APA Project - Survey Research Plan (Assignment #1 )

Running head: GUIDED IMAGERY AND PROGRESSIVE MUSCLE RELAXATION

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Title Here

First and Last Name Here

Department of XXX, College Here

Class number here (It is Psyc 005): Name of Class here (It is Research Methods in Psychology)

Instructor name here

Date

Title from Title Page Here

The title is formatted using an APA style level 1 heading. It is bold and centered. The four main sections of research articles are the Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion and are also formatted as level 1 headings.

Using the bulleted questions below, summarize the key ideas of each section. Use compete sentences to create a paragraph/s. Delete the questions and text and enter your own content.

Introduction

By answers the questions below you will have effectively introduced the research topic.

· What was the researcher interested in (what was the research topic)?

· What were the variables? How were they  conceptually defined? (See  Chapter 4, Psychological Measurement (Links to an external site.) ; especially section 21. Practical Strategies for Psychological Measurement)

· What were the researcher's research questions and/or hypothesis?

Methods

All information in the Methods section should pertain to who participated in the study and how the study was conducted. The Methods section is often (but not always) broken into sub-sections including Sample, Design, Measures, and Procedure. Sometimes sections are combined or different terms are used (e.g., Participants instead of Sample), so if you don’t find the specific term in the article just read to find the relevant content. For this paper, please separate information into the sub-headings noted below and format each using an APA level 2 heading – bold and left-justified.

Sample

· Describe the sample - sample size (how many), gender, age, ethnicity and race, any other important demographic information.

· How were they recruited?

Design

If the terms below are not mentioned in the article, apply your knowledge of the concepts to answer the questions.

· Was the research experimental or non-experimental?

· If non-experimental:

· Was it simply describing variable(s), or was it correlational?

· If experimental:

· What was the independent variable(s)? What was the dependent variable(s)?

· Was a between-subjects or within-subjects design used?

Measures

Think of this section as the ingredients list of a cooking recipe. What materials (e.g., questionnaires, parental observations, dental records, etc.) did the authors use to measure the variables of interest?

· How did the author/s operationally define the variables? 

· i.e., what measures where used? (What are they called and what do they measure?)

Procedures

Think of this section as the “how to” part of a cooking recipe – where the chef explains when and how the ingredients are incorporated to make the dish. In the same way, summarize the steps the researcher followed to conduct the research.

· What did the participants have to do?

Results

Read the Results section completely and then re-read it to find sentences that sum up, in everyday language, the findings. These “main takeaway” sentences are often (though not always) near the end of the Results section and can help you summarize the findings for your paper. Be sure to put the information in your own words.

· What did the researchers find/what were the results?

· Note: for this section, you do not need to include any statistical information. Using everyday language, explain what the main findings were.

Discussion

The purpose of the Discussion section is for the authors to critically examine what went well and what didn’t go as planned. They also discuss conclusions that can be drawn from the research and how future research on the topic might be conducted.

· What explanations (possible reasons) does the researcher give for the results? In other words, why do they think they found what they did?

· What were the limitations of the study?

· What do the researchers recommend future research should do?

References

The Reference section is always on a new page. To “lock in” your page break, hold the keyboard Command/Control and Enter keys simultaneously. This will create a new page that will not move if you edit your document.

Using APA style, reference the article. You can find an example here: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples/journal-article-references#1 Notice the hanging indent (like a reverse paragraph) and double spacing. Notice that the article title is sentence case and that the journal title is italicized. Pay attention to detail when creating references.

If you used any other resources, reference them as well. Follow the appropriate example using the APA site: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references/examples