The second year course looks at specializing in specific areas of psychology. These are:
Psychology and Crime
Psychology and Health

Lessons look at background information and theory supporting the studies in the different sections, essay writing skills, abilities to evaluate and compare and contrast different studies.

Exams
There are two exams:
Crime exam which is all about the first module and the health exam all about the information learned for the health module.
Each exam is worth 16.7% of your overall mark.

Psychology and Crime
This first half of the course has 8 different topic areas within crime to examine, these are: Explanations of criminal behaviour
Crime-victim interaction
Offender profiling
Criminal thinking patterns
The police and crime
Psychology of testimony
Psychology of the courtroom
Offender punishments/ treatments, preventing crime

Psychology and Health
The second half of the course also has 8 different topic areas within health to examine, these are: Lifestyles and health behaviour
Health promotion
Substance use and abuse
Health and safety
Pain
Stress
Adherence to medical advice
The patient-practitioner relationship

Coursework and Assignment
There are two pieces of coursework to complete this year. Each piece of coursework is worth 16.7% of your mark.

Coursework: This is where you have the chance to conduct your very own psychology experiment! Using the skills you learned from the AS year in practical investigations you will develop your own idea of what research area you want to look at, carry it out, test the hypotheses, write it up and evaluate your research. You have to be able to use numbers to be able to use the statistical tests needed. This is your chance to show how you can apply your skills of psychology to your own project and design something no one else has done.

Assignment: This is about using your psychological knowledge to look at a written article and be able to pick out issues and debates relating to psychology. You have to find a newspaper article that you believe has 3 psychological issues in it. You then have to prove that these issues exist by finding research to back it up and then you are required to try and reduce or remove that issue and use research to back that up.

This piece of coursework requires skills of research, psychological understanding and the ability to look beyond the obvious