Homework Assignment

As a system for advancing knowledge, science requires that investigators share their findings with the rest of the scientific community. Only if one’s findings are made public can knowledge accumulate as researchers build on, extend, and refine one another’s work. As we discussed in Chapter 1, a defining characteristic of science is that, over the long haul, it is self-correcting; and self-correction can occur only if research findings are widely disseminated. To this end, informing others of the outcome of one’s work is a critical part of the research process.

  In this chapter we will examine how researchers distribute their work to other scientists, students, and the general public. Because the effective communication of one’s research nearly always involves writing, much of this chapter will be devoted to scientific writing. We will discuss criteria for good scientific writing and help you improve your own writing skills. We will also examine the guidelines that behavioral researchers use to prepare their research reports, a system of rules known as APA style. To begin, however, we’ll take a look at the three main routes by which behavioral scientists disseminate their research to others.

  

    

      HOW SCIENTIFIC FINDINGS ARE DISSEMINATED

    

    Researchers disseminate the results of their investigations among themselves in three ways: journal publications, presentations at professional meetings, and personal contact.

    

      

        Journal Publication

      

      Journal publication is the primary route by which research findings are disseminated to the scientific community. Scientific journals serve not only as a means of communication among researchers (most researchers subscribe to one or more journals in their fields) but also as the basis for the permanent storage of research findings in library collections. Traditionally, journals were published only in printed form, but today many journals are published in digital format as PDF files and on the Internet.

      Before most journals will publish a research paper, it must undergo the process of peer review. In peer review, a paper is evaluated by other scientists who have expertise in the topic under investigation. Although various journals use slightly different systems of peer review, the general process is as follows.

1. The author submits copies of his or her paper to the editor of a relevant journal. (The editor’s name and address typically appear on the inside front cover of the journal and on the journal’s Web site.) Although a few journals still ask authors to submit paper copies of their manuscripts, most journals have on-line systems by which authors submit their work by sending word processing files. Authors are permitted to submit a particular piece of work to only one journal at a time.

  2. The editor (or an associate editor designated by the editor) then sends a copy of the paper to two or more peer reviewers who are known to be experts in the area of research covered in the paper.

  3. Each of the reviewers reads and critiques the paper, evaluating its conceptualization, methodology, analyses, results, interpretations, and contribution to the field. Each reviewer then sends a written review, typically a page or two in length (and, often, several pages), which provides the editor with feedback regarding the manuscript’s strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes the reviewer makes a specific recommendation regarding whether the paper ought to be published.

  4. Having received the reviewers’ comments, suggestions, and recommendations, the editor considers their input and reads the paper him- or herself. The editor then makes one of four editorial decisions. First, he or she may decide to publish the paper as it is. Editors rarely make this decision, however; even if the paper is exceptional, the reviewers virtually always suggest ways in which it can be improved. Second, the editor may accept the paper for publication contingent on the author making certain minor revisions. Third, the editor may decide not to accept the paper for publication in the journal but asks the authors to revise the paper in line with the reviewers’ recommendations and to resubmit it for reconsideration. Editors make this decision when they think the paper has potential merit but see too many problems to warrant publication of the original draft. The fourth decision an editor may make is to reject the paper, with no opportunity for the authors to resubmit the paper to that particular journal. However, once the manuscript is rejected by one journal, the author may revise and submit it for consideration at another journal.

  The most common editorial decision is the fourth one—rejection. In the leading journals in behavioral science, between 65% and 85% of the submitted manuscripts are rejected for publication (Summary Report of Journal Operations, 2009). Even if they are ultimately accepted for publication, most submitted papers undergo one or more rounds of reviews and revisions before they are published, so researchers must become accustomed to receiving critical feedback about their work. (The entire process, from submission to publication, usually takes a year or two.) Although no one likes having their work criticized or rejected, seasoned researchers realize that tight quality control is essential in science. Critical feedback from reviewers and editors helps to ensure that published articles meet minimum standards of scientific acceptability. In addition, critical feedback may actually help the researcher by ensuring that his or her flawed studies and poorly written manuscripts are not published, thereby preventing even greater criticism and embarrassment in the long run.

  Students are often surprised to learn that researchers are not paid for the articles they publish. Conducting and publishing research is part of many researchers’ jobs at colleges and universities, hospitals, research institutes, government agencies, and other research organizations. Thus, they are compensated for the research they conduct as part of their normal salaries and do not receive any extra pay when their articles are published.

Presentations at Professional Meetings

    

    The second route by which scientific findings are distributed is through presentations at professional meetings. Most behavioral researchers belong to one or more professional organizations, such as the American Psychological Association, the Association for Psychological Science, the American Educational Research Association, the Psychonomic Society, regional organizations (such as the Southeastern, Midwestern, and Western Psychological Associations), and a number of other groups that cater to specific areas of behavioral science (such as neuroscience, law and psychology, social psychology, health psychology, developmental psychology, and so on). Most of these organizations hold annual meetings at which researchers present their latest work.

In most instances, researchers who wish to present their research submit a short proposal (usually 200–500 words) that is peer-reviewed by other researchers. The acceptance rate for professional meetings is much higher than that for journal publication; typically 50% to 80% of the submitted proposals are accepted for presentation at the conference or convention.

    Depending on the specific organization and on the researcher’s preference, the presentation of a paper at a professional meeting can take one of two forms. One mode of presentation involves giving a talk to an audience. Typically, papers on related topics are included in the same paper session or symposium, in which each speaker has 15 or 20 minutes to present his or her research and to answer questions from the audience.

