From Research Methods in Psychology

Contents 1 Introduction 2 The Format of the Research Report 3 The Sections of the Report 3.1 Title 3.2 Abstract 3.3 Introduction 3.4 Method 3.4.1 Design 3.4.2 Participants 3.4.3 Materials 3.4.4 Procedure 3.5 Results 3.6 Discussion 3.7 Referencing and References 3.8 Graphs, Tables and Figures 3.9 Appendices 3.10 A Few Additional Points 4 A Note for People Who have Studied A level Psychology 5 Further Reading

[edit] Introduction

If you have looked ahead, before you read this section (as suggested in the last section) you will notice that this section seems to be very long. Why such a long section on writing research reports? You know how to write an essay – writing a research report can’t be so different from that? Well, no, it isn’t, and yes, it is. Writing a research report is like writing anything else – you need to be clear in what you want to say, you need to argue your points well, and you need to use appropriate grammar and language. What is different about writing a practical report is that it has a very strict format and structure that you must follow.

Psychology students often have difficulties adjusting to the strict format that of a research report. Students with more of a scientific background tend to have difficulties with the prose sections. They want to make lists, and organise the work very formally and tersely. This style is not appropriate for a psychology report: it must consist of proper prose throughout: never write in note form (however tempting that might be). Students with an arts or humanities background are not used to following the structure that is required. Everything that you write must be in the correct place, and have the correct form. There is little neither flexibility nor room for creativity in the practical report - you must adhere to the standard format.

I can’t really emphasise enough how important it is to stick to the correct format – students lose marks, completely unnecessarily, and very frequently, because they don’t stick to the correct format.

[edit] The Format of the Research Report

The research reports that you write as a psychology student should look like professional journal articles in terms of their quality and structure. If you are in doubt about what a research report should look like or read like, then it helps to have a look through some psychology journals – this will give you some idea. However, you need to give slightly more information in your practical report than would be found in a journal article. You need to show your lecturers that you understand some aspects of research, and so your practical report will contain some additional sections and information that is not found in journal articles. If you are ever unsure what your report should look and read like, go and have a look at some journal articles.

This format or set of rules makes sure that empirical work is written about in clearly labelled sections, and each of these sections contains clearly defined chunks of information. You might notice that journal articles sometimes seem to break the rules that you will read here. They miss out sections, add sections or combine sections, because this makes the presentation of the research clearer. Sometimes you might think that it might be clearer to report your research if you break the rules in this way.

Crucial Tip: If you have read ‘The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole,’ you might remember that Adrian sent one of his poems (about Norway) to the BBC. Adrian said that he had broken the rules of poetry in the same way that Picasso had broken the rules of painting. Someone at the BBC wrote back, and told Adrian that “before you can break the rules [of poetry] you do have to know what those rules are about,” (Townsend, 1984, page 76). Picasso could paint conventional art, and did, before he moved onto painting art that is more abstract. It might be better to break the rules with your research reports, but your lecturers, who will be assessing your work, want to find out at this point if you actually know the rules. So, don't break the rules - yet.

In general, the research report follows the order in which the work was carried out. Some parts of the report could have been written before the research was carried out, others could not have been written until afterwards. The Introduction and most of the Method section could be written before the research is carried out; the Results, Discussion and Abstract cannot be written until after the research has been carried out. Usually, the layout of the research report has these sections in this order:

• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Method: (comprising four subsections)
  • Design
  • Participants
  • Materials
  • Procedure
• Results
• Discussion
• References
• Appendices (if any)

Crucial Tip: When you write a report, make sure it has those sections. In that order. Surprisingly, students regularly lose marks for not putting those sections in that order.

You should be aware writing a good practical report takes a lot of time to do. It also requires a great deal of thinking time – which you may find you can do better if you are away from your desk.

[edit] The Sections of the Report

In this section, I will describe each part of the report, and tell you what to put in each section. You should note that this is a general outline and that the demands of the report, or of your lecturers, may vary according to the type of study that you have carried out. However, before you move away from what it says in these guidelines, be very sure that you are doing the right thing.

[edit] Title

The title is the first part of the report that the person marking it will read, so you should try to ensure that you make a good first impression. The title should be as informative as you can make it, but no longer than one sentence, although you may include colons or semi-colons. Good titles are important for someone searching the literature for relevant articles: the title will be the first thing a possible reader will use to decide whether to read further.

