Fix Psychology research report

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Arden University

BSc Psychology

Introduction to Research Methods

Put the title of your assessment here

STUxxxxx

Dr Louise Katz

3000

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Title of my Research Report

The first important point is that the heading of the introduction is not

‘introduction’. In line with APA 7 formatting, the title of your research report should be

the heading of the introduction, which is bold and centred. Your work should be

double line spaced and each new paragraph should begin with the first line indented

0.5 inches (you can use the tab key). The report should be written in a professional

font, such as Times New Roman or Ariel, in size 12. This first paragraph should be

broad, outlining the main constructs that you’re going to cover, introducing the focus

of the study so the reader knows exactly what the purpose of the study is about and

define key points. Do not forget to provide citations to support all your points

throughout. With the definitions, ensure that they are specific to the constructs your

study is focusing on.

Your introduction should be written in paragraphs, not one big chunk of text,

as this would disrupt the flow and look messy. Also, please do not use rhetorical

questions within your narrative and always remember to paraphrase information from

the journal papers into your own words, please do not use quotes. In the following

paragraphs, you are going to support your arguments by providing evidence from

past research and/or theories. This will inform the reader of the main topics,

discussing methods and findings of previous studies, which are organised in a logical

flow as you gradually narrow the narrative. Using a narcissism study which

specifically seeks to investigate female narcissists, as an example, rather than

writing two or three paragraphs about narcissism and then two or three paragraphs

about intimate partner violence, it is discussed how they are relevant together.

Research reports are written in a very concise and precise way of expressing the

purpose of the study, so there should only be a little bit of background information.

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Relatedly, there should be one to two sentences which provides the reader

with just enough background of previous research studies, for you to move forward

with your arguments, in terms of framing them. These arguments focus on

discussing and evaluating findings of past research, where you can highlight their

strengths and weaknesses as well as contradictory evidence. The studies that you

are evaluating may not, for example, have used the same methodology that you

intend to, or they may have only focused on males or females in their sample. This is

a back-and-forth process between what is in the literature and your ideas. However,

it does not work well if you try to force the literature into a pre-existing idea that does

not really match with the findings of past research. Remember that absolutely

everything has to be evidence based, supported by citations.

When you are providing this evidence, remember that all your citations should

be in APA 7 formatting. For example, Jones et al., (2020), found a positive and

significant relationship between female narcissists and intimate partner violence.

However, a further study showed conflicting evidence, using a different method,

whereby intimate partner violence was not predictive of female narcissism (Smith,

2010). Yet, the samples for these two studies differed, whereby the former sample

had a mean age of 21.54 and the latter a mean age of 37.64. This suggests that age

may be a factor in perpetration of intimate partner violence and females who embody

narcissistic tendencies (Williams et al., 2017).

This then leads down to thinking about the rationale for the study. It is critical

that a justification for your study is clearly stated. Your reader needs to know why

you are conducting this study. For example, if you have concerns about previous

methods used or you are seeking to use a different method or methodology. Explain

why past research needs to be expanded upon or perhaps their work has not been

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replicated and you feel it is important to do so, if so, explain why it is important as

long as this reasoning is supported by evidence. So, to recap, the literature review

part of your introduction starts very broadly about the scope and focus of your

specific topic and then gets more specific as you bring in related research, organised

into a logical progression of arguments. The journal papers you have used, help to

build support for your research questions and hypothesis throughout the review.

The final part of the introduction highlights the gap in the literature, which

leads into the rationale and aim of the study, followed by the quantitative and

qualitative research questions and hypothesis. Make sure the hypothesis is stated in

a way that it can be tested and is stated specifically. If this section is clear, then

describing and interpreting the results becomes much easier as you have a clear

focus, for example: Whilst research on intimate partner violence is expanding (Jury,

2022), there is a paucity of studies which have specifically investigated narcissistic

females and intimate partner violence (Green et al., 2019). This mixed-methods

study aimed to address this gap by seeking to answer what the relationship is

between narcissistic females and intimate partner violence and what the social

contexts are that these behaviours occur in. Based on previous evidence, it is

hypothesised that there is a significant relationship between narcissistic females and

intimate partner violence.

The quantitative hypothesis is a clear and concise prediction of your results. A

one-tailed hypothesis is very definite and predicts the direction the results will go in.

