Psychology

1

PAPER II: METHODS AND RESULTS INSTRUCTIONS 7

Instructions for Paper II: Study One Literature Review Instructions

Ryan J. Winter

Florida International University

PSY3215

Dr. Anabelle Andon

Due date

Purpose of Paper II: Study One Methods, Results, and Discussion

1). Psychological Purpose

The psychological purpose behind Paper II is to make sure you can tell your reader what you did on your study, how you did it, and what you found. By now you have read several empirical studies in psychology, and you should be familiar with the Methods, Results, and Discussion sections. Now is your chance to write those sections!

Like those prior studies you looked at in Paper I, you will provide information about your participants, materials, and procedure in your Methods section. Your participant section goes first, and it includes descriptive statistics about your sample (means and standard deviations for age as well as percentages for gender and race/ethnicity). Your materials and procedure sections include information about what you did and how you did it. You should write this section for an audience who is unfamiliar with your specific study, but assume that they do know research methods. Thus educate your reader about your materials and procedure, giving enough detail so they could replicate the study. This includes explicitly describing your independent and dependent variables and talking about how you presented those variables to your participants. My suggestion is to look over the articles you summarized in Paper I and see how they wrote their Methods. This will give you a good idea regarding the level of depth and detail you need in your own Methods section.

Your Results section follows. The purpose of this section is to make sure you can show how you analyzed the data and describe what you found.

Finally, you will end with a one-paragraph Discussion, explaining to the reader whether your Results supported or did not support your hypotheses.

2). APA Formatting Purpose

The second purpose of Paper II is to once again teach you proper American Psychological Association (APA) formatting for these sections. In the pages below, I will tell you how to format your paper using APA style. There are a lot of very specific requirements in APA papers (as specific as what to italicize), so pay attention to the instructions below as well as Chapter 14 in your textbook!

3). Writing Purpose

Finally, this paper is intended to help you figure out how to write a Methods and Results section. Many students find statistics daunting, but my hope here is that writing this paper will help you understand both the logic and format of statistics in results sections. We will once again give you a lot of feedback and help in this paper, which you help you when you write Paper IV later in the course. Make sure that you write this for an audience familiar with APA methods and results, but also for someone who needs you to tell them what you found.

Note: The overlap limit is higher in this paper (up to 65%) since your classmates are doing the same design. Don’t go higher than that, though! 65% is the maximum allowed!

Sorry for the length of the instructions! They are long, but take it one section at a time and you will get all of the content you need in your paper and get a great grade!

Methods

1. Title Page: I expect the following format:

a. The title page for your Paper II is identical to the one you used for Paper I: Literature Review Study One. For proper APA formatting, either copy your title page from Paper I or review the title page instructions I gave you in Paper I. You can change your title if you like, but make sure it helps to describe your study (much like a title in PsycInfo describes what the authors did in their paper)

2. Abstract?

a. You DO NOT need an abstract for Paper II. You cannot write it until you run both study one and two, so omit it for now

3. Methods Section: I expect the following format:

a. For this paper, the methods section starts on page 2.

b. Write Method at the top of this page, make it bold, and center it

c. The participants section comes next. The word Participants is bolded and left justified. In this section …

i. Tell me who your participants were (college students, family members, friends?) and how many there were. Please take note not to state that they are all FIU students as they usually are not. Do not say they were randomly selected, as this is not the case.

1. Note: If a number starts a sentence, then spell out the number. That is, “Two-hundred and five participants participated in this study.”

2. If a number is mid-sentence, you can use numerals. “There were 205 participants in this study.”

3. But keep numbers consistent. If you spell out a number at the start of the sentence, carry that through and spell out other numbers in the sentence.

4. For statistics, always use numbers (for the mean, SD, %, etc.)

ii. Provide frequencies and descriptive statistics for gender, race, & ethnicity.

1. For some variables—like ethnicity and gender—you only need to provide frequency information (the number of participants who fit that category). “There were 100 men (49%) and 105 women (51%) in the study.” Or “The sample was 49% male ( N = 100) and 51% female ( N = 105).”

2. Other variables—like age—are continuous (rather than categorical), so use descriptive statistics here (the range, mean, and the standard deviation). “Participants ranged in age from 18 to 77 ( M = 24, SD = 3.50).” or “The average age of participants was 24 ( SD = 3.50).” Your TA can help you find the mean and standard deviation for this assignment during Office Hours, though information is also available in the lab powerpoint titled Data Analysis Part One.

