Lab report

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The APA Methods Section

The APA methods section starts right after the last Hypothesis and the word "Methods" is a centered heading. It does not begin on a new page. The APA methods section contains three subsections: Subjects, Materials (and/or Apparatus), and Procedures. In addition, the materials subsection includes references to the Appendix. Instructions for the Appendix is included here also. Participants Report the number of subjects you plan to use in your study. The total number may be broken down into males and females, or in the case of quasi-experiments in the various groups from which the subjects were selected. For example you may have beginners, novices, and experts and need 20 in each category. How do you know how many subjects you will need? The past research that is summarized in your introduction included subject’s information…how many was typical in past research? That’s about how many you should use too. If you are doing correlation research you will need 30 subjects per variable at least. If you are doing group research the minimum number is 5 per group, but 10 per group is better, at the minimum. These are rough guidelines; let the past research guide you. In addition to the total number of subjects, include how many groups and how many per group (if you have groups), but do not define the groups or discuss what you will be doing with them – that info goes in the procedures subsection to be written later. Include the kind of subjects you plan to use. By this I mean college students or general population, special populations like women aged 35-55 only, etc. If you plan to have a specific number of females and males, or equal numbers of various ethnic backgrounds, include this too. If you just plan to have males and females but don’t know how many of each and it’s not really important anyway, you can leave out the numbers, but do say both males and females will be included. In addition to number and kind, include a detailed description of your selection method. Random selection? Stratified sampling? Use the terms learned in class and tell the reader exactly how you plan to implement the selection strategy. For example, let's the research you've been reading typically uses quota sampling to ensure that equal numbers of freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors are represented. You decide that 40 of each class will work fine. Now tell the reader how will do quota sampling at MTSU. How does one go about "getting" freshmen? sophomores? juniors? and seniors? You could talk to professors and ask to come their classes and recruit volunteers for your study. You could stand in the Student Center, the lobby of the Library, and other locations where students gather and simply ask people to volunteer as they walk by. You could wait in the hall outside of classes and talk to students as they leave class. If you ask enough students, hang out near or in 1000-level classes, 2000- level, 3000 and 4000 level, you will get enough volunteers of each category - just be sure that one question you ask on a demographic survey is their college class. Once all the surveys are in you can then simply split them into the four class categories for analysis. If you are doing experimental (not survey) research, then you must first determine the college class. You might put up flyers around campus requesting volunteers to meet at a designated location or you might ask professors to encourage students to volunteer by giving them extra credit (and announcing the meeting location and time). Once the volunteers show up, you then simply ask them their college class and assign them to the experimental group or control group using a counterbalanced procedure (as described in the textbook).

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Materials This second subsection of the Methods section reports the materials to be used in the study. Materials refer to Questionnaires. One that everyone will include is the consent form. The MTSU official consent form is available in D2L Content. The form is one that I already filled out for some past research. I've highlighted in yellow the parts that you must change to correspond to your proposed research. I could have provided a blank copy, but I think if you see one that was actually used in real-life research you will have an easier time filling it out. A second survey that most everyone will include is a demographic form. Almost always we need to know if the person is male or female, their age, and other subject information. Sometimes these questions can be included as first or last questions on some other survey, but often there are sufficient numbers of these that a one-page demographic sheet is needed. If your proposed research is a survey type, then you will have one or more questionnaires to describe in this section. Provide the official name of the survey, how many questions it has, how the questions are scored, the range of possible scores, the meaning of a high score and a low score, as well as quoting a question or two as examples. Also include a full copy of the questionnaire in the appendix (every form is included in the appendix). Do this for each and every questionnaire. Most research involves providing instructions to the subjects whether it's experimental or observational and those instructions must be written out, put in an appendix, and described in this materials subsection. If you have different instructions for different groups, you must write out the instructions for each group. Some studies will use various machinery (stop watches, computers, exercise monitors, etc.) and that would then be included in an “Apparatus” subsection just like Materials, but describing the machinery (make, model, where purchased, calibrations, etc.). Some studies will have both materials and apparatus and they may be combined into one subsection (Materials/Apparatus) or two separate side headings (it doesn’t matter which comes first). It is possible that you may do a study that uses lots of stimuli that are presented on a computer monitor or some other means of showing them to subjects. In that case you may have a separate subsection called “Stimuli.” It is possible that you may use some specialized equipment or articles that are used in your study, like maps, or a special room with specific design features, or maybe the study is planned for outdoors in a city park. These things may require a special subsection with a unique side heading…perhaps “Location of the Study,” or “The Room of Silence” in which you would give exact descriptions and size, shape details; you may even need to provide diagrams. Procedures The third subsection of the Methods section is procedures. Here is where you tell the reader exactly what you plan to do in the order you plan to do it. The entire Methods section, with subjects, materials, and procedures is like a cooking recipe. In recipe’s you have a list of ingredients and any particulars (like if fresh or frozen). That part of the recipe is the things needed list and is like the subjects and the materials (or apparatus). The part of the recipe that tells you how to combine the ingredients and how to cook them is the procedures section. So the procedures section is what you plan to do with your