    A second mode of presentation is the poster session. In a poster session, researchers display summaries of their research on poster boards, providing the essential details of its background, methodology, results, and implications. The researchers then stand with their posters to provide details, answer questions, and discuss their work with interested persons. They also have copies of a longer research report on hand to distribute to interested parties. Many researchers prefer poster sessions over verbal presentations because more people typically attend a particular poster session than a paper session (thus, the research gets wider exposure), and poster sessions allow more one-on-one interactions between researchers. Poster sessions not only give the researchers who are presenting their studies an opportunity to meet others who are interested in their topic, but they also often serve as a social hour in which convention attendees gather to interact with one another.

  

  

    

      Personal Contact

    

    A great deal of communication among scientists occurs through informal channels, such as personal contact. After researchers have been actively involved in an area of investigation for a few years, they get to know others around the world who are interested in the same topic. They talk with one another at professional meetings, sharing their latest ideas and findings; and they often send prepublication drafts of their latest papers to these individuals and may even collaborate on research projects. Most researchers also stay in contact with one another through e-mail.

    This network of researchers from around the world, which has been called the “hidden university,” is an important channel of scientific communication that allows researchers to stay informed about the latest advances in their fields. Researchers who are linked to these informal networks often become aware of advances in their fields a year or more before those advances are published in scientific journals.

In Depth 

      

      Peer Review, the Media, and the Internet

    

    As we have seen, the dissemination of research findings among members of the scientific community occurs primarily through journal publication, presentations at professional meetings, and personal contact. However, information about research is sometimes released in two additional ways—in the popular media and on the World Wide Web.

    Researchers are sometimes interviewed about their work by reporters and writers. You have probably seen articles about behavioral research in newspapers and magazines and heard stories about research, if not interviews with the researchers themselves, on television and radio. Although most scientists believe that researchers are obligated to share their findings with the public, the drawback of reporting research in the general media is that the audience who reads, hears, or sees the report has no way of judging the quality of the research or the accuracy of the interpretations. Researchers can talk about their research whether it meets minimum standards of scientific acceptability or passes the test of peer review. For this reason, researchers in some sciences, though not in psychology, are discouraged from talking publicly about research that has not been peer-reviewed.

    Furthermore, even if research has the scientific stamp of approval of peer review, popular reports of research are notoriously inaccurate. News reporters and writers typically focus on the study’s most interesting conclusion without addressing the qualifications and limitations of the study that one would find in a journal article.

    The same problem of quality control arises when researchers post reports of their research on the World Wide Web. Because anyone can create a Web site and post whatever they wish on it, we often have no way of knowing that research posted on the Web was properly conducted, analyzed, and interpreted. (For this reason, many teachers do not allow students to use the Web to locate previous research on a topic except when the research has been published in a peer-reviewed journal.) Sometimes researchers post manuscripts after they have been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication, which is a different matter. As long as the research passed the critical process of peer review, we have at least minimum assurance that other experts viewed it as acceptable. However, if research posted on the Web has not been peer-reviewed, you should be wary about using or citing it.

ELEMENTS OF GOOD SCIENTIFIC WRITING

Good writing skills are essential for researchers. No matter how insightful, creative, or well-designed particular studies may be, they are not likely to have an impact on behavioral science if researchers do not convey their ideas and findings in a clear, accurate, and engaging manner. In fact, research shows that influential papers in psychology are more readable than less influential ones. When they systematically compared 72 influential journal articles with matched control articles, Hartley and Sotto (2001) found that the influential papers had significantly shorter sentences that were easier to understand.

  Unfortunately, good writing cannot be taught as easily as experimental design or the calculation of a correlation coefficient. It develops only through conscious attention to the details of good writing, coupled with practice and feedback from others. Very few people are good scientific writers without working on it; most researchers continue to improve their writing skills throughout their careers.

  Although you will not suddenly learn to become an effective writer from the material in the next few pages, I hope that I can offer some suggestions that will help you to develop your own scientific writing skills. Specifically, this section will focus on the importance of organization, clarity, and conciseness, and offer you hints on how to achieve them.

  

    

      Organization

    

    The first prerequisite for clear writing is organization—the order in which one’s ideas are expressed. The general organization of research reports in behavioral science is dictated by guidelines established by the American Psychological Association. Among other things, these guidelines stipulate the order in which sections of a paper must appear. In light of these guidelines (which we will examine in detail later in this chapter), you will have few problems with the general organization of a research paper.

    Problems are more likely to arise in the organization of ideas within sections of the paper. If the order in which ideas are expressed is faulty, readers are likely to become confused. Someone once said that good writing is like a road map; the writer should take the reader from point A to point B—from beginning to end—using the straightest possible route, without backtracking, without detours, and without getting the reader lost along the way. To do this, you must present your ideas in an orderly and logical progression. One thought should follow from and build on another in a manner that will be easily grasped by the reader.

Before you start writing, make a rough outline of the major points you wish to express. This doesn’t  necessarily need to be one of those detailed, multilevel outlines you learned to make in high school; just a list of major points will usually suffice. Be sure the major points in your outline progress in an orderly fashion. Starting with an outline may alert you to the fact that your ideas do not flow coherently or that you need to add certain points to make them progress more smoothly.

    As you write, be sure that the transitions between one idea and another are clear. If you move from one idea to another too abruptly, the reader may miss the connection between them and lose your train of thought. Pay particular attention to the transitions from one paragraph to another. Often, you’ll need to write transition sentences that explicitly lead the reader from one paragraph to the next.

Clarity

    

    Perhaps the fundamental requirement of scientific writing is clarity. Unlike some forms of fiction in which vagueness enhances the reader’s experience, the goal of scientific writing is to communicate information. It is essential, then, that the information is conveyed in a clear, articulate, and unclouded manner.

