Psychology

General Paper Format

Yes

No

1. Is everything in your paper in the same consistent font throughout?

2. Is everything in your paper double spaced?

3. Do you have one-inch margins on all sides of the paper (one inch from the top of the page, one inch from the bottom, and one inch from each side)?

4. Are the first lines of all paragraphs indented another ½ inch (or 1 ½ inches from the page edge)?

5. Are your paragraphs aligned left? (That is, text should be flush left, with lines lining up on the left of the page, but text should NOT line up on the right side of the page – it should look ragged)

Do you need help figuring out how to configure a word document in APA format (inserting headers, page numbers, proper indents, etc.)? If NO, I highly recommend watching this video which walks you through setting up an APA formatted paper! https://youtu.be/a9hXY1xiZjo

Methods Section

Yes

No

Header

1. If you have a header, is it identical to your header title on the title page?

2. If you have a header, is it in ALL CAPS and the same consistent font as the whole paper?

3. Does your header omit the phrase “Running head”?

4. Do you have a page number starting on page 1?

Yes

No

Title for the methods section

1. Is the word “ Methods” centered and in bold at the top of your methods page?

Participants

1. Do you have the word “ Participants” flush left and in bold, right below the word “Methods”?

2. Did you list out your demographic characteristics, including gender, age, and ethnicity/race?

3. Did you provide the descriptive statistics for (means and standard deviations) for age and italicize the letters M and SD?

4. Did you provide frequencies for gender and ethnicity/race and italicize the N?

5. Do you include tables for age, gender, and ethnicity below this paragraph?

Materials and Procedure

1. Did you mention informed consent?

2. Did you discuss any instructions the participant may have read?

3. Did you thoroughly describe any stimulus material that might have occurred before your actual independent variables (and photos, descriptions, profiles, questions, puzzles, etc.) that are a part of your study?

4. Did you thoroughly describe your independent variable (IV) in enough depth and detail that another researcher could recreate your materials?

5. Did you give your IV a name that matches up with the name you refer to in the results section?

6. Did you describe all of your most relevant dependent variables, noting the scales you used (e.g. “Yes/No”, “A scale ranging from 1 (not at all likely) to 9 (very likely))” for EACH of your DVs? Did you place both variables and scales in quotation marks? (e.g., “disagree”, “agree” or “male”, “female”)?

7. Did you fully describe what participants went through in the study, noting the order in which they received study materials (e.g. first informed consent, then IVs, DVs, and debriefing)?

8. Did you fully describe your attention check (manipulation check) with enough detail that a reader unfamiliar with your study could recreate it, and did you include the scale for that attention check question?

9. Did you use the past tense when describing your methods (seeing how you already collected the data, and therefore do not discuss what participants will do)?

Results Section

Yes

No

1. Do you have the word “ Results” centered and in bold, immediately following the methods section?

2. Was the first dependent variable you looked at your manipulation check question, and did you make sure you analyzed the correct DV?

3. Did you analyze an appropriate dependent variable for your ANOVA? In other words, did you run the ANOVA using one of the dependent variables aimed to test our hypotheses? (e.g., not any of the demographic questions, or an unrelated question not aimed to test our hypothesis, or a nominal variable)

4. Did you mention both the IV and the DV by name when talking about your analysis?

5. Did you include means and standard deviations within parentheses for each level of your independent variable?

6. Did you italicize the letters F, t, p, M, SD, and X2 (where appropriate)?

7. Did you round ALL numbers to two decimal places (with the exception of the p value, which can go as low as p < .001 or p = .001).

8. Do you include tables chi-square and ANOVA below their respective paragraph?

Discussion Section

Yes

No

1. Do you have the word “ Discussion” centered and in bold, immediately following the results section?

2. Did you remind your reader of your hypothesis?

3. Did you mention whether you supported or did not support your hypothesis?

4. Did you offer your own interpretation of the Results, making sure to refer to your literature review?

Appendix/Tables

Yes

No

*please note tables can be in-text, in the appendix or both

1. If you have an appendix, do you have the word “Appendix” centered and bold on each Appendix page, followed by a description of the appendix content, immediately following the results section?

2. Do you have SPSS tables for gender, ethnicity, and age in the paper? (Note: Age might be in a general “statistics” table, but you should have specific frequency tables for both gender and ethnicity)

3. Do you have the crosstabs table (with percentages) plus the chi square test (with Pearson) in the paper?

4. Do you have the descriptives table, the ANOVA table, and the post hoc table (if applicable) for your first dependent variable in the paper?

Writing Quality

Yes

No

1. Did you proofread your paper, go to the Writing Center, go to the research methods help center, or use the Pearson writer to make sure your paper flows well?

2. Did you use the past tense (which is recommended, since your papers in this class will reflect work you already did rather than work you will do)?

3. Did you use a scientific / objective terms like “people”, “participants”. “users”, “readers”, etc. (as opposed to subjective words like “you”, “we”, “me”, “I”, or “us”, etc.)? Did you use inclusive terms and person-first language?