There are three parts to this assignment (all of which must be submitted).
Part 1 (essay)
Evaluate the usefulness of the Strange Situation procedure to our understanding of attachment.
70 per cent of the mark
Word limit: 1000 words
Part 2 (DE100 project report)
Write the Design, Participants and Materials subsections of the Method section of your DE100 project report.
30 per cent of the mark
Word limit: 400 words
Part 3 (reflective component)
Reflect on your writing skills and consider how they are developing as you progress through the module.
Not graded, but 5 marks deducted if not completed.
Word limit: 100 words
On the following pages you will find:
• student notes for each part of this assignment
• learning outcomes addressed by this assignment
• a checklist to ensure you have done everything required for this assignment.
Student notes for Part 1
Process and content words
Evaluation involves constructing an argument about the importance and/or implications of the points being made. Further, evaluation requires you to consider arguments both for and against a certain question/claim; for example, in this case, whether the Strange Situation procedure is useful for understanding attachment. Your points should be supported with evidence and referenced appropriately.
The content words are ‘the usefulness of the Strange Situation procedure for understanding attachment’. This means that the essay has a very specific focus on the work of Mary Ainsworth, which you came across in Chapter 5 of Investigating Psychology, as well as some of the more recent research on animals, which is discussed in Chapter 5 of Investigating Methods.
Relevant material
You will find relevant material in Chapter 5 of Investigating Psychology and Chapter 5 of Investigating Methods.
Chapter 5 of Investigating Psychology: Section 4.2 introduces the Strange Situation procedure and discusses its development in the early 1970s. Section 4.3 is likely to be especially important, as it contains an evaluation of the use of attachment categories, while Section 4.4 introduces some recent work on attachment in animals. In evaluating the Strange Situation procedure, you may also want to draw on some of the points raised in Section 5 of this chapter, where the notion of flexibility of attachment is discussed.
Chapter 5 of Investigating Methods: Section 3 of this chapter introduces a study by Prato-Previde et al. (2003) which adapted the Strange Situation procedure to examine the relationship between dogs and their owners. As such, this material builds on some of the points raised in Chapter 5, Section 4.4 of Investigating Psychology. Because the focus of Section 3 is on the method (namely coding in observational research) not all of it will be relevant, but you may want to consider Sections 3.1 and 3.5. Also Section 4 provides an alternative way of studying attachment which you might find useful when evaluating the Strange Situation procedure.
You may also find the audio Mary Ainsworth from Week 15 useful as well as the video demonstration of the Strange Situation procedure, which you watched in the same week.
The content words specify that the focus is on the Strange Situation procedure and its usefulness for understanding attachment. However, in showing how or why the Strange Situation procedure is, or is not, useful for understanding attachment, you will probably need to draw on other studies described in Chapter 5 of Investigating Psychology and Chapter 5 of Investigating Methods. However, when mentioning any specific study, avoid lengthy descriptions which will not be directly relevant to the focus of this essay. Rather, you should use any additional material as a way of providing evidence in support of your evaluation of the Strange Situation procedure.
Tips for writing your essay
If you are unsure of what to include in the essay, it may be useful to consider the following questions:
• How and why did Mary Ainsworth develop the Strange Situation procedure?
• How did she carry out her research?
• How has the Strange Situation been used since it was developed?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of this procedure?
• How has this work been taken up by other researchers?
Note: As part of the DE100 project, you were required to collect data from two participants. This was to enable you to gain experience of running an experiment and to give you a clearer sense of the design of the experiment, the materials used, the procedure involved, and what it is like to conduct research with participants.
Note, however, that for this part of the assignment, you are required to write the Methods subsection based on participant data supplied by the DE100 team, not on data that you and other students in your group collected. The data for this assignment is set out in TMA 03: DE100 project participant information[Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)], which is in the Assessment resources section of the module website.
The Method section of a research report usually comprises four subsections: Design, Participants, Materials and, finally, Procedure. For this assignment you are only required to write the first three.
Student notes for Part 2
You are asked to write the Design, Participants and Materials subsections of the Method section of your DE100 project report.
By this point you should have run the DE100 project experiment on two participants, collected the data and submitted it to the collaborative forum to be combined with data from other students. You do not need to have analysed the data in order to write your Method section. You will be conducting the analysis in the weeks ahead.
Relevant material
The most important source of information for this part of the assignment is Online Activity 18.3: Preparing for TMA 03 (Part 2), which provides examples of a Design subsection, a Participant subsection and a Materials subsection, along with a detailed account of what information you should include in each. The summary to the online activity contains a checklist to help you ensure you have covered each point.
Some of the other DE100 project-related online activities which you completed in previous weeks also contain useful information, including:
• Online Activity 14.4: DE100 project – Introduction
• Online Activity 16.2: DE100 project – Procedure
• Online Activity 17.2: DE100 project – Collecting data.
If you have not already done so, you should complete these online activities before you attempt this part of the assignment.
In addition, you will need to access the document TMA 03: DE100 project participant information, which contains the details of the participants (the overall number, age and gender) and how they were recruited, which you will need in order to write the Participant subsection..
For the purposes of writing this report you may assume that relevant ethical procedures were followed.
Tips for writing
In the first draft of your answer, use the summary checklist in Online Activity 18.3: Preparing for TMA 03 (Part 2) to make sure you have covered all the relevant points for each subsection. Then check your word count. It is likely that you will need to redraft the subsections several times before they fit within the word limits while ensuring that your account remains clear.
Note that you do not need to submit a copy of the stimulus materials.
Remember to state the word count at the end of each subsection.
Student notes for Part 3
Your task is to reflect on your writing skills and consider how they are developing as you progress through the module.
You should have reviewed the feedback you received on TMA 02 before attempting this assignment. Write a few sentences (not more than 100 words) on the following:
• What aspects of my writing did the tutor comment on in the feedback on TMA 02, and how have I tried to address this in TMA 03?
• What else could I do to improve my writing in the future?
You will need to review the feedback you were given on TMA 02 and identify one or two aspects of your writing which your tutor suggested could be improved. For example:
• Was your referencing adequate and accurate?
• Did you provide evidence for the claims you were making?
• Did you write clearly?
• Was your essay well structured, and your introduction and conclusion clear and appropriate?
• Did you cover appropriate material, or were key points omitted, or too much unnecessary information included?
When you have identified one or two aspects to focus on, explain how you have tried to improve. For example:
• Did you go back to any of the online activities to clarify any misunderstanding?
• Did you contact your tutor for further advice?
• Did you allow yourself more time to complete particular tasks?
• Did you spend more time planning or editing what you have written for TMA 03?
It is important that you complete this reflective activity. Developing your writing skills will benefit you over the remaining assignments, and reflecting on your progress or any challenges you face will also help your tutor to provide feedback that addresses your specific needs.
Remember to state the word count at the end of your answer.
Note that you will lose 5 marks if you do not attempt this part of the assignment.
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