Researchers tend to use one-tailed hypotheses if there is a massive amount of

previous research, which makes them very confident as to the direction their own

results will take. A non-directional two-tailed hypothesis is more generally used as it

does not predict the direction the results will go in. It means you are predicting a

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change or an association, without specifying what that change or association will be.

Remember, that qualitative research does not have a hypothesis.

Method

Note: This should be written in the past tense

Participants This is a new paragraph so should begin indented. This section should

describe both your quantitative and qualitative sample. Consider how the participants

were recruited for the study, for example, they may have responded to an invitation

to participate, posted on social media networks. Describe the demographic

information beginning with the quantitative participants and how many took part in

the survey, the number of males and females, the mean age and standard deviation

(don’t forget that the ‘M’ and ‘SD’ are in italics). Provide inclusion/exclusion criteria,

for example, all participants needed to be 18 years of age and older. For the

qualitative element, add the name and age.

Design

In this section you should talk about the design of your study. Include the

overall design of a mixed-methods study and set this within a framework to provide

transparency. We are using a sequential explanatory approach, as we have already

discussed. Then go onto describe the design of the quantitative aspect, for example

it may be a within or between subjects design or a correlational design. For t-tests

you need to put what your dependent variable is, for example, emotional responses

and then your independent variable and the two levels, for example film clips

(positive/negative). With a correlational design, you would state what the two

variables were as there is no independent variable in a correlational design. The

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qualitative perspective needs to then be incorporated, which in this case is thematic

analysis.

Materials

This section needs to be very specific as it describes how you conducted your

study in terms of the scales used and the interview style. This will enable other

researchers to replicate your study. With the questionnaires, for the quantitative

element, you will need to put the title of the scale and reference the authors, then

briefly describe what the scale measures. Inform how many questions the scale

contains and how these questions are scored. It is also good practice to include the

internal reliability of the scales (Cronbach’s alpha). For the qualitative element, you

should state whether the interviews were structured, semi-structured or open-ended

and also provide one key question from this. When interviews are conducted,

whether it’s in person or online, researchers tend to use more than one recording

device, in case one of them fails. This equipment is part of the materials used in your

study and so should be included.

Procedure

This section specifically describes a chronological account of what

participants did at each stage of the study as well as the ethical considerations. I

suggest separating the quantitative and qualitative elements.

Quantitative

This should begin with the posting of the invitation to participate, stating that it

described the aim of the study and provided a link to the survey hosting platform. It

should then discuss the participant information sheet, which contained contact

details of the researcher and the consent form. Following informed consent, the

participants completed the questionnaires, were debriefed and thanked for their time.

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Qualitative

This should state that following the quantitative element, participants who

were interested in being interviewed, contacted the researcher via email. Indicate

where the interviews took place and discuss further informed consent, which was

specific to the interviews. State how long the interviews lasted, followed by their

debrief and again, thanked for their time. This should end with the statement that

ethical approval for the study was received from the University ethics committee.

(Note: Specific details for this section and the results section were

discussed in Zoom session three: Methods and Results)

Results

Quantitative

The first set of results you will report is the statistics, which should be written

very succinctly. Please do not include your Jamovi output in the results section, this

should be placed in the relevant appendix. To begin with, justify the statistical test

you have chosen by outlining the assumptions relevant to that test, you will also

need to signpost to the appendix. This is a brief example just to show you the layout

of this section.

An independent samples t-test was used to determine whether there was a

statistically significant mean difference between males and females in terms of

aggressive tendencies. There were no outliers in the data as assessed by inspection

of a boxplot. Residuals were normally distributed as assessed by a Q-Q plot and

there was homogeneity of variances as shown by Levene’s test for equality of

variances (p = .213; Appendix A). This is then followed by the results of the test, for

example: Aggression was significantly higher in males (M = 3.75, SD = 0.22) than

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females (M = 2.15, SD = 0.18), t(110) = 20.45, p = .002, d = 0.45, 95% CI [0.13 -

0.67], (Appendix A).

Your statistics should be reported to two decimal places apart from the p

value which is always to three decimal places or <.001 if appropriate. If relevant to

the test you’re using, include the effect size.

Qualitative

From the data analysis one theme emerged, which was coping mechanisms.

