Explore our Behavioural and Data Science taught Master's degree.

P-C803

MSc

1 year full-time

3 October 2022

Psychology

University of Warwick

Understand the underlying factors driving human behaviour on Behavioural and Data Science MSc. Warwick's Psychology department offers you training in basic psychology, behavioural economics and state of the art methods in data science and analytics.

This course offers training in the foundations of psychology, decision-making, and behavioural economics. It will also develop your understanding of state-of-the-art methods in data science and data analytics, focusing on statistical methods, machine learning, and data visualisation.

You will gain an understanding of large-scale patterns in data, with an eye to comprehending the underlying factors driving human behaviour. This can be used to understand economics, politics, history, wellbeing, and many other large-scale patterns at national and international levels. Previous experience in behavioural science is not necessary, but you should have basic programming skills in at least one programming language.

Skills from this degree

Graduates will be able to:

• Use data to understand how and why people make the choices they do, and understanding the consequences of their choices in relation to public policy (e.g. encouraging people to save for pensions or change to low-carbon behaviours), industry (e.g. understanding how to place a new product in the market), and individual behaviour (e.g. understanding why people drink and eat too much)
• Access and analyse large-scale datasets
• Utilise state-of-the-art techniques in data analysis and visualisation
• Design and conduct studies using data analysis to understand behaviour

You will have a combination of lectures, seminars and practical classes or workshops. Lectures introduce you to a particular topic, seminars build on that knowledge and workshops and practical classes allow you to put what you are learning into practice. Seminars, practical classes and workshops are smaller groups than lectures giving access to tutors to help you put into practice what you are learning.

Class sizes will naturally vary, however our Psychology courses comprise of around 25-30 students.

Teaching occurs throughout the week, with an average of 8-12 hours of lectures and 5-7 hours of practical classes or seminars per week. You will also have meeting with your personal tutor at intervals throughout your course.

We typically assess modules through a mix of assessment types, which include worksheets, essays, research reports, modelling and data analysis, class tests, exams, and presentations.

Reading lists

Most departments have reading lists available through Warwick Library. If you would like to view reading lists for the current cohort of students you can visit our Warwick Library web page.

Your timetable

Your personalised timetable will be complete when you are registered for all modules, compulsory and optional, and you have been allocated to your lectures, seminars and other small group classes. Your compulsory modules will be registered for you and you will be able to choose your optional modules when you join us.

This year we anticipate many applications.

As such, we are only able to accept students with a solid quantitative background (2.1 in quantitative field with demonstrated experience in maths or programming), students with an extremely strong social science background (1st or equivalent), or students who have solid evidence of programming experience and a solid generalist background (2.1 in chosen field).

The MSc in Behavioural and Data Science is a quantitative degree and students should feel comfortable taking a mathematical approach to their thinking.

On the MSc, we cover the use of statistics to make sense of behavioural data (e.g., regression and t-tests). We introduce the R and Matlab programming languages for statistics and mathematical modelling (though we do not assume you have previous experience of these languages). We use maths in psychological and computer science models.

Prior experience with Python, R, or Matlab is extremely valuable. Though students do not need to show evidence of this training in their application, but prior experience and/or self training in one of these programming languages is valuable.

• Band B
• IELTS overall score of 7.0, minimum component scores of two at 6.0/6.5 and the rest at 7.0 or above.

There are no additional entry requirements for this course.

Students will study six core modules across Psychology and Computer Science as well as a Behavioural and Data Science project. These modules include:

Issues in Psychological Science

This module covers core psychology and behavioural science content relevant to later modules, including memory, attention, perception, personality and individual differences, choice, and subjective well-being.

Methods and Analysis in Behavioural Science

The purpose of the module is to introduce experimental design and statistical programming. Behavioural scientists need statistical analysis of experimental data to identify whether the results are consistent enough to be confident that the effects are significant.

Foundations of Data Analytics

You will study techniques for how to go from raw data to a deeper understanding of the patterns and structures within the data, to support making predictions and decision making.

Foundations of Computing

The aim of the module is to equip you with a grounding in foundations of computing, to enable students from a wider background to confidently undertake a taught masters programme in advanced computing topics.

Psychological Models of Choice

The main aim of this module Psychological Models of Choice is to review theories of individual choice. Core empirical results in the decision-making literature will be reviewed and their theoretical implications explored.

Data Mining

This module will help you understand the value of data mining in solving real-world problems, as well as the foundational concepts underlying data mining. You will also understand the algorithms commonly used in data mining tools to gain the ability to apply data mining tools to real-world problems.

Optional modules

Students will be able to choose further optional modules from Psychology and Computer Science lists.

Students will be able to choose further optional modules from Psychology and Computer Science lists.

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