A Level Psychology
Revision Guide

A level psychology is one subject taught from several different specifications. The Department for Education sets the content every board must cover, and leaves each board to choose the theories and studies that carry it. This guide is that content, in the DfE’s own order, with the assessment rules Ofqual sets around it, both quoted word for word. The five AS areas each take a page — cognitive, social, developmental, individual differences and biological — and research methods is split into collecting data, experimental design and ethics, and qualitative versus quantitative data, because the DfE asks for each as its own skill. No paper numbers, no component names and no mark totals appear anywhere in it, so it holds whichever specification you are sitting. Unlike the DfE’s biology, chemistry and physics content, psychology carries no Practical Endorsement: the DfE says students carry out investigative activities but are not directly assessed on them, and the guide says so rather than inventing a practical section that isn’t there.

Two parts of the DfE’s document are easy to miss. The first is everything A level adds beyond the AS core: at least two more areas in depth, the four approaches — cognitive, biological, behavioural and psychodynamic — and eight further skills the DfE lists by name, including applying psychology, the scientific nature of the subject, designing and reporting investigations, and an appreciation of issues and debates. The guide gives each its own page rather than a shared paragraph. The second is mathematics, which Ofqual says must be at least ten per cent of the marks in psychology. It has pages of its own too: numbers, estimates and correlation; describing data; and inferential statistics, split into choosing a test and then calculating it and reading the significance table.

The DfE prints AS content in normal type and the content that is A level only in bold. We counted them from the type: twenty-six content points, sixteen AS and ten A level only, and twenty-four mathematical skills, nineteen AS and five A level only. Every point the guide quotes carries an AS or an A level tag, so you can see what is yours to learn whichever qualification you are sitting. Page one draws the whole split as a map of dots, beside Ofqual’s weightings for the three assessment objectives.

Every quotation from the DfE and Ofqual is checked against the source text, word for word, before the guide is built. Every number in it is worked out by the code that draws the figure beside it, and then worked out a second time, separately, and compared with what is printed on the page. A correlation coefficient comes from the plotted points, not a typed figure; a chi-square critical value is calculated from the distribution itself, not copied from a table; a sign test is checked against the exact binomial probability; and a standard deviation is carried through every step from the raw scores. Where a classic study illustrates a method — Loftus and Palmer’s eyewitness testimony experiment, for instance — its numbers and its full citation are checked against the published paper, never invented or approximated. We built the guide around pictures, with worked examples you can follow line by line.

Written to

The DfE’s GCE AS and A level subject content for biology, chemistry, physics and psychology (April 2014), Appendix 4 for the psychology content and Appendix 6d for the mathematical requirements, with Ofqual’s GCE subject level conditions and requirements for psychology (Ofqual/14/5408), quoted word for word; no board’s specification, no paper or component names, and no claim about which studies your board examines

Intended for

A level psychology students revising the whole course, and for teachers to set as revision or use in lessons

Extent

19 pages · 19 sections