    This is a very difficult task, however. You don’t have to read many articles published in scientific journals to know that not all scientific writers express themselves clearly. Often writers find it difficult to step outside themselves and imagine how readers will interpret their words. Even so, clarity must be a writer’s first and foremost goal.

    Two primary factors contribute to the clarity of one’s writing: sentence construction and word choice.

    

      

        SENTENCE CONSTRUCTION.

      

      The best way to enhance the clarity of your writing is to pay close attention to how you construct your sentences; awkwardly constructed sentences distract and confuse the reader. First, state your ideas in the most explicit and straightforward manner possible. One way to do this is to avoid the passive voice. For example, compare the following sentences:

      

        

          The participants were told by the experimenter to press the button when they were finished (passive voice).

        

        

          The experimenter told the participants to press the button when they finished (active voice).

        

      

      I think you can see that the second sentence, which is written in the active voice, is the better of the two.

      Second, avoid overly complicated sentences. Be economical in the phrases you use. For example, the sentence, “There were several different participants who had not previously been told what their IQ scores were,” is terribly convoluted. It can be streamlined to, “Several participants did not know their IQ scores.” (In a moment, I’ll share with you one method I use to identify wordy and awkwardly constructed sentences in my own writing.)

    

    

      

        WORD CHOICE.

      

      A second way to enhance the clarity of one’s writing is to choose one’s words carefully. Choose words that convey precisely the idea you wish to express. “Say what you mean and mean what you say” is the scientific writer’s dictum.

      In everyday language, we often use words in ways that are discrepant from their dictionary definition. For example, we tend to use theory and hypothesis interchangeably in everyday language, but they mean different things to researchers. Similarly, people talk informally about seeing a therapist or counselor, but psychologists draw a distinction between therapists and counselors. Can you identify the problem in this sentence?

Many psychologists feel that the conflict between psychology and psychiatry is based on fundamental differences in their theoretical assumptions.

    

  

  In everyday language, we loosely interchange feel for think; in this sentence, feel is the wrong choice.

  Use specific terms. When expressing quantity, avoid loose approximations such as most and very few. Be careful with words, such as significant, that can be interpreted in two ways (that is, important vs. statistically significant). Use verbs that convey precisely what you mean. The sentence, “Smith argued that earlier experiments were flawed” connotes greater animosity on Smith’s part than does the sentence, “Smith suggested that earlier experiments were flawed.” Use the most accurate word. It would be impossible to identify all of the pitfalls of poor word choice; just remember to consider your words carefully to be sure you “say what you mean.”

Finally, avoid excessive jargon. As in every discipline, psychology has a specialized vocabulary for the constructs it studies—such as operant conditioning, cognitive dissonance, and preoperational stage—constructs without which behavioral scientists would find communication difficult. However, refrain from using jargon when a more common word exists that conveys the desired meaning. In other words, don’t be like Calvin in the accompanying cartoon; don’t use jargon when everyday language will do the job.

  

    

      Conciseness

    

    A third important consideration in scientific writing is conciseness. Say what you are going to say as economically as possible. Like you, readers are busy people. Think how you feel when you must read a 26-page journal article that could have conveyed all of its points in only 15 pages. Have mercy on your readers! Conciseness is also important for practical reasons. Scientific journals are able to publish only a limited number of pages each year, so papers that are unnecessarily long rob the field of badly needed journal space.

    However, do not use conciseness as an excuse for skimpy writing. Research papers must contain all necessary information. Ideas must be fully developed, methods described in detail, results examined carefully, and so on. The advice to be concise should be interpreted as an admonition to include only the necessary information and to express it as succinctly (yet clearly) as possible.

Proofreading and Rewriting

    

    Good writers are rewriters. Writers whose first draft is ready for public distribution are extremely rare, if they exist at all. Most researchers revise their papers many times before they allow anyone else to see them (unlike the students I’ve known who hand in their first draft!).

    When you reread your own writing, do so with a critical eye. Have you included everything necessary to make your points effectively? Is the paper organized? Are ideas presented in a logical and orderly progression, and are the transitions between them clear? Is the writing clear and concise? Have you used precise vocabulary throughout?

    When you proofread your paper, read it aloud. I often imagine that I am a television newscaster and that my paper is the script of a documentary I am narrating. If you feel silly pretending to be a newscaster, just read your paper aloud slowly as if you were reading a speech that was written by someone else and listen to how it sounds. Reading a paper aloud is the best way I know to spot awkward constructions. Sentences that look fine on paper often sound stilted or convoluted when they are spoken.

    Allow yourself enough time to write and revise your paper and then set it aside for a few days. After a period away from a paper, I am always able to see weaknesses that I had missed earlier. Many researchers also seek feedback from colleagues and students. They ask others to critique a polished draft of the paper. Typically, other people will find areas of confusion, awkwardness, poor logic, and other problems. If you ask for others’ feedback, be prepared to accept their criticisms and suggestions graciously. After all, that’s what you asked them to give you! Whatever tactics you use, proofread and revise your writing not once but several times, until it reads smoothly from beginning to end.

  

  

    

      AVOIDING BIASED LANGUAGE

    

    

      

        Gender-Neutral Language

      

      Consider the following sentence: “The therapist who owns his own practice is as much a businessman as a psychologist.” Many people regard such writing as unacceptable because it involves sexist language—language that reinforces sexism by treating men and women differently. In the preceding sentence, the use of he and businessman seems to imply that all therapists are men.