3. Make sure to italicize the N, M, and SD (the letters, not the numbers)

4. Include your tables for age, gender, and ethnicity below this paragraph.

d. Materials and Procedure

i. For this section, the words Materials and Procedure are flush left. In this section …

1. Provide information about your materials and your procedure.

a. I suggest starting with your procedure. Tell your reader what your participants did in the order participants did them. Be specific here. I have the following recommendations:

i. First, talk about the oral informed consent procedure.

ii. Second, talk about the three versions of the study questionnaire. Provide enough detail so that your readers know how the three conditions differ. As a reader, I need to able to replicate your design, so you need to give me enough detail so I can do so.

1. I want to stress that – pretend I have no idea what you did, but I want to repeat your design and procedures. That means you need to be VERY clear and detailed about what you did and how you did it.

iii. Tell the reader that participants were randomly assigned to conditions. This is important as it signals to the reader that our study has strong internal validity.

iv. Third, talk about your dependent variables (that is, your survey questions).

1. For example, “Participants provided their gender, age, and race”.

2. For other dependent variables, tell me how the responses were recorded (yes/no, true/false, a scale of 1 to 6, etc.). If you used a scale, note the endpoints. That is, does a 1 mean it is high or is it low? “Participants were asked, ‘How frustrating was this task?’, and they responded on a scale from 1 (very frustrating) to 9 (not at all frustrating).’”

3. Make sure to highlight which specific DVs you analyzed. If there are DVs participants completed but you did not analyze it, feel free to say those that participants completed them but since they were not analyzed, they are not discussed further. Do not list all of the DVs. It takes too much white space and is not necessary. Focus on those you analyzed and summarize the rest.

v. Finally, make sure to be specific about your attention/manipulation check question!

vi. Finally, mention debriefing

e. There is no set minimum or maximum on the length of the methods section, but I would expect at least a page or two (though probably more. After all, your own research script took up several pages – you should provide a similar level of depth and detail in your methods section!). Missing important aspects of your IVs and DVs or presenting them in a confused manner will lower your score in this section.

f. Remember, make sure that another researcher can replicate your study based on your methods section. If they can’t, then you may not have enough detail!

4. Results Section: I expect the following format:

a. The results are the hardest part of this paper, and your lab powerpoints will help you with this part of the paper (also refer to the crash course statistics quizzes, and the resources under PSY3215 Resource, which walk you through similar analyses!).

b. First, write Results at the top of this section, center it, and use boldface. This section comes directly at the end of the methods section, so the results section DOES NOT start on its own page.

c. For this assignment, include statistics about the most important variables in your study, including your IV and the DVs you feel are most important to your hypotheses. Refer to the Example Paper, for reference.

d. More specifically, you must run at least two different analyses on two different dependent variables . One must be a chi square for the manipulation question. The remaining analysis must be a One Way ANOVA. You can have a third analysis if you want and it can be either an ANOVA or a t-Test. We count the number of DVs you analyze – NOT the number of statistical tests you run! *The following examples are from a study on Selfies we used in a previous semester of this course. This is not our study this semester. It is just an example.*

i. Chi square : Your first analysis will be a chi square, which you use if your DV is categorical (yes / no; yes / no / maybe; male / female). So let’s discuss the chi square, which does not look at means but rather counts how many responses there are compared to how many you would expect.

1. We are interested in the chi square ( χ2) and p value. We also provide percentages for each of our groups (rather than means and SD). This is an example of how to report a chi-square. Please don’t copy verbatim. You can copy the format but update with your own results and our IV/DVs for this semester:

a. “Using the photo condition as our independent variable (selfie, groupie, or professional) and the photo participants recalled seeing as the dependent variable, we saw a significant effect, χ2(4) = 68.49, p < .001. Most participants in the selfie condition recalled selfies (98%); most participants in the groupie condition recalled seeing groupies (96%); and most participants in professional photo condition recalled seeing professional photos (90%). This indicates that participants saw our manipulation as intended.”

b. Make sure to italicize the χ and p

2. Include your tables for your chi square and the crosstabs below your results.

3. If you are having trouble running this analysis, revisit the Crash Course Quiz for chi-square or check out the PSY3215 Resources for chi-square.

ii. ANOVA : Since you have an independent variable with three levels, the most appropriate test is a One-Way ANOVA if your DV is scaled (like a 0 to 5 scale or a 1 to 5 scale). Your lab and lecture powerpoints show you how to conduct an ANOVA, but there are some guidelines I want to give you about how to write your results. *The following examples are from a study we used in a previous semester of this course. This is not our study this semester. It is just an example.*

1. First, there are several dependent variables to choose from. Choose one that is in line with your literature review and hypotheses.

