and presenting your own research plan. You will be introduced to a series of ‘classic’ studies and asked to evaluate and debate the way that psychological knowledge, methods and ethical approaches may have changed since that original study. Each classic study represents a pathway in the discipline of psychology, embracing diverse areas such as social, developmental, cognitive and health psychology. For each pathway, you will be asked to reflect critically on the original epistemological and methodological assumptions made within the discipline and consider the major changes in the development of the discipline. This module will then equip you to think more critically about the design of your own research programme and so can be used to explore thesis ideas. In the second semester this will become an explicit focus of the module and you will be asked to develop and present a research proposal that gives evidence of critical thinking around research design.