      In the 1970s, the American Psychological Association was one of several organizations and publishers to adopt guidelines for the use of gender-neutral (or nonsexist) language. Using gender-neutral language is important for two reasons. First, careless use of gender-related language may promote sexism. For example, consider the sentence, “Fifty fraternity men and 50 sorority girls were recruited to serve in the study.” The use of the nonparallel words men and girls reinforces stereotypes about and status differences between men and women. Second, sexist language can create ambiguity. For example, does the sentence, “Policemen experience a great deal of job-related stress,” refer only to policemen or to both male and female police officers?

      The APA Publication Manual (2009) discusses many variations of sexist language and offers suggestions on how to use gender-neutral substitutes in your writing. I’ll discuss three common cases of sexist language.

GENERIC PRONOUNS.

    

    Historically, writers have used generic pronouns such as he, him, and his to refer to both men and women, as in the sentence, “Every citizen should exercise his right to vote.” However, the use of generic masculine pronouns to refer to people of both sexes is problematic on two counts.

    First, using masculine pronouns can create ambiguity and confusion. Consider the sentence, “After each participant completed his questionnaire, he was debriefed.” Are the participants described here both men and women, or men only? Second, many writers have argued that the use of generic masculine pronouns is inherently male centered and sexist (see Pearson, 1985). What is the possible justification, they ask, for using masculine pronouns to refer to women?

    Writers deal with gender-relevant pronouns in one of two ways. On one hand, phrases that include both he or she or his or her can be used: “After each participant completed his or her questionnaire, he or she was debriefed.” However, the endless repetition of he or she in a paper can become very tiresome. A better way to avoid sexist language is to use plural nouns and pronouns; the plural form of generic pronouns, such as they, them, and theirs are gender free: “After participants completed their questionnaires, they were debriefed.” Incidentally, APA style discourages use of the forms he/she and s/he to refer to both sexes.

THE WORD MAN.

    

    Similar problems arise when the word man and its variations (e.g., mankind, the average man, manpower, businessman, policeman, mailman) are used to refer to both men and women. Man-linked words not only foster confusion but also maintain a system of language that has become outmoded. Modern awareness of and sensitivity to sexism force us to ask ourselves why words such as policeman were traditionally used to refer to female police officers.

    In most instances, gender-neutral words can be substituted for man-linked words. For example, terms such as police officer, letter carrier, chairperson, fire fighter, and supervisor are preferable to policeman, mailman, chairman, fireman, and foreman. Such gender-neutral terms are not only sometimes more descriptive than the man-linked version (the term fire fighter more clearly expresses the nature of the job than does fireman) but also avoid the absurdity of reading about firemen who take time off from work each day to breast-feed their babies.

  

  

    

      NONEQUIVALENT FORMS.

    

    Other instances of sexist language involve using words that are not equivalent for women and men. The earlier example involving “fraternity men and sorority girls” is an example of this inequity. Furthermore, some words that seem structurally equivalent for men and women have different connotations. For example, a person who mothered a child did something quite different from the person who fathered a child. If caretaking behavior is meant, gender-neutral words such as parenting or nurturing are preferred over mothering. Other words, such as coed, that do not have an equivalent form for the other gender (that is, what is a male coed called?) should be avoided.

In Depth 

      

      Sexist Language: Does It Really Matter?

    

    Some writers object to being asked to use gender-neutral language. Some argue that so-called non-exist language is really unnecessary because everyone knows that he refers to both men and women and that mankind includes everybody. Others point out that nonsexist language leads to awkwardly constructed sentences and distorts the English language.

    At one level, the arguments for and against gender-neutral language are philosophical or political: Should we write in ways that discourage sexism and promote egalitarianism? At another level, however, the debate regarding nonsexist language can be examined empirically. Several researchers have investigated the effects of sexist and nonsexist language on readers’ comprehension.

    Kidd (1971) examined the question whether readers interpret the word man to refer to everyone as opponents of gender-neutral language maintain. In her study, participants read sentences that used the word man or a variation and then answered questions in which they identified the gender of the person referred to in each sentence. Although the word man was used in the generic sense, participants interpreted it to refer specifically to men 86% of the time. If you want to demonstrate this effect on your own, ask 10 people to draw a picture of a caveman and see how many opt to draw a cavewoman. People do not naturally assume that man refers to everybody (see also McConnell & Gavanski, 1994).

    In another study, Stericker (1981) studied the effects of gender-relevant pronouns on students’ attitudes toward jobs. Participants read descriptions of several jobs (such as lawyer, interior decorator, high school teacher). In these descriptions, Stericker experimentally manipulated the words he, he or she, or they in job descriptions. Her results showed that female participants were more interested in jobs when he or she was used in the description than when only he was used, but that male participants’ preferences were unaffected by the pronouns being used. More recently, McConnell and Fazio (1996) showed that using man-suffix words (such as chairman of the board) led readers to draw different inferences about the person being described than did gender-neutral words (such as chair of the board).

    In brief, studies have shown that using sexist or gender-neutral language does make a difference in the inferences readers draw (see Adams & Ware, 1989; McConnell & Fazio, 1996; Pearson, 1985). In the eyes of most readers, man, he, and other masculine pronouns are not generic, gender-neutral designations that refer to men and women equally.

Other Language Pitfalls

    

    

      

        AVOID LABELS.

      

      Writers should avoid labeling people when possible and particularly when the label implies that the person is characterized in terms of a single defining attribute. For example, writing about “depressives” or “depressed people” seems to define the individuals solely in terms of their depression. To avoid the implication that a person as a whole is depressed (or disabled in some other way), APA style suggests using phrases that put people first, followed by a descriptive phrase about them. Thus, rather than writing about “depressed people,” write about “people who are depressed.” Similarly, “individuals with epilepsy” is preferred over “epileptics,” “a person who has a disability” is preferred over “disabled person,” “people with a mental illness” is preferred over “mentally ill people” (or, worse, “the mentally ill”), and so on.

