For any research that you carry out in this course you must write up a report of the study. The comments here apply both to the two class projects that you might carry out during the term, and to your final project.
Each report must consist of an introduction to the research topic, a description of the experimental method, a summary of the data, and a conclusion describing the findings and their implications.
For some of these projects you may have been working very closely with other students. Your reports, though, must be written independently. This does not mean you may not share ideas with others. By all means discuss the theoretical foundations for the study. Review the data analysis with your partner or with other students, and discuss the meaning of the results. Ideas and data are to be shared. The reports, though, are individual products - see the separate notes concerning cooperation and Honor Code concerns.
But before you begin writing, look at the grading criteria. There's no point spending many hours on your report unless you know what your instructor is looking for.
There is, of course, a deadline for submitting each paper. Be aware that computers and printers have a bad habit of breaking down if you wait until a few hours before the deadline to print your report. Mechanical breakdowns are not considered to be "documented emergencies that could not have been anticipated".
If you submit an article for publication, most psychology journals require that the paper use APA format. If you write a paper for a course in psychology, many instructors require that the paper be in APA format. It's something you should be familiar with.
Unfortunately, "APA format" can mean many different things. Officially it is defined by the Publication Manual of the APA (American Psychological Association, 2001). This manual covers topics ranging from how to abbreviate "seconds" to how to avoid annoying the guardians of political correctitude.
There are two excellent reasons for demanding that research papers follow a specific format. First, it guarantees a uniformity of style that makes life easier for the reader. Second, it guarantees that everything of importance is included in the paper, in a predictable place, and nothing irrelevant is included. Many scientists, however, feel that prescriptions for inoffensive language are out of place in a scientific manual (see Roediger, 2004). And some others believe that the difference between "secs", "sec", "s", and "s." is not very important when evaluating an undergraduate paper.
Nevertheless, the criteria of uniformity, comprehensibility, and comprehensiveness apply, whether or not one believes that the APA publication manual has become too bloated. What follows is an outline of the format specified by APA that few would quarrel with. The most important details are covered in various web sites. But if you end up capitalizing a heading that should not be capitalized, or failing to underline something that should be underlined, does anyone really care?
Some textbooks insist that scientific reports should use only the third person (e.g., "This was done ...") and avoid the first person (e.g., "I did this ..."). They are wrong, for two reasons.
1. You must avoid the passive voice whenever possible.
2. You must take, or at least assign, responsibility for what you write.Compare the following sentence pairs:
"It is widely believed that ..." (Oh yes? Who believes it?)
"Smith (2001) and Jones (2002) assert that ..." (So - only two people?)"It has often been demonstrated that ..." (Who is "it"?)
"Robinson (1922) demonstrated that ..." (Ah, now we know who "it" is)Those are examples of the evils of the passive voice, and the importance of assigning responsibility. Now see how you can fall into evil ways by mindlessly using the third person, and avoid them by using the first person:
"It would be interesting to find out if ..." (Really? Says who?)
"I would like to find out if ..." (OK, so it's you. Can you justify that statement?)"It seems plausible that ..." (The mysterious "it"! That sounds like a poor excuse)
"I predict that ..." (So it's you again. Why do you predict that ...?)"Participants were given a test of anxiety ..." (Who gave it to them? Some unknown intruder?)
"We gave subjects a test of anxiety ..." (Take responsibility for what you did - and see Roediger, 2004, on "subjects" versus "participants")By the way, "we" is fine if there was really more than one of you. Otherwise use "I".
The issues of passive voice and third person are just examples of a more general principle to bear in mind when writing your report: Scientific writing does not have to be dull. At its best, it is as exciting and interesting as a good novel. That does not mean, of course, that you are entitled to take poetic license with the facts. It's best to avoid such extravagances as, "Stereotyped thinking is one of the most serious problems facing society today".
The following paragraphs explain how to write each section of your report. The issue of style will crop up in most of the sections.
