1. Differences among the Topic, Problem, Purpose, and Questions
Title
Topic
Distance learning
Distance learning and students’ motivation.
Research
Problem
Lack of students in distance classes
To study why students do not attend distance education classes at a community college
Purpose
Statement
Does the use of interactive web pages help to increase students’ interest in distance education classes?
Research
Question
Hypothesis
The use of interactive web pages will increase students’ interest in distance education.

2. Writing an APA- Style Research Report
Chapter 16

3. Basic tips

4. First Draft Learn about your institution required guidelines
Focus more on organization and logical thinking and less on exact wording, spelling , grammar
Start with research problem (chapter 1)
Provide a context for your research problem (what we know what we don’t know)

5. First Draft Convince the reader of the importance of your project
Assume that your readers know nothing about your research
Communicate that you have an open mind about what you will find
Describe your methodology as detailed as possible
Describe how you will use the data to address your research problem

6. Revising your proposal
Set the proposal aside for a few days
Read a print copy of your draft
Look for disorganized thought, illogical thinking, and inconsistencies in terminology
Look for unclear sentences or ambiguous phrases
Keep your sentences simple and straightforward

7. Revising your proposal
Choose your words carefully (shorter words- feel is not the same as think)
Pronouns might be misleading (instead of this, that, use this test, that experiment)
Don’t use I or We in quantitative study.
Comparisons might be misleading
(I like my mom more than my sister)
Spell and Grammar check

8. Revising your proposal
Make sure all bulleted items have the same grammatical structure
One-to-one correspondence in references
Print it and read it again.

9. APA style
Is used by many publications throughout the behavioral sciences, however, it is not universal.

10. Some Elements of Writing Style

11. Writing Style A research report is not the same as creative writing
Don’t try to persuade, amuse, entertain, challenge, confuse, or surprise your reader

12. Impersonal style Should be written in an objective style.
Avoid distracting the reader with literary devices such as alliteration, rhyming, deliberate ambiguity, or abrupt changes in topic.
Don’t advocate or promote an idea

13. Impersonal style You should avoid colloquial expressions such as
“ once in a blue moon” ( in place of “ rarely”)
and jargon such as “ left- winger” ( in place of “ politically liberal”).

14. Impersonal style
You may use personal pronouns to describe what you did as a researcher,
e.g., “ I instructed the participants,”
but keep in mind that you are writing a research report, not a personal journal.
There is a difference between qualitative and quantitative reports.

15. Verb Tense
In your literature review , if not at a specific time or is continuing into the present, use the present perfect tense
When you present your results, always use the past tense.
After you have described the study and presented the results, switch to the present tense to discuss the results and your conclusions (“ the data suggest”).

16. Reducing Biased Language
Be sensitive to labels; call people what they prefer to be called. For example, instead of “schizophrenics” and “ the elderly”
you may use “ people diagnosed with schizophrenia” and “older adults”
(elderly)

17. Reducing Biased Language
Describe people with a level of specificity that is accurate. For example, when describing ethnic groups, instead of general terms such as Asian American or Hispanic American, use Korean American or Mexican American.
(Ethnic groups)
(LGBT)

18. Citations

19. Citations
Previous research has shown that response to an auditory stimulus is much faster than response to a visual stimulus ( Smith & Jones, 2009).
In a related study, Jones ( 2008) found that…
It has been found that word recall decreases as a function of age ( Jones, Smith, & Brown, 2002).

20. Citations
When a publication has six or more authors, you only include the first author’s last name followed by “et al.” and the date for the first and subsequent citations. (Katz et al., 2002)

21. Multiple citation
( Jones, Smith, & Brown, 2002; Smith & Jones, 2009)

22. Citations

23. Literature Review

24. Literature Review
Try to find a few closely related studies rather than many unrelated studies.
Select only those references that are truly useful and contribute to your arguments.

25. Paraphrase Quotations should be used sparingly.
As a general rule, it is better to paraphrase a point using your own words than to quote directly from another work.

26. Direct Quote
For short quotations, fewer than 40 words, the quotation is embedded in the text with quotation marks at both ends.
Resenhoeft, Villa, and Wiseman ( 2008) report that participants judged a model without a visible tattoo as “ more attractive, athletic, and intelligent than the same model shown with a tattoo” ( p. 594).