    

    

      

        RACIAL AND ETHNIC IDENTITY.

      

      When describing people in terms of their racial or ethnic identity, writers must use the most accurate and specific terms and should be sensitive to any biases that their terms contain. Preferences for nouns that refer to racial and ethnic groups change frequently, and writers should use the words that the groups in question prefer (assuming, of course, that they are accurate). The APA Publication Manual includes guidelines regarding the most appropriate designations for various racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.

    

  

  

    

      PARTS OF A MANUSCRIPT

    

    In 1929, the American Psychological Association adopted a set of guidelines regarding the preparation of research reports. This first set of guidelines, which was only 7 pages long, was subsequently revised and expanded several times. The most recent edition of these guidelines—the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th edition)—was published in 2009 and runs more than 240 pages.

    Most journals that publish behavioral research—not only in psychology but in other areas as well, such as education and communication—require that manuscripts conform to APA style. In addition, most colleges and universities insist that students use APA style as they write theses and dissertations, and many professors ask that their students write class papers in APA style. Thus, a basic knowledge of APA style is an essential part of the behavioral researcher’s toolbox.

    The guidelines in the APA Publication Manual serve three purposes. First, many of the guidelines are intended to help authors write more effectively. Thus, the manual includes discussions of grammar, clarity, word usage, punctuation, and so on. Second, some of the guidelines are designed to make published research articles uniform in certain respects. For example, the manual specifies the sections that every paper must include, the style of reference citations, and the composition of tables and figures. When writers conform to a single style, readers are spared from a variety of idiosyncratic styles that may distract them from the content of the paper itself. Third, some of the guidelines are designed to facilitate the conversion of manuscripts typed using word processing software into printed journal articles. Certain style conventions assist the editors, proofreaders, and typesetters who prepare manuscripts for publication.

The APA Publication Manual specifies the parts that every research report must have, as well as the order in which they appear. Generally speaking, a research paper should have a minimum of seven major sections:

• title page

• abstract

• introduction

• method

• results

• discussion

• references

    

  

  In addition, papers may have sections for footnotes, tables, figures, and/or appendixes, all of which appear at the end of the typed manuscript. Each of these sections is briefly discussed next.

  

    

      Title Page

    

    The title page of a research paper should include the title, the authors’ names, the authors’ affiliations, and a running head.

    The title should state the central topic of the paper clearly yet concisely. As much as possible, it should mention the major variables under investigation. Titles should generally be no more than 12 words. The title is centered in the upper half of the first page of the manuscript.

Good Titles:

      

      Effects of Caffeine on the Acoustic Startle Response

      Parenting Styles and Children’s Ability to Delay Gratification

      Probability of Relapse after Recovery from an Episode of Depression

      

        Poor Titles:

      

      A Study of Memory

      Effects of Feedback, Anxiety, Cuing, and Gender on Semantic and Episodic Memory under Two Conditions of Threat: A Test of Competing Theories

In the examples of poor titles, the first one is not sufficiently descriptive, and the phrase “A study of” is unnecessary. The second title is way too long and involved.

  One double-spaced line beneath the title are the author’s name and affiliation. Most authors use their first name, middle initial, and last name. The affiliation identifies the institution where the researcher is employed or is a student.

  The Author Note is located at the bottom of the title page. In the Author Note, the authors provide their complete departmental affiliation at the time of the study and any changes in affiliation that may have occurred after the study was completed. They can also thank those who helped with the study, acknowledge grants and other financial support for the research, and discuss any special circumstances that may be relevant. The note also provides the mailing address and e-mail address for the contact author.

  In the header of the title page is the running head, an abbreviated form of the title. For example, the title “Effects of Social Exclusion on Dysphoric Emotions” could be reduced to the running head, “Effects of Exclusion.” The running head is typed flush left at the top of the page in uppercase letters. When an article is typeset for publication in a journal, the running head appears at the top of every other page of the printed article.

  

    

      Abstract

    

    The second page of a manuscript consists of the abstract, a brief summary of the content of the paper. The abstract should be 150–250 words depending on the policy of a particular journal. The abstract for the report of an empirical study should describe the following items:

• the problem under investigation

• the participants used in the study

• the research procedures

• the findings

• the conclusions or implications of the study

Because this is a great deal of information to convey in so few words, many researchers find it difficult to write an accurate and concise abstract that is coherent and readable. However, in some ways, the abstract is the single most important part of a journal article because most readers decide whether to read an article on the basis of its abstract. Furthermore, the abstract is retrieved by computerized literature search services such as PsycINFO. Although the abstract is usually the last part of a paper to be written, it is by no means the least important section.

  

  

    

      Introduction

    

    The body of a research report begins on page 3 of the manuscript. The title of the paper is repeated at the top of page 3, followed by the introduction itself. (The heading Introduction does not appear, however.)

The Introduction section describes for the reader the problem under investigation and presents a background context in which the problem can be understood. The author discusses aspects of the existing research literature that pertain to the study—not an exhaustive review of all research that has been conducted on the topic but rather a selective review of previous work that deals specifically with the topic under investigation.

  When reviewing previous research, write in the past tense. Not only does it make sense to use past tense to write about research that has already been conducted (“Smith’s findings showed the same pattern”) but also writing in the present tense often leads to awkward sentences in which deceased persons seem to speak from the grave to make claims in the present (“Freud suggests that childhood memories may be repressed”). Throughout the paper, but particularly in the introduction, you will cite previous research conducted by others. We’ll return later to how to cite previous studies using APA style.

