Psychology Sorted

The IA Evaluation section is often seen as the most challenging section to write. But organisation is the key.

Have your other sections in front of you:

• Introduction – with the description of your background theory
• Exploration – your procedure, design and sampling technique
• Analysis – your results from your descriptive statistics and inferential statistics

Organise the Evaluation by sub-sections:

• Discuss your findings in relation to the background theory/model: What did you find? In which way[s] did they support/fail to support the model and (very briefly) why might this be?

• What were the strengths and limitations of your design, sample and procedure? Take each one at a time and explain each strength and each limitation clearly. You only need one strength and one limitation for each of these. (Note: mistakes such as videos not working or a participant not coming are errors, not limitations.)

• Taking each limitation in turn, describe how you could have modified the investigation to avoid this limitation. (Example: our participants showed tiredness or boredom in the second condition under our repeated measures design, even though we counterbalanced the conditions. We could have avoided this by substituting this design with a matched pairs design, where we match students in pairs according to their ability in ________________ [insert a relevant skill here].)

• Check each of these sections to ensure that what you have written agrees with your previous sections. Although there are no marks given for a conclusion, a concluding sentence repeating your findings in relation to your hypothesis closes this section nicely.

Next, the References and Appendices.

For more help with your IA, don’t forget to visit the Psychology Sorted Youtube channel.