Coping Mechanisms

This theme encapsulates the ways in which Gabriel and his unit coped with

the emotional impacts of their experiences. For example, drinking was not perceived

as a relaxing social event, it was a time which reinforced a macho positioning whilst

also strengthening the intragroup bond (Appendix B).

“You couldn’t go in a pub and ‘ave a pint and a chat, it’d be how many we can

get down us in this short space of time.” (Gabriel).

Drinking to numb their emotions was a group behaviour as the soldiers were

consistently subjected to self-threatening events. Therefore, drinking may have been

used as a way of disassociating from traumatic experiences and memories. It also

enabled the soldiers to maintain their macho positioning whilst using alcohol as an

internal coping mechanism.

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Discussion

The aim of this study was to …. The discussion should begin with reiterating

why you conducted the study, to remind the reader. It begins in the opposite

direction to the introduction, whereby you begin in narrow terms and gradually

broaden the narrative. In this first paragraph, you concisely summarise your main

findings and whether the results supported your hypotheses and research questions.

Please do not include statistics here or anywhere else in your discussion – you have

already reported these in the results section.

In terms of discussing both the quantitative and qualitative results in relation

to the wider literature, you can state whether the qualitative findings supported the

research question and in turn, the quantitative results. If not, you can provide

examples from the literature as to why this might be. Remember to bring forward

your studies and/or theories from the introduction and relate them to your own

findings, thereby putting them into context. You will also need to go back to the

library, so that you have all the appropriate and relevant literature to discuss how

your results fit in with previous work. The discussion is where you synthesise your

findings, contextualising and evaluating them in line with previous research and

theory.

Explain what you have found and offer possible explanations, which may

relate to the theories you have already discussed or a new theory you may

introduce. It does not matter if your hypotheses are supported or not, it’s about how

you explain what you discovered. If your results are non-significant or vastly different

from the literature, you should try and explain and evaluate why, considering the

possible alternative explanations. The discussion must be limited to what the data

shows and not beyond, so make sure that all the points you’re arguing are based

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around the data you analysed rather than going off on a tangent with a hypothetical

discussion about another variable that you feel perhaps should have been included

but was not. If you do feel that another variable may have provided further

informative information, suggest it when writing your recommendations for future

research.

If your results are significant this may seem like an obvious finding, especially

when your results corroborate previous research. However, it is important to spell out

the significance for the reader and show exactly how these results answer your

research question and support your hypotheses. You could discuss which theories

may explain your findings, but please, don’t pluck suggestions out of thin air, always

use citations to support your work.

When you do discuss your results, they are never insignificant, they are non-

significant or not statistically significant and if this is the case, nothing can be

concluded from non-significant findings. Relatedly, do not make hypothetical

statements, for example, ‘if my results had been significant’ or the results were

almost significant’, avoid trying to make these giant leaps beyond what is reasonably

supported by your data, and one word that you should not use is ‘prove’. Nothing is

proven in science, there is evidence and support but no proof.

Limit your discussion to a handful of the most important points. Your readers

do not want to be wading through paragraphs of suppositional reading and even

more so suppositions that are not directly relevant to the topic and unsupported by

evidence. So, ensure that every aspect of the discussion is relevant to the

investigated topic. This is also not the place to discuss limitations or

recommendations for future research. If you do this here, your reader may wonder

why they should care about the study or take note of anything you have found, if you

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bring limitations into the discussion at an early point, as this will diminish the

narrative you are building.

Once you have explained and evaluated your findings, you then launch into

the bigger picture by highlighting the implications of your study. Your overall aim is to

show the reader exactly what your research has contributed and why they should

care. You need to consider what your research has contributed to the wider

literature, how your findings fit in with existing knowledge and in turn, what

consequences they have for theory or practice. Consider what your findings are

adding to previous research and any implications you suggest, do need to be

supported by evidence.

You then address the limitations of your study but please do not write a long

list and rip your study to shreds. if your study used psychometric scales, do not

spend time criticising them, this is your study and you chose to use the scales. You

will end up raising more questions than your paper answers and weaken the strength

of the study. So, do not undermine your research – the discussion of limitations

should aim to strengthen your credibility, not emphasise weaknesses or failures.

Although it’s helpful to suggest follow up studies, don’t spend too much time

thinking about the future and eating into your word count, when the evaluative

narrative of the discussion should be the key focus. As an example, you may

suggest using a different methodology or extending the sample to address age or

cultural considerations. You are providing ideas for how future work can build on

areas that your own research was unable to address.