2. Second, once you run the analysis, look first at the ANOVA table (or F table) and focus on the between subject factor. Note the degrees of freedom, the F value itself, and the p value. (We’ll get into two-way ANOVAs later in this course, but here we only have one independent variable, so it is a one-way ANOVA. Yes, we have three levels to our IV, but it is still only one IV).

3. If the p value is significant (less than .05), we have one more step to take. Since this is a three level IV, we need to compare mean A to mean B, mean A to mean C, and mean B to mean C. We do this using a post hoc test (try using Tukey!). That will tell us which of the means differ significantly. You then write up the results. For example, let’s say I ran an ANOVA on a dependent variable called “X” and an IV called ‘Y with three levels – A, B, & C. My write up would look like this (though note: I completely made up the data below, so don’t copy the numbers!) …

a. “Using Y (A v. B v. C) as our independent variable and ratings of “X” as the dependent variable, we found a significant condition effect, F(2, 203) = 4.32, p < .05. Tukey post hoc tests showed that mean ratings for Y were higher in the A condition ( M = 4.56, SD = 1.21) than participants in both the B ( M = 2.24, SD = 0.89) and C ( M = 2.23, SD = 0.77) conditions. The B and C conditions, however, did not differ from each other. This supports our prediction that [enter a brief summary of what you had predicted]

i. Note there are lots of possible outcomes. The one above essentially says that condition A differed from B and C, but that B and C did not differ from each other. However, we might also find that NONE of the three conditions differ from each other, so they are all equal or we might find that ALL conditions differ from each other, so they all differ. Be sure to adapt what you write to your results.

b. Make sure to italicize the F, p, M, and SD (as in the example)

c. Pretty simple, right!? Remember you have to conduct two analyses – one chi-square and one ANOVA.

4. Include your tables for your ANOVA below your results paragraphs.

5. If you are having trouble running this analysis, revisit the Crash Course Quiz for ANOVA or check out the PS3215 Resources for ANOVA.

iii. Statistics order recommendation: For this paper, start your results section with the chi square (your manipulation check). Then talk about your main analysis (ANOVA). Make sure the analysis lines up with your hypotheses.

e. There is no page minimum or maximum for the results section, though I would expect it to be at least a paragraph or two for each dependent variable

5. Discussion

a. Type the word “ Discussion” centered and in bold, immediately following the results section.

b. Write a 1-paragraph summary giving your interpretation of the findings.

i. Begin by restating your hypotheses.

ii. Then, tell the reader whether your Results supported or did not support the hypotheses.

iii. Finish by giving your interpretation of what the Results mean; why they supported the hypotheses or why not. Use your literature review as a guide here, as it may provide hints about why your Results would or would not support your hypotheses. If you cite studies, make sure the citations are in proper APA style.

iv. Use the articles you reviewed in Paper I as well as the Example Paper as a guide.

6. Tables/Appendices

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

a. Include all relevant SPSS tables for each of your analyses in a series of appendices.

i. Include your tables for age, gender, and ethnicity.

ii. Include your tables for your chi square and the crosstabs

iii. Include your tables for your ANOVA

b. Hint: The best way to get these tables is to copy them directly from SPSS. In the SPSS output, right click on the table, copy it as an image, and then paste it as an image into your appendix in Word. Another alternative is to use a “snipping” tool (search “snipping tool” in your computer’s search function to find it, or use Shift+Command+4 in a Mac). You can highlight an area on any computer page and save it as a picture. Copy the picture and paste it into your appendix. Easy!

c. Make sure to give a proper name to the appendix (e.g. Appendix A – Study One Demographics) and insert a page break in between them.

7. Overall writing quality

a. Make sure you check your paper for proper spelling and grammar. The Writing Center is available if you want someone to look over your paper (an extra eye is always good!) and give you advice. I highly recommend them, as writing quality will become even more important on future papers. I also recommend visiting Office Hours if you need additional guidance with writing or statistical analyses.

b. Make sure to use the past tense throughout your paper. You already did the study, so don’t tell me what participants are going to do. Tell me what they did!

Other Guidelines for Paper II – Methods and Results (Study One)

 

1. 1). Page size is 8 1/2 X 11” with all 4 margins should be one inch. You must use a 12-point font that is consistent throughout your paper.

1. 2). PLEASE use a spell checker to avoid unnecessary errors. Proofread everything you write. I actually recommend reading some sentences aloud to see if they flow well, or getting family or friends to read your work.

1. Use the Paper II Checklist before you turn in your paper to make sure it is the best paper you can write!

1. Finally, go look at the supporting documents for this paper. Like Paper I, there is a grade rubric and an example paper for Paper II. All will give you more information about what we are specifically looking for as well as a visual example of how to put it all together in your paper. Good luck!