reporting psychological investigations Flashcards
abstract
the first section of a journal is a short summary/ abstract (150-200 words) that includes all the major elements: the aims and hypotheses, method/procedure, results and conclusions.
introduction
literary review of the general area of research detailing relevant theories, concepts and studies that are related to the current study. the research review should follow a logical progression- beginning broadly and gradually becoming more specific until the aims and hypotheses are presented.
what details should the method include?
this is so studies can be replicated by other psychologists.
-design- should be clearly stated e.g independent groups, naturalistic observation etc. and reason for the choice
- sample-info related to the people in the study e.g how many were there, the sampling method and target population etc
-apparatus/materials- detail of any assessment instruments used
-procedure-a recipe-style list of everything that happened in the investigation from beginning to end
-ethics- an explanation of how these were addressed within the study
results
should summarise the key findings from the investigation. likely to feature descriptive statistics such as tables, graphs and charts, measures of central tendency and measures of dispersion. inferential statistics shoul include reference to the choice of statistical test, calcualted and critical values, the level of significance and the final outcome, i.e which the hypothesis was rejected. any raw data that was collected and any calculations appear in an appendix rather than the main body of the report. if the researchr has used qualitative methods of research, the findings are likely to involve analysis of themes and/or categories.
discussion
researcher will summarise the results in verbal, rather than statistical form. these should be discussed in the context of the evidence presented in the introduction and other research that may be relevent. the researcher should discuss the limitations of the present investigation and this may include some suggestions of how these limitations night be adressed ina future tudy. finally the wider implications of the research are considered. this may include real-world applications of what has been discovered and what contribution the investigation has made to the existing knowledge-base within the field
referencing
includes full details of any source material cited in the report. journal refernces follow the format: authors, date, article, title, journal name (in italics), volume (issue), page numbers. book references take the format: authors,date, title of book (in italics), place of publication, publisher. web references provide source, date, title, weblink and date accessed