Let the potential reader know the key issue of your piece of research. Never be vague. Do not, for example, title your report ‘Memory’ or ‘An Experimental Investigation of Recall Aids’ but something more specific like ‘The Effect of the Method of Loci upon the Recall of Unfamiliar Names.’

[edit] Abstract

If someone has read the title of your report, the next thing they will do before they decide to take the time to read the whole thing is read the abstract. The abstract must provide enough information for someone to decide whether they want to read the whole report. As well as giving this information, you should try to keep the abstract as brief as possible. This whole section involves a compromise between informativeness and conciseness. An abstract should probably be around 150 words. You should not include minor, or extraneous details (for example the sampling technique used) unless this is very important to the study. In a published journal article, the abstract is placed onto databases that people use to search through the literature, such as PsycInfo.

[edit] Introduction

The introduction (obviously) exists to introduce your research. It should include the following parts:

• An account of the findings of relevant prior research and an overview of any particular conceptual issues that you think are important to your study.

• Theoretical and practical aspects of your study.

Your introduction should be something like a short essay that brings together previous research on the subject, and concludes by saying what should be done next. Your study should almost ‘fall out of’ the end of your introduction. By the time the reader reaches the end of your introduction, you should have made it obvious that your research needs to be done.

When you state a fact in your introduction, you must cite evidence for it. The evidence is usually a piece of research.

It is usually sufficient to identify a piece of research by the standard method of giving the name of the author and the date it was published. Students find some difficulty getting used to this, but if you look at an introduction in a journal article, you will find that it is full of citations - between five and ten citations in the first couple of paragraphs is not at all unusual.

Crucial Tip: The previous point relates to statements of opinion, as well as statements of psychological fact. If, for example, you write, “a great deal of research has been carried out on …” you should either then list a great deal of research, or say who has made the claim. The same is true for statements like “most modern psychologists agree that …” or “little research has been done on… .”

You need to state the psychological questions that your research was designed to answer. You will usually have clear hypotheses that you have derived from past research, in which case these can be listed (however, see the next point). Sometimes the purpose of your research is better stated as exploring a variety of factors or answering particular questions. Either way, after reading your introduction someone should have a very clear picture of what you are trying to find out and how it builds on what is already known. Finally, do not state your findings in this section. The introduction should read as though it was written before the research was carried out.

[edit] Method

This section tells the reader what you actually did. This section should be clear, accurate and complete. Keep in mind whilst writing it that you are intending to give sufficient information so that a researcher could be repeat what you did, exactly. The section should be written in the past tense because it is a description of what you did, not a recipe for how to carry out your study. The Method section usually has four distinct subsections, which are described below. (You might find in journal articles that they have not always included every sub-section, or that they have included an additional section. However, it is worth emphasising again that while a student you should stick to the standard format that I am giving you. One of the purposes of writing a research report is to show your lecturers that you know what a research report should look like. If you change the basic format, it might present your research more clearly, but it will not demonstrate to your lecturers that you know what a research report should look like.

The Method section in your practical reports will probably include more details than those in a journal article. Journal editors prefer to keep Method sections short because they have a limited amount of space available

[edit] Design

In the Design section, you outline the structure of your study. The purpose of the design section is to give the reader an overview of the study – if your design was complex, it might be hard for the reader to understand it from a description of what you did. The design section is a little like the ingredients from a recipe – it provides the ingredients of your study, that you will use later on in the Method section.

You should state clearly the nature of the research that you carried out. Was it an experiment, a correlational study, a case study, etc.? If it was an experiment, did you use a between-participants design (different participants in each condition) or a within-participants design (same participants in each condition) - or was it a mixed-design (with both within- and between-participant conditions)? (See Chapter 3).

Describe the variables that you measured and/or manipulated. If your design was experimental, you should describe the dependent and independent variables. In experimental designs, you should state the number of levels in (each of) the independent variables, and describe them (see Chapter 3).

Describing the dependent variable(s) means actually saying what they are and what they mean. You need to say more than “the dependent variable was the response the participants gave to the questionnaire.”

[edit] Participants

The Participants section is used to briefly describe the makeup of your sample, i.e. the people who took part in your study. You need to tell the reader about your sample so that they can decide whether this was a good enough sample for the purposes of your research. In Chapter 6, we will look at sampling techniques, and see some of the things that can go wrong.