Avoid redundant phrases such as "A study of ...". Be more informative than, say, "Attention and Short Term Memory", but don't include half the method section in titles like "Comparing Two Forms of Humor, as Found in Newspaper Cartoons, on Reaction Times when People Judge the Attractiveness of Faces".
Double barreled titles can be effective, stating a broad topic plus a more precise title: "Implicit Priming: An Effective Procedure for Improving Skilled Performance". With a title like that, how could the reader not be interested?
The title page should include the title, your name and institutional affiliation (i.e., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), the name and number of the course and your section number, and a date. Give the name of any other student who worked with you on the project. Include a brief running head, which should appear on each page of the report.
Add the honor pledge "On my honor, I have neither given nor received unauthorized aid on this assignment", sign it, and mean it (see Honor Code concerns).
Although it appears first, write it last. As a rule of thumb, plan on six to eight sentences, say, up to two each for introduction, method, results, and discussion. Don't follow this rule rigidly. Try to answer the following questions as succinctly and directly as you can:
What was the main motivation for your project?
What hypothesis did you test?
What was the subjects' task?
What independent and classification variables did you use?
What was the most important finding?
What does it all mean?The abstract should be brief and to the point. If it has done it's job it will convince readers who have the time that it's worth reading further, yet still convey useful information to those who don't have the time.
Your task in the Introduction is to convince the reader that your study is interesting and important. You must place the study in the context of previous research and theory, and demonstrate that your idea is a sensible extrapolation of existing knowledge.
The first sentence. The first sentence must grab the attention of your reader right away. Don't be shy - but don't be extravagant or dogmatic either. Here are some examples taken from a recent issue of a journal:
"For nearly 40 years, researchers have been aware of significant disparities in scholastic achievement between children from low- and high-income homes" (Tuerk, 2005).
"Recent research has shown that culture affects social judgments and behaviors, even those as basic as cognitive dissonance and fundamental attribution errors" (Wong & Hong, 2005).
"On September 11 of 2001, about 250 people died on four airplanes downed by terrorists in the United States, and another 3,000 people died on the ground" (López-Rousseau, 2005) .
"It is a common experience that faces from 'other races' look more similar than faces from 'one's own race'" (Sangrioli, Pallier, Argenti, Ventureyra, & de Schonen, 2005).
Right away you are pulled into the article. Notice, too, that the authors don't use unnecessary words ("In this article we discuss disparities in scholastic achievement"), they don't use overstatement ("Everyone now is worried about terrorism"), and they don't use the passive voice ("The effect of culture on social judgments and behaviors can be important").
The first paragraph. Having caught the reader's attention, direct it at once towards the relevant theoretical or practical issue being addressed. Again, don't waste time with the trite or the obvious, and keep your sentences active, direct and informative. Cite references to support each assertion. Consider:
"On September 11 of 2001, about 250 people died on four airplanes downed by terrorists in the United States, and another 3,000 people died on the ground. Alarmed, Americans immediately reduced their flying, to escape airborne terrorism. This was a natural reaction, but a risky one as well, as flying is safer than driving, according to Myers (2001). He hypothesized that if Americans substituted driving for flying, the number of car passengers and pedestrians killed as a result of the added traffic after September 11 would be greater than the number of airline passengers and crew who were killed by terrorists that day" (López-Rousseau, 2005) .
"It is a common experience that faces from 'other races' look more similar than faces from 'one's own race'. For example, Feingold (1914) remarked that 'to the uninitiated American, all Asians look alike, while to the Asian, all White men look alike' (p. 50). The reality of this so-called other-race effect has been confirmed by several experimental studies (...)" (Sangrioli et al, 2005).
Also, pay attention in these examples to the format for citing previous research.
Remainder of the introduction. Your first paragraph has told the reader what the project is about. The remainder of the introduction needs to address four questions:
What is your research question?
What existing literature is relevant?
What contribution will this project make to the topic?