  After addressing the problem and presenting previous research, discuss the purpose and rationale of your research. Typically, this is done by explicitly stating the goals of the study or describing the hypotheses that were tested.

  In stating their hypotheses, researchers must be wary of HARKing—Hypothesizing After the Results are Known (Kerr, 1998). Occasionally, researchers will present a “hypothesis” in the introduction that they developed after seeing the results of the study as if it was derived a priori. In essence, they imply that the research was designed to test a particular hypothesis when, in fact, the so-called hypothesis did not occur to them until after the study was conducted and they saw the results. HARKing creates a number of problems for science. Among other things, presenting post hoc hypotheses as if they were a priori can transmute flukes into theories. A true a priori hypothesis is based on an existing theoretical foundation that is independent of the results of the study, whereas HARKing gives us a hypothesis that may be based on an anomalous finding (such as a Type I error). In addition, HARKed hypotheses are not subject to disconfirmation because they came after rather than before the study. Given that scientific theories must be disconfirmable (Chapter 1), HARKing violates a basic tenet of scientific investigation. Furthermore, HARKing hides ideas and hypotheses that did not work, leaving other researchers open to the risk of committing the same mistakes. For these and other reasons, HARKing in the introduction of a paper is typically discouraged, although it is certainly appropriate for researchers to offer ideas and “hypotheses” that dawned on them later as long as they are identified as post hoc.

  The introduction should proceed in an organized and orderly fashion. You are presenting, systematically and logically, the conceptual background that provides a rationale for your particular study. In essence, you are building a case for why your study was conducted and what you expected to find. After writing the introduction, ask yourself:

• Did I adequately orient the reader to the purpose of the study and explain why it is important?

• Did I review the literature adequately, using appropriate, accurate, and complete citations?

• Did I deal with both theoretical and empirical issues relevant to the topic?

• Did I clearly state the research question or hypothesis?

Method

    

    The Method section describes precisely how the study was conducted. A well-written method allows readers to judge the adequacy of the procedures that were used and provides a context for them to interpret the findings. A complete description of the method is essential so that readers may assess what a study does and does not demonstrate. The method section also allows other researchers to replicate the study if they wish. Thus, the method should describe, as precisely, concisely, and clearly as possible how the study was conducted.

The method section is typically subdivided into three sections, labeled Participants, Apparatus (or Materials), and Procedure. The participants and procedure sections are nearly always included, but the apparatus or materials section is optional.

    

      

        PARTICIPANTS.

      

      The Participants section describes the participants and how they were selected. (As you will notice when you read older journal articles, until 1994, this section was labeled Subjects. Today, participants is the preferred term for the people or animals that were studied.) When human participants are used, researchers typically report the number, sex, and age of the participants, along with their general demographic characteristics. In many cases, the manner in which the participants were obtained is also described. When nonhuman animals are used, researchers report the number, genus, species, and strain, as well as their sex and age. Often relevant information regarding housing, nutrition, and other treatment of the animals is included as well.

    

    

      

        APPARATUS OR MATERIALS.

      

      If special equipment or materials were used in the study, they are described in a section labeled Apparatus or Materials. For example, sophisticated equipment for presenting stimuli or measuring responses should be described, as well as special instruments or inventories. This section is optional, however, and is included only when special apparatus or materials were used. If an apparatus or measure can be described very briefly—in a sentence or two—many authors simply describe it at the appropriate place in the Procedure.

    

    

      

        PROCEDURE.

      

      The procedure section describes in a step-by-step fashion precisely how the study was conducted. Included here is information regarding instructions to the participants, experimental manipulations, all research procedures, and even the debriefing. The procedure must be presented in sufficient detail that another researcher could replicate the study in its essential details.

After writing the method section, ask yourself:

• Did I describe the method adequately and clearly, including all information that would be needed for another investigator to replicate the study?

• Did I fully identify the people or animals who participated?

• Did I describe the apparatus and materials fully?

• Did I report the research procedure fully in a step-by-step fashion?

Results

    

    The Results section reports the statistical analyses of the data collected in the study. Generally, writers begin by reporting the most important results and then work their way to secondary findings. Researchers are obligated to describe all relevant results, even those that are contrary to their predictions. However, you should not feel compelled to include every piece of data obtained in the study. Most researchers collect and analyze more data than needed to make their points. However, you are not permitted to present only those data selected to support your hypothesis!

    When reporting the results of statistical tests, such as t-tests or F-tests, include information about the kind of analysis that was conducted, the degrees of freedom for the test, the calculated value of the statistic, its statistical significance, and the effect size. If an experimental design was involved, also include the means and standard deviations for each condition. (Because it is difficult to type the conventional symbol for the mean,  on many word processors, the symbol M is used for the mean.) The results of statistical analyses are typically separated from the rest of the sentence by commas, as in the following sentence:

    A t-test revealed that participants exposed to uncontrollable noise made more errors (M = 7.5, SD = .67) than participants who were exposed to controllable noise (M = 4.3, SD = .56), t(39) = 4.77, p = .012, eta = .29.

    Note that this sentence includes the name of the analysis, the condition means and standard deviations, the degrees of freedom (39), the calculated value of t (4.77), the p value for the test (.012), and the effect size (.29). Specific p values should be reported whenever possible (to the second or third decimal place); however, if a p value is less than .001, it should be reported as p < .001. (You may notice that older journal articles often report all p values as less than a particular value, such as “p < .05.” However, the most recent edition of APA style recommends that precise p values be reported, such as “p = .043” or “p = .075”.)

