Slides to accompany Weathington, Cunningham & Pittenger (2010), Chapter 5: Writing the Research Report 1

Objectives What Readers Appreciate in Good Writing Elements of APA Style Special Grammatical Issues Academic Integrity Parts of the Research Report Proofreading 2

Readers’ Expectations Focus –Writing has a purpose and clear boundaries Organization –Writing follows a logical sequence Integration –Writing conveys a complete story 3

Elements of APA Style Strive for accuracy, brevity, and clarity Write for a specific audience –Typically other scientists Use unbiased language –e.g., sex- and race-neutral Integrate numbers and text carefully, following guidelines in the manual 4

Special Grammatical Issues Use active voice whenever possible –“We designed this study to test…” Use past tense when referring to the work of other researchers and to your own results Be careful with your pronouns Study box 5.1 for commonly misused words 5

Academic Integrity Based on you giving fair credit where credit’s due –Whenever you state a fact or report someone else’s findings you need to cite the origin of that information Academic dishonesty = plagiarism –Don’t go there Review Box 5.2 and the APA manual for citation examples 6

Parts of the Research Report Title page Abstract Introduction Method Results Discussion References 7

Crafting the Introduction 8

Method Section Subsections Participants Materials/Measures Procedure 9

Results Section Issues Follow APA manual guidelines for reporting results of statistical tests Use tables and figures sparingly and when they are more efficient than displaying statistical information in the text 10

Discussion Details 11

Proofreading Do it – seriously Computer spellchecker is NOT a substitute for actual proofreading Read it aloud to yourself and have someone else listen (if you can find someone) 12

What is Next? **instructor to provide details 13