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Useful Information you will need throughout your degree

This page contains information that you will need to support you throughout your degree.  It contains information and links pertaining to how the Department is organised, specifics about the degree programme, writing essays and practical reports as well as other useful resources and aids. 

Psychological Society

The student Psychological Society arranges talks by staff members or visiting speakers, and organises social events. Limited funds may be available from the Students' Union and Department. Anyone interested in an organisational role in this Society should see the Psychology Society noticeboard for further information or Dr Tom Hartley, who is responsible for liaison between the Society and the staff. Suggestions for visiting speakers and social events are always welcome.

Student (undergraduate) Handbook

The student handbook contains general information about the Department and specific information about the degree programme.

Handbook for Year 2012- 13 please click on the following UG handbook 2013 (MS Word , 518kb)

Writing Essays

Essay writing is an important part of being a student at the Department of Psychology. Writing essays should get you into the habit of searching out information on a topic, extracting the substance from what you read, and evaluating the relevance of the material you have extracted. Before writing you must plan an essay carefully, ensuring that what you propose to say is relevant to the essay title, that your argument is consistent, and that you have drawn appropriate conclusions. Irrelevance is the most common fault in essays and is very frequently attributable to lack of a prior essay plan. There is no virtue in unnecessary length, and if diagrams and tables are economical ways of making your point they should be used. Your essays do not need to be literary masterpieces, but they should be clear, relevant and concise. Essay writing is an important skill that you should try to develop during the programme. Bear in mind that much of the final degree assessment is based on essays, and the more practice you get at writing, the easier it will become.  For more information on how to improve your essay writing please go tothe University's Yorkshare VLE platform and  http://vle.york.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp and click on guide to feedback.  For additional information please see page 75 of the student handbook http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/psych/www/handbooks .

Practical Report Writing

The purpose of a practical report is to communicate to others what you did, why you did it, how you did it, what you found and what you think it means. Readers of reports will sometimes want the answers to very precise questions (e.g. Where did the participants come from? What exactly were the average scores for these two groups?). They do not want to wade through the whole report looking for this information. For this reason it is important to follow a standard format, with headings, which allows the reader to locate the required information immediately.The simple rule for report writing is "remember your reader". Reports are intended to be read by someone who is broadly familiar with the science of psychology, but who knows nothing about your study. They will usually see the title first, then maybe read the abstract and only then read the bulk of the report. The reader needs to know two things: (i) how the experiment was conducted, so that it is clear exactly what it was about, and (ii) what the results were. If it is clear precisely what happened from reading the procedure and results, then the reader is in a position to judge whether some new finding has been firmly established. It is customary for the experimenter to assist the reader by writing an introduction to establish the background out of which the experiment grew. In addition a concluding discussion section is included to provide the experimenter's view of the significance of the study and the implications for future work. These four elements, (i) background, (ii) the way it was conducted, (iii) the results, and (iv) an evaluation of its success and implications are found in every report and as such will form the basis of the write-ups you produce. For more information on how to improve your essay writing please go tothe University's Yorkshare VLE platform and  http://vle.york.ac.uk/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp and click on guide to feedback.  For additional information please see page 69 of the student handbook http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/psych/www/handbooks .