Experimental Psychology APA Format Reports: Results, Discussion, References

Projects Due in This Course Proposal – similar to the kinds of proposals submitted to granting agencies. Contains parts of a full APA report plus extra info needed by the agency. Written in future tense. Final Report – similar to the manuscripts submitted to journals for publication. Written in APA format. Written in past tense because it describes what happened.

Goals of the Final Report Communicate to the scientific community. Clearly describe your project in sufficient detail to permit replication. Convince readers that your findings support your conclusions. How strong is the evidence? Does it justify your statements about theory? Summarize your contribution to the ongoing debate on an important question. Pay special attention to your abstract!

Contents of Final Report Must contain all sections listed in the APA Publication Manual, including: Title page Abstract Introduction Methods Results Discussion References Tables and Figures

You Are Telling a Story Introduction -- state your research question, review the literature, make your predictions (hypotheses). Methods – describe how you explored the question in sufficient detail to permit replication. Results – describe your findings and test your hypotheses using statistics. Discussion – analyze your results and put them back into the context of your question.

Abstract This may be the only part of your paper that most people read, so make it count! Write this last. Tell the story of your study, with one sentence per report section. Do not exceed 120 words.

Use of Tenses For the final report, revise the sections that were written for your proposal because they will be graded again. Your proposal was written in the future tense (e.g., “subjects will…”), but for the final report… Put the Methods section in the past tense. Report your results in the past tense.

Reporting Results Only include the results that are relevant to your research question, not all data collected. Go from the general to the specific. Provide tables for: Multiple analyses. Complex experiments (factorial designs). ANOVA Organize your results section around your hypotheses, testing one at a time.

Describing Data Don’t forget to include descriptive statistics (means, SDs). “The mean number of words recalled was calculated for each group. The means and the standard deviations for each group are shown in Figure 1.” “Recall was higher for the drug group (M = 15, SD = 5.43) than for the placebo group (M = 10, SD = 4.98).”

Reporting Inferential Statistics “The data were analyzed using an independent t-test. The t-test showed no significant difference between the mean of the placebo group and the mean of the drug group, t(34) = 1.35, p = .782. “Using one-way ANOVA, gender differences were found to be significant, with females scoring higher on the average than males, F(1, 23) = 23.89, p =.025.” Show more complex analyses in a table.

Report Exact p-Values The old approach simply tested results against a standard of p<.05 by looking up the critical value in a table. Significance was an all-or-nothing judgment. Only the critical value (cutoff) was known, not the exact p-value for your statistic. Today, SPSS gives exact p-values for every result. Report those exact values (p=.031). NEVER report p > .05 for a non-significant result. It implies use of p > .05 as a standard.

Ethics of Reporting Statistics Don’t change your hypotheses (prediction) to fit what you actually discovered. Instead say you were surprised by your results. Decide how many subjects to test in advance. Don’t stop collecting data because you already have significant results. Don’t add more subjects because your results are almost significant and would become so with a few more subjects. State your reason for ending data collection.

Avoid “p-Hacking” p-hacking is the practice of trying different approaches to data analysis until you find one that gives significant results. It is unethical. Collect at least 20 observations per condition. Report all experimental conditions, even failed manipulations (studies that didn’t work). List all variables collected in a study, even if they are not analyzed in your paper. If there is any doubt, report results with and without excluded subjects, covariates.

Changes in Reporting The internet is making possible different approaches to report writing. Because journals are no longer limited in space, authors can supply complete data sets, stimuli (materials) and alternative analyses. This represents a movement toward greater transparency. Exact, not conceptual replications are needed results are marginal.

References Format varies depending on the type of material being referenced (e.g., book, article, web site). Only list the sources actually mentioned in the text of your report. Everything listed in the references must be cited in text Everything cited in text must be listed in the references. When you mention a source referenced in another paper say: “as cited by…” and cite the source you actually read, not the original quoted by someone else.

Tables and Figures Tables go first – always use APA format. Tables contain numbers or words. Figures are pictures and typically present graphs of data, sample stimuli, equipment setup, diagrams of experiment flow, flowcharts of cognitive processes or diagrams of theoretical models. Tables have titles that go at the top. Figures have captions that go at the bottom. Include at least 1 of each in your final report.

Discussion First, state what you discovered during your experiment. Do not repeat results but interpret them and state whether your hypotheses were confirmed. Tell whether your findings are consistent with what others have found. Describe any threats to validity and problems with your experiment (confounds, bias, limitations of generalizability, problems). Conclusion – what are the consequences?