WJEC A Level Psychology
WJEC A Level Psychology Personal Investigations Exam Questions
Free WJEC A Level Psychology revision for Personal Investigations: what you need to know, common mistakes and exam-style questions with answers. Covers the two set personal investigations, planning and running them ethically under the BPS Code, analysis and evaluation.
Practise Personal Investigations with past papers
Once you have learnt this topic, find the Personal Investigations questions in real WJEC A Level Psychology past papers and mark them with the mark scheme. Doing lots of real questions is the quickest way to learn how examiners ask about each idea.
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A-Level Psychology Flashcards for 2027 Onwards
Every answer is written in mark scheme wording, so you learn exactly what examiners give marks for. Then test yourself with the questions on this page.
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About WJEC A Level Psychology Personal Investigations
Section A of Unit 4 contains compulsory questions on two personal investigations that you carry out before the exam. WJEC sets new investigations for each series; for summer 2027 they are a content analysis of post-match interviews and an experiment on social facilitation. You plan, run and analyse both following the BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct (2009), keeping a log book, which cannot be taken into the exam. Questions ask about your aims, hypotheses, sampling, procedures, results, statistical tests and evaluation, so you need to remember the specific details of what you did.
What you need to know
- Planning Write an aim and operationalised alternative and null hypotheses. Decide the method, sampling technique and, for experiments, the design, and justify each choice.
- Content analysis of post-match interviews Choose a sample of interviews, create clear coding categories, tally their frequency and check inter-rater reliability with a second coder. You may compare categories, for example after wins and losses.
- Social facilitation experiment Social facilitation is the effect of the presence of others on performance. Design conditions such as working alone versus being watched, control extraneous variables and standardise instructions.
- Ethics Apply the BPS Code of Ethics and Conduct (2009): valid consent, right to withdraw, confidentiality, debriefing and avoiding embarrassment, particularly when using fellow students.
- Analysis and conclusions Use descriptive statistics and a suitable graph, choose and justify an inferential test, compare the observed and critical values, and state whether to accept or reject the null hypothesis.
- Evaluation Discuss your own study's reliability, validity and sample, and suggest specific improvements explaining how they would help.
Common mistakes in Personal Investigations
- Giving textbook answers instead of describing your own study. Use your actual aims, sample size, materials and results.
- Revising the wrong investigations. The set investigations change for each exam series, so check the specification appendix.
- Not being able to justify your statistical test. Give the reason based on difference or correlation, design and level of data.
- Assuming you can use your log book in the exam. It is not permitted in the examination room.
- Suggesting improvements without saying why they help. Link each improvement to reliability, validity or ethics.
Try three Personal Investigations exam-style questions
1. State the null hypothesis for your social facilitation experiment. (2 marks)
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A strong answer states there will be no difference in the operationalised DV, such as the number of tasks completed in two minutes, between participants working alone and participants working in front of an audience.
2. Explain one ethical issue you considered in your content analysis and how you dealt with it. (3 marks)
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A strong answer might discuss using publicly available interviews, so consent was not needed, while avoiding naming or mocking individuals; or confidentiality for the student coders; with a clear link to the BPS Code.
3. Explain which inferential test you used for your experiment and why. (3 marks)
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For example a Mann Whitney U test: because it tests for a difference, an independent groups design was used, and the data were at least ordinal; credit any test correctly justified for the design actually used.
Personal Investigations FAQs
What does WJEC A Level Psychology Unit 4 Personal Investigations cover?
Two investigations set by WJEC that you carry out before the exam, then answer compulsory questions about their design, ethics, results and evaluation.
Which paper are personal investigations examined in?
It is examined in Unit 4, Psychology: Applied Research Methods, a 1 hour 30 minute A2 paper worth 20% of the A level.
How should I revise my personal investigations?
Turn each log book into a one-page summary covering aim, hypotheses, method, sample, ethics, results, test, conclusion and improvements, then practise exam questions from memory.
