Abstract: The abstract should be written last. It is a summary of your research. The abstract should be 125-150 words. When your paper is finished, go through it and summarize each section in one or two sentences. Voila!! That’s your abstract. I attached a sample from playground research. You might also want to check p. 185 in your text for formatting guidelines. There is no submission link for the abstract. You submit it as part of your final paper. Don’t forget it should be on a separate page at the beginning of the paper. Data: Everyone’s data collection plan is different. Email me if you need help with particulars. A couple of pointers: 1) Data need to be collected in an objective and unbiased manner. 2) Data need to be collected anonymously. You can note your participants by their initials or code them in another way that will enable you and only you to distinguish among them. 3) Data must remain confidential. Make sure you protect your participants’ welfare. 4) Be organized. Record your data on a form or a checklist. Keep it in a safe place. If you lose data, you will have to do all that work again. Method: The Methods section is fairly straight forward. It consists of three subsections: subjects/participants, materials/apparatus, and procedure. The goal for this section is to describe how the research was conducted in such minute detail that if someone wanted to replicate your research, s/he would be able to. I’ve attached a few examples I think are well written. You can also check out the Methods sections in the sample papers. Subjects/participants: The subjects subsection should describe every relevant detail about the research participants. What is relevant will vary from study to study. (It’s up to you title this section “Subjects” or “Participants”.) Materials/apparatus: Materials are consumable goods that generally don’t last forever. This would include toys or food used as rewards, office supplies that get used up such as pens and pencils, and so forth. Apparatus is heavy-duty equipment that loses value over time such as a computer. Most of you will probably use “materials”. If you gave a test, instead of describing it in detail, you could summarize (a 12-question test was used to assess concentration before and after recess) and append your test to the end of your paper as “Appendix I”.
You should describe every relevant detail of your materials/apparatus so that if someone wants to replicate your study, they will come as close as possible to using the same materials/apparatus. Procedure: In this section, you should describe how the research was carried out in as much detail as possible so that if someone wants to replicate your research, s/he can adhere as closely as possible to your procedure. The word “Methods” is centered at the top of the page. The three subsection headings are placed against the left margin. Results: I’m not expecting anything terribly fancy for statistics — descriptions (mean, median, mode, range) are fine. If you want to give an inferential test a shot, be my guest. You can also email me data. I will run the inferential test — but you’re on your own for descriptives. If we haven’t agreed on how you should analyze your data, shoot me an email. Your results should report the group differences you observed — not the individuals. Think about the labs you’ve been doing. You report the group differences. If there’s something remarkable about any of the data points, you could report them and discuss what is special but the focus is on the differences between or among the groups. A picture is worth 1,000 words. Make a graph — it is required. Make sure you explain in prose — in your Results section – everything on your graph. You can refer the reader to your graph but don’t count on the graph to write your Results section for you. Graph the group differences, not the data for the individuals you observed. You do not need to submit the raw data. In general, you chart the different conditions on the X-axis and the results/dependent variable on the Y-axis. You could also do a pie chart. Tables are good too but make sure you include a graph. Discussion: The Discussion section is the easiest of all the sections to write. In this section, you interpret your results and offer possible explanations. While you don’t explicitly express an opinion, you can shade your writing with phrases like: “it is suggested…”, “it is possible…”, ” there seems to be evidence/a trend toward…”, etc. Additionally, in suggesting a direction for further research, you’re putting in a plug for what you think might be an important effect. By now you’ve all have practice writing discussion sections for the labs. You can also refer to the Discussion section in your textbook (p. 191). You should note that the sample Discussion section references research. You may want to do that as well. I attached two discussion sections from papers that got high grades. There is no submission link for the discussion. You will submit is as part of the final paper in Module 14. Reference page: Your text has a great reference section as part of the sample paper. Check out p. 192. You can also pull up the APA (American Psych Association) Style Manual on Touro’s website. I attached a few references pages that are correctly formatted. Make sure the type font is uniform on the entire reference page. The first line of the reference is flush left. Subsequent lines for that reference are indented. You can also copy and paste this link into your browser bar: http://ww2.usj.edu/PDF/CAE/apareferencepage_6th_ed.pdf Links to an external site. There are examples of references for a variety of publications. There is no submission link for the reference page. It is submitted as part of your finished paper.
