A-Level Psychology: Research Methods — Analysis

The analysis half of research methods is where psychology students meet statistics, and where the exam's most reliably lost marks live. This quiz covers reliability, validity, the scientific method and the statistical toolkit through applied questions.

The reliability questions distinguish test-retest from inter-observer reliability through scenarios, and the validity questions cover the full family — internal, external, ecological (generalisation to real-world settings, tested by definition), temporal, face and concurrent — anchored by the relationship question the exam loves: reliability is necessary but not sufficient for validity.

The philosophy-of-science questions test Popper's falsifiability as the line between science and pseudoscience, alongside the other features of science: objectivity, replicability, empirical method and theory construction. Meta-analysis is tested for what it genuinely is — secondary data aggregated across studies to compute an effect size.

The statistics questions cover measures of dispersion (range and standard deviation, correctly separated from central-tendency measures), skewed distributions — with the negative-skew question testing the mean-below-median signature — and the correlation-versus-experiment distinction that determines whether causal language is licensed.

The inferential-testing questions apply the selection logic directly: a repeated-measures design with ordinal data pointing to the sign test, plus the 0.05 significance convention. Peer review closes the set with its twin purposes of quality control and fraud prevention.

Each explanation shows the decision procedure, not just the answer — the skill the exam's "justify your choice of test" questions actually assess.

• Distinguish reliability types and the validity family, and relate the two concepts
• Apply Popper's falsifiability and the features of science
• Separate dispersion from central tendency and read skewed distributions
• Choose the correct inferential test from design and data level
• Explain meta-analysis, peer review and the limits of correlational claims

Covers the compulsory Research Methods content of A-level Psychology: reliability and validity, features of science, descriptive statistics and distributions, correlation vs experiment, peer review, and inferential testing including the sign test.