Year Three


In the final year, we offer a wide selection of optional modules allowing you to specialise in whichever area of psychology you are particularly interested in – including health, clinical, educational, developmental, and social psychology,  psychopathology, perception and many more. These seminar courses are based upon individual reading and open discussion of up to date research. We also allow you to choose up to two options outside of Psychology, facilitating interdisciplinary study.

In your third year, you must also choose a topic for a Literature Review and a Research Paper, which you will complete under the supervision of a member of staff in Psychology. The Research Paper will be the culmination of your three years research training and will constitute a valuable piece of psychological research, the best example of which will be presented a prize.

 

Diversification…

The third year continues to broaden and deepen the level of intellectual challenge.

It allows you some freedom of choice in terms of what subjects to study in depth (for example, a variety of seminar option units [PSYC3002, PSYC3010, PSYC3015PSYC3024, PSYC3044, PSYC3048]), and gives you the opportunity to produce sophisticated and extended pieces of work, such as a Literature Review (PSYC 3003) and Research Paper (PSYC 3005), as part of the Empirical Project.

Your choice of topic for the Empirical Project in Year Three will be informed by the knowledge you have acquired in the two introductory units in Year One and the several discipline-specific units in Year Two. In addition, the research methods and data analysis units in Years One and Two, plus the attendant practical units, will equip you with the skills necessary to critically assess the relevant research literature, identify a research question, design your own study, carry it out, analyze the data, interpret your results, and arrive at a defensible conclusion.

The seminar option units will permit you to develop familiarity with more specialized areas of past and current research. Whereas in Year One you got a broad overview of Psychology, and in Year Two got an overview of particular disciplines, you will now have the opportunity to get an in-depth look at specific research programmes. You will see how they unfold over time, how theories are informed and modified by data, and how different researchers make their arguments and criticize the arguments of other researchers. You will also see what direction future research is likely to take.

Year Three is intended both to broaden and deepen your experience of Psychology. The units (with the exception of the Literature Review and the Research Paper) have therefore been designed to operate relatively independent of one another. Nonetheless your Empirical Project topic may be connected to your seminar topics.

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