What explicit hypothesis will be tested?The research question may be quite broad, but it is essential that it include reference to existing theory or theories. It should be a natural extension of your first paragraph. For class projects the research question is probably stated in the explanation of the project, but for your independent project you will develop your own question.
The review of literature should not be a section by itself. It is best if the review is woven in with a presentation of the theory, development of the research question, and explanation of your own contribution. Each citation should support a point that you want to make, and each point should be supported by a citation if possible.
There must be a logical development in which the initial broad statement of a question leads in an inevitable way to a precise hypothesis. You would like the reader to finish the introduction thinking, "Of course! I should have thought of doing that myself".
In a sense, the Method section is the most cut-and-dried. Even so, there's no excuse for being boring. It's easy to fall into the passive voice trap - avoid it. It's not "this was done ..." but "we did this ...", or "subjects did that ...".
After reading the Method section anyone else ought to be able to replicate your study. It is usually divided into two or more subsections. You will not need all of the following subsections, but if you look through this list it will help to make your own report complete.
In many cases you can combine two or more subsections. If your study was simple and straight forward, several of them may be integrated into the Procedure subsection.
Subjects. For a PSYC 270 project this is usually pretty obvious, but it must be there anyway. You should cite descriptive statistics on gender, etc., if they are relevant classification variables.
Design. Explain what the independent and classification variables were, and for the former make clear which were manipulated between subjects and which within subjects.
Stimuli (or Apparatus). You may need to explain what the stimuli were and how they were generated, or describe any special equipment that was used. If you used nothing special, this can all be included under Procedure (below).
Task. What were subjects asked to do? How was performance measured, if that's relevant?
Measures. It may be necessary to explain how the dependent variables were measured, especially if you used tests of any sort.
Materials. As an alternative to separate Stimuli and Measures subsections you may prefer a single subsection that describes the experimental materials.
Procedure. Excepting the Data Analysis subsection (next), the procedure section is usually the last part of the Methods, because it will make reference to the items listed earlier. You describe what happened, largely from the point of view of the subjects. To write this section you'll find it helpful to imagine a time line that summarizes the sequence in which events occurred.
Data Analysis. If any preliminary analysis of the data was needed, explain it here. Do not include this section if your raw data were used directly in a correlation, ANOVA or t-test. (This subsection may come at the beginning of the Results section rather than the end of the Method).
You may need to include specific test questions, stimulus lists, etc., in an appendix to your report.
It's sometimes not clear where the Method should end and the Results should begin, especially if you have a Data Analysis subsection. As a rule of thumb, when you reach the point where it's natural to ask, "What happened?", that's where to make the break.
It may be necessary or helpful to begin the Results section with a descriptive summary of demographic data that you have collected, or with overall means and standard deviations for dependent variables or any extra variables that you measured. This will depend on the details of your study. Don't feel you need to include these statistics unless they are useful.
The primary focus of the Results section must be on the test or tests of your original hypothesis. Did you find what you expected, or what your theory predicted?
You should capitalize the descriptive labels for your independent and dependent variables. Thus, "Treatment", "Age", and "Errors" draw attention to the central focus of your study. These will often be the very variables in your t-test or analysis of variance.
When presenting your results, though, remember that no-one can understand what you found if the only information they have is the output of a statistical test. Consider: "The Treatment main effect was significant, F(1,31) = 11.84, p < .005. The interaction of Treatment with Practice was also significant, F(2, 62) = 4.19, p < .05". Do you know what happened? No.
Follow this simple rule: start with descriptive statistics, then give the inferential statistics. The reader has to be able to visualize the results, especially in an experiment where you examine the effect of an independent variable on a dependent variable. Very simple results (a single correlation, or two means) can be placed in the body of the text. Correlational research usually requires a table of correlations. For experimental research you usually need a graph.
Plan your tables and figures carefully. Label them clearly enough that the reader can understand them without having to refer to the text. Do not include tables taken directly from SPSS. These tables are usually much too detailed. Include the meaningful rows and columns, and leave out the rest.