The conclusion is the take-home message for the reader, so it does really

need to be a strong paragraph. A good conclusion does not introduce any new

information but brings together all the strands of your discussion, to provide a final

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summary, which may include the methods used, the key findings, and the

implications, importance and relevance for the field. You are leaving the reader with

the message of how your findings relate to the bigger picture and therefore why this

was a great study.

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References

Note: The reference list should always begin on a new page and be listed alphabetically Ackerman, R. A., & Donnellan, M. B. (2013). Evaluating Self-Report Measures of

Narcissistic Entitlement. Journal of Psychopathology and Behavioral

Assessment, 35(4), 460-474. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10862-013-9352-7

Ackerman, R. A., Donnellan, M. B., & Wright, A. G. (2019). Current

conceptualizations of narcissism. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 32(1), 32-37.

Anestis, J. C., Caron, K. M., & Carbonell, J. L. (2011). Examining the Impact of

Gender on the Factor Structure of the Psychopathic Personality Inventory-

Revised. Assessment, 18(3), 340-349.

https://doi.org/10.1177/1073191111403243

Baez, S., Flichtentrei, D., Prats, M., Mastandueno, R., García, A. M., Cetkovich, M.,

& Ibáñez, A. (2017). Men, women…who cares? A population-based study on

sex differences and gender roles in empathy and moral cognition. PloS

One, 12(6), e0179336. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0179336

Barelds, D. P., & Dijkstra, P. (2010). Narcissistic personality inventory: structure of

the adapted Dutch version. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 51(2), 132-

138. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9450.2009.00737.x

Chabrol, H., Bronchain, J., Morgades Bamba, C. I., & Raynal, P. (2020). The Dark

Tetrad and radicalization: personality profiles in young women. Behavioral

Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 12(2), 157-168.

https://doi.org/10.1080/19434472.2019.1646301

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Appendix A

Jamovi Output for an Independent Samples T-Test

Descriptives

Sex Spitefulness

N Male 108

Female 123

Missing Male 0

Female 0

Mean Male 31.69

Female 30.69

Median Male 32.00

Female 31

Standard deviation Male 8.15

Female 6.39

Minimum Male 17

Female 17

Maximum Male 51

Female 46

Boxplot

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Q-Q Plot

Independent Samples T-Test Output

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Appendix B

Qualitative Analysis Coding

Data Code

Somebody’s shooting at these people who you protect and care and watch their back You’ve got er, people that you love and care for and have served alongside and you’re losing them at the side of you That’s why people say, some, oh, you know, oh me grandad never spoke about it, well of course he didn’t cos he didn’t want to go back there

‘Protectiveness in the moment, yet repression of the past’ The traumas changed Gabriel’s sense of self, they hold power over every step of life, long after service has ended. There are no words which can really describe what he went through and the emotional impact. Talking about it intensifies the emotions and highlights the intrapsychic conflict

Black humour’s something that er, was very, very common When you’re up against someone who dislikes you intensely and wants to fight you and things, and to kind of dilute that situation, you try and use humour. It becomes second nature and sometimes really very inappropriate

Black Humour Used as a defence mechanism, as a release of emotions without actively expressing emotions. An acceptable form of release.

You would’ve been seen as a wimp if you’d cried into your boots You kind of manned up and just had to get on with it The coping method was really to be very macho You’re really really very very scared and anyone, any soldier, ex-soldier, who tells you they weren’t scared is not telling the truth

The outwardly presented self and internal conflict Portraying the image of tough and macho, whilst inside the fear was raging. Yet, there was no release for this fear, it was not acceptable to verbalise it.

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Those people that you want to go home to and love are a long way off You come back and your wife is laying alongside you, she doesn’t know what you’ve been through It’s what I did and she understood it and she supported me but she could never get, you feel that nobody can get it, you know?

Distance from family both geographically and emotionally There is a sense of longing to go home which needs to be suppressed when on active duty. However, once at home, the feelings and experiences aren’t discussed in depth – if you weren’t there, if you didn’t experience it, you just wouldn’t understand.

Themes

Code Theme

Protectiveness in the moment, yet repression of the past Distance from family both geographically and emotionally

Intrapsychic Conflict

The outwardly presented self and internal conflict Black humour

Coping Mechanisms