8.3 Acknowledging the sources of ideas Even when you have used your own words it is essential that you acknowledge the source of the ideas you re-present. This entails making a note of the author and date of publication of the material from which you extract key concepts and points. So at the end of our summary of the Croall extract above, we would need to acknowledge that we got our information from that source by putting (Croall, 1998) at the end of the relevant paragraph. If you use more than one author's work in a paragraph th
7.1 Processing meanings Reading and thinking requires you to begin to process the material you read in preparation for re-presenting it in assessments. Initially, processing happens in your head. Selecting what to identify and extract will start the process off. Summarizing the arguments continues this process and, crucially, gets you started on reproducing ideas in your own words. The next stage is to develop your notes further by thinking more consciously about the material you have read and the points you
4 Taking the point: identifying key ideas As earlier activities have demonstrated, active reading and note taking often come hand-in-hand. In order to read effectively we often have to jot down the main ideas and key words introduced in the text. We might also note down one or two questions as we go along to assist in the ‘thinking’ part of the process. But, like reading, note taking comes in all shapes and sizes, and different kinds of notes can be useful for different purposes. Moreover, good note taking, like purposeful, activ
3 Strange words, long sentences and lost meanings In reading for a purpose it is not unusual to get stuck on unfamiliar words and concepts or struggle with complex ideas and sentences. This section suggests tactics for coping with unfamiliar words (and inadequate dictionaries), unpacking complex sentences and retrieving lost meanings. In order to do this we will draw on an extract taken from a book, Crime and Society in Britain, by Hazel Croall (1998) which is a social science text. It thus contains more ‘conceptual’ or ‘technic
1.1 Preparation for study One of the main purposes of this course is to help you develop two kinds of skills: the general skills of being a student some skills which are particularly associated with the way social scientists work. Both are of fundamental importance to your success in studying other courses. This course is about the very basic study skills of reading and taking notes. These are basic in the sense that they are the foundation for al
Introduction This course is about the very basic study skills of reading and taking notes. You will be asked to think about how you currently read and then be introduced to a some techniques that may help you to alter the way you read according to the material you are studying. In the second section you will be asked to look at some useful techniques for note taking and how you may apply them to the notes you make. This OpenLearn course provides a sample of Level 1 study in Author(s):
Critical Social Psychology
We live in a complex, fast changing and highly social world. One of the most compelling questions we face is how to understand ourselves and other people. The video tracks on this album introduce the four main theoretical perspectives in social psychology - cognitive, psychoanalytical, discursive and phenomenological. The album also explores interrogative themes that help in the understanding of key topics in social psychology. This material forms part of The Open University course DD307 Soci
Exploring Psychology
How humans think, develop, and experience the world around us has been fascinating psychologists for over 100 years. The tracks in this album cover a range of case studies, looking at factors which can influence the development of our personalities. What is the impact of significant people in our early lives? How do you go about the process of researching topics like this in social psychology? The audio tracks feature disabled people who reflect on how disability has affected their sense of ide
Identity In Question
This album Investigates recent debates in sociology, cultural theory and psychoanalysis, and explores the nature of social identity, ‘socialisation’, subjectivity and personhood. The case studies explore the value and relevance of different theoretical frameworks for understanding identity by applying the main concepts in real situations. The material is taken from The Open University course D853 Identity in question.Author(s):
Physical activity: a family affair
This free course, Physical activity: a family affair, aims to explore the effects that the family has on the amount and nature of physical activity a child participates in. The beliefs and behaviours of the family environment are the key psycho-social factors we investigate here. First published on Tue, 09 Apr 2019 as Author(s):
Psychological research, obedience and ethics
In this free course, Psychological research, obedience and ethics, you will learn about the importance of ethics in research that is undertaken by psychologists. You will read about the famous study on obedience conducted by Stanley Milgram, and watch two psychologists talk about their research with meerkats and chimpanzees.
Author(s):
Investigating psychology
One of the keys to understanding psychology is to know about its history and core questions. This free course, Investigating psychology, allows you to explore psychology using an interactive resource. You can follow links to people, contexts, perspectives and methods to discover information, images and links from across psychology. The resource also links each of these people, contexts, perspectives and methods so you can see how each element is connected in the history of psychology.Author(s):
Forensic psychology
In this free course, Forensic psychology, you will discover how psychology can help obtain evidence from eyewitnesses in police investigations and prevent miscarriages of justice. First published on Tue, 24 Apr 2018 as Forensic psychology. To find o
3.6 Different paradigms and different methods These different methods alert us to the fact that psychology is not just one enterprise, but a series of interlocking enterprises in which psychologists have different views about the best ways to try to understand or explain people and their behaviour and experience. These are arguments about epistemology; that is, what questions to ask, what sort of evidence to look for, what sort of criteria to use to evaluate explanations, and what sort of methods to use. All knowledge and al
3.2 Questionnaires and interviews If we are interested in what people think or feel, or in behaviours that are difficult to observe in humans, we need to ask people about themselves. This is a variant on introspection, in that researchers are not looking inside themselves but are using the best possible means to obtain other people's introspections. Psychologists do this through both questionnaires and interviews. Many of you will have filled in questionnaires from market researchers on the street or at home. Questi
2.1 An evidence-based enterprise We have seen that psychology is an evidence-based enterprise and we have also seen that disputes about what should count as evidence have had an important impact on the development of psychology as a discipline. For example, the rise of behaviourism was driven by the idea that only observable behaviour is legitimate data for psychology because only data that can be observed by others, and agreed upon, can be objective. Many other disciplines have had less trouble with this issue
1.5 Summary In many societies and cultures psychology is now a very visible part of everyday life. This course aims to increase your knowledge of psychology and provide you with the tools to think about psychological issues. In many countries psychology has an impact on policy, practice and culture in general. Psychological research and knowledge may sometimes be developed from common sense, but, as a discipline, psych
1.2 Psychology has wide appeal Some people will be doing this psychology course to consolidate earlier study and experience and to build a career. Others will be quite new to psychology as a formal research-based discipline. Some will have been stimulated to study a course in psychology by the well-publicised examples of research findings or psychologists at work that are presented in the media. Some will be coming to this course because of experiences in their own personal lives. This may be because they have been touched
Acknowledgements This free course is an adapted extract from the course DSE212 Exploring psychology, which is currently out of presentation. If you are interested in this subject and want to study formally with us, you may wish to explore other courses we offer in Social sciences. The content of this course was developed by Volker Patent, Faculty of Social Science at th
3 Using the Menu This activity follows the previous one by encouraging you to explore the menus available in the SPSS software. Each item has been annotated to provid
Activity 2