You should generally not discuss the meaning of the results in the Results section itself. Save that for the Discussion section. In some short published papers the Results and Discussion are combined in a single section. For your project, however, end the Results as soon as your description of the data and its analysis is complete. Save the interpretation for the next section.
Before explaining to the reader what it all means, it's a good idea to summarize the important results briefly, without the technical details. The most important question is, of course, was the original hypothesis supported?
If a hypothesis was supported, you should at least consider possible objections that a reader might have. Are there alternative explanations for your results? If so, are they plausible? How might they be ruled out?
If a hypothesis was not supported, you move into defensive mode. What went wrong? Was the original idea misconceived? Were the variables not manipulated or measured the right way? Perhaps your experiment was simply not powerful enough - you had access to too few subjects.
No study is perfect, especially a project carried out in a classroom setting. What weaknesses are apparent in your study? How might they be overcome in future?
Feel free in the Discussion to speculate, but be prepared to back up your speculations. Bring in more references to existing research and theory if it helps to support your suggestions. The end of every report might be seen as the beginning of a new project.
Finally, look back at the first paragraph of your introduction, and the research question that grew out of it. Even if the test of your hypothesis failed, even if the study was plagued by intractable problems, you have surely learned something. Don't end your paper with a whimper ("More research needs to be done on this topic"). End it, if not with a bang, at least with a shout ("A full understanding of social judgments may depend on finding an answer to this question").
Here's how two of the examples quoted above ended - explicit statements of clear conclusions.
"For better or for worse, terror attacks may represent less of a dread risk for Spaniards now and more of a calculated risk instead" (López-Rousseau, 2005) .
"The present results show that plasticity is still present at age 9, and the specification process itself can be deeply modified during childhood" (Sangrioli et al, 2005).
Confused about how to list the references? Just follow examples from any journal that uses APA style. Here are the references cited above. Note that they are listed alphabetically. Two articles by the same author or authors will be listed chronologically. Sections included here in italics may be underlined instead.
American Psychological Association. (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th ed.). Washington, D.C: Author.
López-Rousseau, A. (2005). Avoiding the death risk of avoiding a dread risk: The aftermath of March 11 in Spain. Psychological Science, 16, 426-428.
Roediger, R. (2004). What should they be called? American Psychological Society Observer, 17, 5, 46-48.
Tuerk, P. W. (2005). Research in the high-stakes era: Achievement, resources, and No Child Left Behind. Psychological Science, 16, 419-425.
Sangrioli, S., Pallier, C., Argenti, A.-M., Ventureyra, V.A.G., & de Schonen, S. (2005). Reversibility of the other-race effect in face recognition during childhood. Psychological Science, 16, 440-444.
Wong, R.Y., & Hong, Y. (2005). Dynamic influences of culture on cooperation in the prisoner's dilemma. Psychological Science, 16, 429-434.
Depending on the content of your paper, you may need additional sections.
Include as appendices any detailed information about the methods that would otherwise clutter up the Method section itself. Appendices might include the specifics of stimuli that were used, questions that were used to measure dependent variables, or detailed tables of results. However, do not simply copy SPSS output tables: include only the meaningful rows and columns of the table.
Formal APA style requires that there be separate sections for footnotes, tables, figure captions, and the figures themselves. The reason for using separate sections in these cases is that it makes life easier for the publisher of the final article. For a class paper, however, comprehensibility and readability may suggest that this material be integrated into the text. Your paper has to be read by your instructor, not by a type setter, so find out what your instructor prefers.
There are probably limits to the permissible length of your paper (title page, abstract, and graphs or tables may be extra). Your first draft will probably be too long. Read every sentence and ask, "Is this necessary?" If not, eliminate it. If so, then ask, "How can I say this in fewer words?"
By eliminating all unnecessary words, you will actually improve the paper no end.