[edit] Materials

The Materials section (sometimes called Apparatus, or Measures) is where you describe anything that you used in the study. This should include technical equipment, questionnaires, word lists, computer programs, etc. It does not need to include pens, paper, tables, or anything that was extremely obvious. It is very tempting to write the materials section as a list – don’t. Always write in full sentences.

Where possible in this section, you should describe accurately the nature of the equipment. Note that some journals recommend that you report the precise model of a piece of equipment (e.g., tape recorder model number ST23451) though usually you can be more easy-going than this – just say you used a tape recorder, and everyone knows what you mean.

You should also include in this section full details of any stimuli that were used in your study (e.g., word lists, pictures, nonsense syllables etc.). If the materials, such as a word list, can be described briefly, you should include it here. If it is long, then it should be included as an appendix. Don't relegate everything important to the appendix - your materials should not say nothing except:

Questionnaire (see appendix).

[edit] Procedure

In this sub-section, you describe precisely what you did while carrying out the study. This section is a full report of what happened, from the selection of the participants to the debriefing.

If your study was an experiment, then you should detail how participants were allocated to the different experimental conditions. If the design was a between-participants design, were participants randomly allocated to the different conditions (and if not why not)? If the design was a within-participants design, what method of counterbalancing (see Chapter 3) was used and why. Do not simply say: “participants were randomly allocated to one of the conditions”. Instead, describe how you decided which participants were allocated to what part of the experiment.

You should describe the instructions that were presented to participants – don’t just say “participants were given the instructions (see Appendix 2)”. If there were written or standardised instructions then you might want to include them as an appendix. Occasionally the exact wording of instructions is important. If this is the case, then you should include the wording in the procedure. If you debriefed the participants, you should say so.

Crucial Tip: Students often lose marks by missing out details in the procedure. It can be useful to pretend that you are trying to repeat the study by carrying out the procedure that you have written down – although this is difficult to do, because you were there, so you know what happened.

[edit] Results

In this section, you report the results of your data analyses. However, you should not discuss, or attempt to interpret them in this section. Sometimes you will come across research reports that combine the results and discussion section.

Though you might be tempted to do this if you have a large number of results that need to be discussed, it is better to stick to the standard format (for the reasons we have already discussed, more than once).

The first part of the results should say how you calculated the scores for your participants. This will often be obvious; for example, the score might be the number of words correctly remembered. Sometimes the method of scoring will be less obvious, and sometimes it might even be quite complex. The second part of the results should display descriptive or exploratory statistics (see Chapter 7). The third part of the results should display information about any statistical tests that you carried out.

If you have a number of hypotheses to test, you might prefer to present the descriptive statistics and the inferential statistics together for each hypothesis. Your results section would then look like:

Hypothesis A: Inferential statistics, hypothesis A: descriptive statistics.

Hypotheses B, descriptive statistics, Hypothesis B inferential statistics,

etc.

It can be difficult to know what level of detail to put in the results section. If what you are putting into this section will help to answer part of your initial questions or hypotheses, then you are right to include it.

The Results section should be easy to understand on its own. Make sure that the reader does not have to keep flicking back and forward to other sections of the report to understand what you are saying. For instance, students sometimes put into the Results section abbreviations that were described in the Materials section. Don't use abbreviations that the reader may not remember.

Crucial Tip: Using abbreviations is usually frowned upon. Using abbreviations that are not defined elsewhere is worse. But the most heinous sin is to use variable names from computer output, without describing them.

You can report results in many different ways: using a text description, a table or a graph.

For example, you could write, “Group 1 (chocolate) had a mean happiness score of 12.3, higher than group 2 (carrots) whose mean happiness score was 4.1”

You could present the same information in a table, or a graph. Generally, you should choose the method that takes up the least space – but conveys the information clearly. In this example, the text description is acceptable – anyone reading it has all of the information needed– the graph and the table give no new information, and do not enhance our understanding in any way. Choosing the method of presenting the information is, however, a complex issue.

It can be difficult to know how to report statistical tests in text. As a rule, you need to report the test statistic, either the N, or the df (depending on the test) and whether the result is significant. There are two ways of doing this, and either would be appropriate. The first way, is just to list the test statistic, the df and the probability: &choi;² = 1.3, df=1, p>0.05. The second way is to put the df (or less commonly the N) in brackets after the test statistic t(88) = 2.4, p < 0.05.