When the results of an analysis are not significant, the APA Publication Manual recommends that researchers report a power analysis. As discussed in Chapter 10, a power analysis tells us the likelihood of making a Type II error—of failing to detect an effect that was actually present (or failing to reject the null hypothesis when it was false). When power is low, the failure to obtain a significant effect may be due to insufficient power. Thus, the nonsignificant effect may reflect a Type II error. However, when power is high, it is unlikely that a nonsignificant finding reflects a Type II error, and it is more likely that the effect truly did not occur. Readers are better able to interpret the meaning of a nonsignificant result when they know whether statistical power was low or high.

When you need to report a large amount of data—many correlations or means, for example—consider putting some of the data in tables or in figures (graphs). APA style requires that tables and figures be appended to the end of the manuscript, with a reference to the table or figure at an appropriate place in the text. Tables and figures are often helpful in presenting data, but they should be used only when the results are too complex to describe in the text itself. Furthermore, avoid repeating the same data in both the text and in a table or figure. Remember to be economical.

  The results should be reported as objectively as possible with minimal interpretation, elaboration, or discussion. The material included in the results section should involve what your data showed but not your interpretation of the data. After writing the results section, ask yourself:

• Did I clearly describe how the data were analyzed?

• Did I include all results that bear on the original purpose of the study?

• Did I include all necessary information when reporting statistical tests?

• Did I describe the findings objectively, with minimal interpretation and discussion?

Discussion

    

    Having described the results, you are free in the Discussion to interpret, evaluate, and discuss your findings. As a first step, discuss the results in terms of the original purpose or hypothesis of the study. Most researchers begin the discussion with a statement of the central findings and how they relate to the goals or hypotheses of the study. They then move on to discuss other findings.

    In your discussion, integrate your results with existing theory and previous findings, referencing others’ work where appropriate. Note inconsistencies between your results and those of other researchers, and discuss alternative explanations of your findings, not just the one you prefer. Also mention qualifications and limitations of your study; however, do not feel compelled to dwell on every possible weakness or flaw in your research. All studies have shortcomings; it is usually sufficient simply to note yours in passing. Often, researchers conclude the Discussion with ideas for future research—the next steps that need to be taken to pursue the topic further. After writing the discussion section, ask yourself:

• Did I state clearly what I believe are the major contributions of my research?

• Did I integrate my findings with both theory and previous research, citing others’ work where appropriate?

• Did I discuss alternative explanations or interpretations of my findings?

• Did I note possible qualifications and limitations of my study?

CITING AND REFERENCING PREVIOUS RESEARCH

    

    

      

        Citations in the Text

      

      Throughout the text of the paper, you will cite previous work that is relevant to your study. APA guidelines specify the form that such citations must take. APA style uses the author–date system in which others’ work is cited by inserting the last name of the author and the year of publication at the appropriate point in the text. The book you are reading uses the author–date system.

      The author–date system allows you to cite a reference in one of two ways. The first way is to include the author’s last name, followed by the date of publication in parentheses, as part of the sentence, as shown in the following examples:

Jones (2009) showed that participants …

        In a recent review of the literature, Jones (2009) concluded …

        This finding was replicated by Jones (2009).

If the work being cited has two authors, cite both names each time:

Jones and Williams (2010) showed …

        After reviewing the literature, Jones and Williams (2010) concluded …

If the work has more than two authors but fewer than six, cite all authors the first time you use the reference. Then, if the reference is cited again, include only the first author, followed by et al. (an abbreviation of Latin for “and others”) and the year:

Jones, Williams, Isner, Cutlip, and Bell (2007) showed that participants …

    Jones et al. (2007) revealed … [subsequent citations]

The second way of citing references in the text is to place the authors’ last names, along with the year of publication, within parentheses at the appropriate point:

Other studies have obtained similar results (Jones & Smith, 2005).

If several works are cited in this fashion, alphabetize them by the last name of the first author and separate them by semicolons:

The effects of stress on decision making have been investigated in several studies (Anderson, 1997; Cohen & Bourne, 1988; Smith, Havert, & Menken, 2004; Williams, 2008).

The Reference List

    

    All references cited in the text must appear in a reference list that begins on a new page labeled References immediately after the discussion section. References are listed in alphabetical order by the first author’s last name. The APA Publication Manual presents 95 variations of reference style, depending on whether the work being referenced is a book, journal article, newspaper article, dissertation, film, abstract on a CD-ROM, government report, or whatever. However, the vast majority of citations involve five types of sources—journal articles, books, book chapters, papers presented at professional meetings, and Internet sources—so I’ll limit my examples to these five types of references.

    

      

        JOURNAL ARTICLE.

      

      The reference to a journal article includes the following items, in the order listed:

1. last name(s) and initials of author(s)

2. year of publication (in parentheses), followed by a period

3. title of the article, with only the first word of the title capitalized (with the exception of words that follow colons, which are also capitalized), followed by a period

4. name of the journal, followed by a comma (All important words in the title are capitalized, and the title is italicized.)

5. volume number of the journal (italicized), followed by a comma

6. page numbers of the article, followed by a period

7. direct object identifier (doi) number, if available (I will explain the doi in a moment)

        

      

      Here are two examples of references to articles. Note that the second and subsequent lines of each reference are indented. (This is called hanging indentation.)

      

        

          Smith, M. B. (2010). The effects of research methods courses on student depression. Journal of Cruelty to Students, 15, 67–78. doi: 10.1267/0568-6354.23.1.564

        

        

          Smith, M. B., Jones, H. H., & Long, I. M. (2007). The relative impact of t-tests and F-tests on student mental health. American Journal of Unfair Teaching, 7, 235–240. doi: 10.4532/9856-3424.56.3.234.