27. More than 40

28. language
It also is customary to distinguish between citations of empirical results and citations of theory or interpretation.
To report an empirical result, for example, you could use: Jones ( 2008) demonstrated… To cite a theory or speculation, for example, you might use: Jones ( 2008) argued…

29. Samples of APA-style research report

30. Title Page

31. Title Page

32. Title
1. Avoid unnecessary words. “ A study of women in higher education” or “ Investigating the relationship between IQ and Math score.”
2. If possible, the first word in the title should be of special relevance or importance to the content of the paper.
3. Avoid cute or catchy titles

33. Abstract
A one- sentence statement of the problem or research question.
A brief description of the subjects or participants ( identifying how many and any relevant characteristics).
A brief description of the research method and procedures.
A report of the results .
A statement about the conclusions or implications.

34. Abstract

35. Introduction & (lit review)
A general introduction to the topic of the paper and why this problem is important and deserves new research.
The relevant literature; only the articles that are directly relevant to your research question. Do not provide detailed descriptions. The literature review should not be an article- by- article description of one study after another; instead, the articles should be presented in an integrated manner.

36. Intro & literature review
The specific goal, hypothesis, or question that the research study addresses. State the problem or purpose of your study, and clearly define the relevant variables.
Briefly describe the research strategy . Also explain how the research strategy provides the information necessary to address your hypothesis or research question.

37. Method A- Subjects or participants (selection procedures)
B- Procedures
The settings and locations,
Operational definitions
Ethical standards met and safety- monitoring procedures,
Groups or conditions and how many individuals were in each condition,
Instructions given to participants,
Any experimental manipulation or intervention
Research design and Statistical analysis
C- Instruments , equipments, tools (validity & Reliability)

38. Results
Usually, a results section begins with a statement of the primary outcome of the study, followed by the basic descriptive statistics (usually means and standard deviations), then the inferential statistics ( usually the results of hypothesis tests), and finally the measures of effect size.
The results section simply provides a complete and unbiased reporting of the findings, just the facts, with no discussion of the findings

39. Reports of statistical significance
( 1) the type of test used, (LSD, Tukey, Bonferroni, Sidak, Scheffe) ( 2) the degrees of freedom, ( 3) the outcome of the test, ( 4) the level of significance, ( 5) the size and direction of the effect

40. Sample Result

41. Discussion
The discussion section should begin with a restatement of the hypothesis.
In the discussion section, you offer interpretation, evaluation, and discussion of the implications of your findings.

42. Discussion
It can be helpful to think of the discussion section as a mirror image of the introduction. Remember, the introduction moved from general to specific, using items from the literature to focus on a specific hypothesis. Now, in the discussion section, you begin with a specific hypothesis ( your outcome) and relate it back to the existing literature.
In the last paragraphs of the discussion section, you may reach beyond the actual results and begin to consider their implications and/ or applications.

43. References

44. Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

47. Tables & Figures
As a general rule, tables and figures supplement the text; they should not duplicate information that has already been presented in text form, and they should not be completely independent of the text.
Tables, formatted according to APA specifications, are each typed separately on a new page. The table number and title, respectively, are displayed at the top of the page, each at the left margin.

48. 1- Title page thesis

49. Dissertation

50. 2- Abstract
Running head
No indent

51. free-floating table

52. Regular table

53. Table Space
The main text of the manuscript will begin with three empty line spaces between the end of the table and the text

55. Figures

56. Figures

58. This is an Example of a Landscape Figure (Tables will read in the same direction).

60. Research Proposal (Part 1)
The basic purpose of a good research proposal is to provide three kinds of information about the research study.
Why is your research important
How your planned research study is related to other knowledge in the area.
3. What do you expect to find?

61. Proposal (part 2)
4- How the data will be collected and analyzed,

62. Proposal (part 3)
5- other plausible outcomes, implications of the expected results

63. Difference between a proposal and a research article
1. An abstract is optional in a research proposal.
2. The literature review in the introduction is typically more extensive than the review in a research report.
3. The results and discussion sections are typically replaced either by a combined Results/ Discussion section, or a section entitled Expected Results and Statistical Analysis or Data Analysis and Expected Results.

65. The Research Report CSULB Style and Format Guidelines
Sample Paper