If you use a statistical package, it will probably provide you with an exact p value, rather than just saying p<0.05, it will say p=0.023. Arguments rage in methodological circles about how this should be reported. One side of the argument says that you should simply report whether the result is significant at the 0.05 level, or not. So, if the statistics package says that p=0.0045, you should write p < 0.05. The other side of the argument says that you should write the exact value that is given for p, so if the statistics package says p=0.0045, you write p=0.0045. A sort of compromise is to use cut-off values of 0.05, 0.01 and 0.001. So if the statistics package says that p=0.0045, you should write p < 0.01. Whilst many journal articles still use this technique, it is usually frowned upon in methodological circles. I don’t know which of these your lecturers will prefer you to use – the best thing for you to do is to find out, and use the same one.

If a statistics package says that p=0.000, it doesn’t mean it. It has rounded the value to 3 decimal places, and it means that p < 0.0005.

Don’t give excessive numbers of decimals. One decimal more than the accuracy of your measure is usually enough. If you measured how many digits people could recall, writing that the mean was 7.1 is fine. Writing that the mean was 7.132384 is far more accuracy than your measure warrants.

[edit] Discussion

The discussion section is where you are freed a little from the strict rules about what you should put in your practical report, and you are finally allowed to get a little creative. Whilst this is a good thing in some ways, it also means that you have to think a lot more about what to put in this section.

Crucial Tip: The discussion section can be very difficult to write, and if you leave it to the last minute, you can find that you lack the necessary inspiration and end up with a rather poor (or even non-existent) discussion section.

The discussion falls into three sections:

• What did the study find?
• What do the findings mean?
• What are the implications?

The first section involves a description of your findings - an outline of what was found, this is a summary of the results section, putting an emphasis on answering the questions posed in the introduction. The second section should be a discussion of the possible interpretation of these data, including any flaws in the experimental design or execution that may limit the usefulness of the data.

In the third section of the discussion you should: (i) to assess the implications of your study - particularly with regard to any issues that you outlined in your introduction, and (ii) what questions has your research left unanswered, and what new questions has it suggested to you.

In this section, you elaborate upon the argument you began in your introduction. What this means is that a good discussion depends on having a good introduction. This section should include very little new material or literature.

Do not feel afraid to point out issues that have arisen in your research. No one, ever, has carried out a perfect experiment. Lecturers ask you to carry out practical work so that you learn, so don’t be afraid to show that you have learnt from the experience. Sometimes students are afraid to point out possible flaws in their study because they think that lecturers will think that they carried out the research badly, and will therefore give them a lower grade. You can be reassured by two thoughts. First, if there are flaws in your study, your lecturer will notice them whether you point them out or not (they have probably read hundreds of practical reports in the past). Second, you lecturers will be happy to see that you have learned from the experience of carrying out the research.

[edit] Referencing and References

Referencing properly is surprisingly hard work. Your reference section will take a lot longer to write than you imagine. Make sure that you find out the guidelines for referencing from your department, and follow them.

You should reference all information that you use in your study. And you should include everything in the reference section.

[edit] Graphs, Tables and Figures

Label all of your figures, tables and graphs (graphs should also be labelled as figures) using a consecutive numbering scheme that starts with the first one of each to appear in the report (i.e. the first table is Table 1, the first figure or graph is Figure 1, the next table is Table 2 and so on). Then use those labels in your text. (e.g., As is shown in Figure 1 ...).

• All of your figures and tables should have detailed, informative titles. Someone should be able to look at a table or a graph and understand it without looking at any of the text. (Have a look at how this tends to be done in journal articles).

[edit] Appendices

Whilst appendices are rare in journal articles because journals don’t have the space, your practical report will almost certainly need to have some appendices. Appendices might contain the following:

• Raw data. This means a listing of the scores of the participants, which you analysed. It does not mean all of the materials that you collected from the participants. Your lecturers do not want to look through 100 questionnaires, which your participants completed. (If you put them in, it also makes the practical reports quite heavy.)
• Calculations of statistical tests (if these were done by hand).
• Informed consent sheet. If you asked your participants to sign anything to signify that they had given their informed consent to take part in the study, you should include this in the appendix.
• A copy of any instructions that were used, which were not given verbatim in the report.
• Any stimuli that were too large to be included in the materials section of the report, for example pictures, word lists, questionnaires.