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subjects and the materials. It’s easiest sometimes to write this subsection in the order that you can envision doing the research. After randomly selecting subjects from a subject pool (for example) you may then have them all meet in a room on campus where you randomly assign them to groups. Or maybe you plan face-to-face interviews one-on-one in a convenience sample. And then you plan to have one group leave the room and wait in the hall while you read instructions to the remaining group. Instructions are read to the group (see appendix X). They first fill out the consent form, which is handed back to the researcher, and then they are handed the survey packet with the demographic form on top. They fill out each page of the packet (the contents were described in the materials subsection, so no need to do that again here). Once all the questionnaire's are completed the subjects turn in the entire packet to the researcher. This is repeated in four locations across campus. The above is a description of survey research in which students meet the researcher as a group. Imagine how it would read if you plan one-on-one interviews around campus instead. Or what if you are planning an experiment with four groups getting therapy? You would then describe the specific instructions, treatments, durations, etc., for each group. Appendix Everyone will have an Appendix. The appendix will be composed of several items that are identified by letter starting with A. The consent form in its entirety will be Appendix A. If you use a demographic form it will be Appendix B. Instructions will be another appendix (C?) and so will the questionnaires (D, E, F?). These appendices are full and complete copies of all the materials and/or stimuli that you plan to use in the research. For proposals for research it is important to show that you are ready to go once given the grant money or the IRB approval and the only way to convince people that you are ready is to have one copy of all your materials ready. I once had a grad student ask to go ahead with IRB submission without the questionnaire he planned to use to save time. The questionnaire was difficult to obtain, but one copy was being mailed from the publisher to arrive in a week or two. I said ok, IRB approved the project, but then when the survey came in the mail, it was not what he thought it was and he had to rewrite the Methods and Results section and then go back to the IRB for permission for the "new" research. This glitch cost him an extra semester! And he discovered that the survey copy they sent was a "sample" and not the real thing at all. The real thing cost $50.00 per copy! He planned on 200 subjects! The company also did not reveal how the items were to be scored - you send the completed surveys back to the company who then scores each one and returns the scores, but keeps the original surveys! So he had double mailing costs as well. Working with MTSU officials in the Research Office we managed to get the company to provide 100 copies at a nominal cost. Many companies will do this for student research, but it does take time and lots of communication back and forth. It is best to locate surveys that are free and publicly available on the internet. Remember, one "rule" for this project is that it is something you can do, with your current knowledge, your current skill and ability, and that you have access to everything you need to do the project. Another rule is that you can complete the project in one semester. The basic idea is that this is honest-to-goodness something you can actually do, not a pie-in-the-sky idealistic I-might-could-if! The primary purpose of the Methods and subsections is to provide enough detail that anyone reading your proposal could do the study exactly the same way.