[edit] A Few Additional Points

• Don’t use sexist language in your report writing. Don’t say ‘he’ when you mean ‘he or she’ – you might prefer to use ‘they’ in the singular form (as you read the rest of this book, you will notice that I use this form - although converting it to a wiki makes this sound wrong).
• Personal pronouns (we, I, me) are a very tricky issue. This rule varies between journals, and between departments, but it is usually better to usually avoid using them.
• Remember the person marking the practical. You should always remember that practical reports are marked by your lecturers - who are human beings. Because they are human beings, they will sometimes get annoyed and frustrated by things. Marking practical reports isn’t the most interesting thing to do, and so anything that you do to make the life of the person marking the report easier may be looked on favourably. (Unfortunately, universities tend to have quite rigorous standards for grading students’ work, so by following these rules you will not improve your grade, but your lecturers will like you more.)
  • Unless you are specifically told to, don’t put your practical report in hardback ring binder. Your lecturer will probably have many practical reports to mark, and if they are all in ring binders, they are very large and heavy, and might make your lecturer unstable on their bicycle.
  • Make sure that the person grading the report can read all of it. If you write or print to the left hand edge of the page, and then put the report into a binder, your lecturer will not be able to read it. Don’t put every page into a separate plastic folder - it takes a long time to take each one out.
• Use double line spacing.
• Finally, read your report and make sure that it is clear and makes sense. If you have the time, you should put it to one side for a little while, before you come back to it and read it. If possible, ask a friend to read it – anyone will be able to spot mistakes – and there will almost certainly be some (despite my best efforts, there are almost certainly some in this book).

[edit] A Note for People Who have Studied A level Psychology

If you studied A level psychology, you may feel that you are at a slight advantage over other students. Sometimes this is true, more often this is not. When it comes to report writing, this is definitely not the case. If you had to write reports at A level, try to erase everything you learned from your brain. The reports that you wrote at A level will differ in important ways from the reports that you write at degree level, and if you continue to write in the same style, you will lose marks.

Checklist You can use this checklist as a final examination of your practical report. This is not intended to be an exhaustive set of instructions, rather it contains some of the most common, easily fixed, errors that students make in their report.

• Is the title short, and informative?
• Does the abstract give your conclusions, without giving the results of any statistical tests?
• Have you removed all minor details from the abstract?
• Is the abstract 100-150 words, and one paragraph long?
• Does the introduction finish with the aim of the research, and the hypotheses or predictions that are to be tested?
• Have you described the independent variable, and its levels.
• Have you described the dependent variable?
• Have you described your participants in sufficient detail (age, sex).
• Have you described how your participants were sample?
• Have you said that you used random sampling? (If you did, you are wrong, so change it.)
• Have you described your materials (not just referred the reader to an appendix)?
• Have you written your materials section as a paragraph?
• Does your procedure contain all the details, which would allow someone else to repeat the experiment? (From when the participant was approached, to when they were debriefed.)
• If your study is an experiment, have you described how you assigned participants to conditions?
• Have you described how your participants were debriefed?
• Have you described how your dependent variable was calculated? (If it was a questionnaire, how was it scored, for example?)
• Have you labelled all graphs and tables clearly? (Not used abbreviations, and not used variable names from computer printout.)
• Have you used a sensible number of decimal places in your results section?
• Have you reported your statistical tests correctly? Make sure that you have reported the test statistic (F or t, for example), the df or N (and remember that F has 2 sets of df) and the p value.
• Don’t confuse p < 0.05 and p < 0.5.
• Don’t confuse p < 0.05 and p > 0.05 (the fat end of the arrow points toward the larger number, so p < 0.05 means ‘ p is less than 0.05’.)
• Have you reiterated your results at the start of the discussion?
• Have you referred back to the introduction in your discussion?
• Have you pointed out flaws in your study?
• Have you suggested avenues for future research?
• Have you summarised your findings in your final paragraph?
• Does every reference in your report appear in your references section?
• Do any references appear in your references section, which do not appear in your report?
• Have you put the report in a folder in such a way that all of the text is easily readable?

[edit] Further Reading

Many books on research methods have a section that tells you about the structure of psychology practical reports. The book “Evaluating, doing and writing research in psychology” by Bell, Staines and Mitchell, goes beyond this, discussing styles of writing, and approaches to writing.

The bible for writing research reports is the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association. This has advice on every aspect of research reports that you could think of - and a lot that you would never thought of. The section on referencing describes how to refer to 73 different sources.