BOOKS.

    

    References to books include the following items, in the order listed:

1. last name(s) and initials of author(s)

2. year of publication (in parentheses), followed by a period

3. title of the book (only the first word of the title is capitalized, and the title is italicized), followed by a period

4. city and state in which the book was published, followed by a colon

5. name of the publisher, period

        Leary, M. R. (1995). Self-presentation: Impression management and interpersonal behavior. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

 

      BOOK CHAPTER.

    

    References to a book chapter in an edited volume include the following, in the order listed:

1. last name(s) and initials of author(s)

2. year of publication (in parentheses), followed by a period

3. title of the chapter, followed by a period

4. the word “In,” followed by the first initial(s) and last name(s) of the editor(s) of the book, with “Eds.” in parentheses, followed by a comma

5. title of the book (only the first word of the title is capitalized, and the title is italicized)

6. page numbers of the chapter in parentheses, followed by a period

7. city and state in which the book was published (followed by a colon)

8. name of the publisher, period

Smith, K. L. (2009). Techniques for inducing statistical terror. In J. Jones & V. Smith (Eds.), A manual for the sadistic teacher (pp. 45–67). Baltimore, MD: Neurosis Press.

    

  

  

    

      PAPER PRESENTED AT A PROFESSIONAL MEETING.

    

    References to a paper or poster that was presented at a professional meeting include the following, in the order listed:

1. last name(s) and initials of author(s)

2. year and month in which the paper was presented (in parentheses), followed by a comma

3. title of the paper (italicized), followed by a period

4. phrase “Paper presented at the meeting of …” followed by the name of the organization, comma

5. city and state in which the meeting occurred, period

        Wilson, H. K., & Miller, F. M. (1988, April). Research methods, existential philosophy, schizophrenia, and the fear of death. Paper presented at the meeting of the Society for Undergraduate Teaching, Dallas, TX.

INTERNET SOURCES.

    

    References to material obtained on the Internet vary depending on the specific nature of the source. In general, references to Internet sources should provide as much information as possible regarding the following items:

1. the author or organization responsible for the document

2. a date (either the date of publication of the document or, if no publication date is shown, the date you retrieved it from the Internet)

3. a title or description of the document

4. the Internet address (the URL or uniform resource locator). If the URL extends to another line, break it after a slash or period and do not hyphenate it at the break (shown later).

 

    In many cases, some of this information will be unknown (such as when a Web page lists no author or sponsor). In all cases, however, provide enough information to allow others to access the document if desired.

    

      Internet journal or archive:

 

        Blaha, S. (2002, Feb. 9) A classical probabilistic computer model of consciousness. Cogprints, No. 2077. Retrieved from http://cogprints.ecs.soton.ac.uk/archive/00002077/

Newspaper article—electronic version:

 

      Squires, S. (2002, Oct. 9). Study finds that in U.S., 1 in 3 is obese. Washington Post. Retrieved from http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A62930–2002Oct8.html

 

    Stand-alone document (no author listed):

  

      Brain anticipates events to learn routines (2002). Retrieved October 16, 2002 from http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2002–10/bcom-bae100802.php

    

  

  The APA Publication Manual contains examples of how to cite other types of Internet sources, including government reports, messages posted to newsgroups, e-mail messages, and data files obtained via the Internet.

In Depth 

      

      Electronic Sources and Locator Information: URL and DOI

    

    In the latest version of the APA Publication Manual, new attention was given to electronic publishing and to referencing material that was obtained online. Publishing in the online, digital environment has led to easier and faster access to research findings, space for storing supplemental files that are relevant to an article (such as appendices containing supplemental data), and the possibility of making corrections to an article after it is published. As a result of these changes, some styles of referencing have become outdated, and new methods have become necessary. In particular, locator information is now necessary for any article found on the Internet or in a digital database. Providing locator information helps readers locate references and differentiate between articles that might have different versions on the Internet and in print.

    For sources that are published online, providing a Uniform Resource Locator or URL allows readers to locate the material and ensures that they are directed to the same version of the article that you are citing in the paper. A URL is an Internet address that allows readers to locate the article on the Web and should be included in the references whenever possible.

    Before the digital revolution, researchers obtained virtually all of the scientific articles that they read from printed journals. Today, however, they can obtain articles from printed journals, a variety of digital databases (such as PsycINFO and Medline), and from Web sites. For that reason, scholarly publishers developed a direct object identifier (DOI) system that provides a unique number for every article. With this number in hand, readers can locate a particular article without knowing the specific method of accessing the article used by the authors. Authors should include the DOI in reference citations whenever it is available.

    The Web site Crossref.org offers resources to assist researchers in finding DOI numbers for specific articles as well as using DOI numbers to locate articles. DOI numbers are typically found on the first page of a print or PDF version of all new articles.

SECONDARY SOURCES.

    

    By and large, you should cite only sources that you have personally read. Citing someone else’s work implies that you have read it and attest that it is relevant and accurate with regard to the point that you are making in your paper. Trusting that you understand another author’s work by reading someone else’s brief description of it is risky. All seasoned researchers have had the experience of looking up a reference cited in a paper only to find that the reference does not actually draw the conclusion that the author of the paper suggested. Clearly, the author had not actually read the original paper but rather relied on a secondary source that had cited it.

    Even so, situations occasionally arise in which a writer wishes to cite an article or book that he or she found in a secondary source but is unable to locate the original. In such cases, this fact should be reflected in both the citation in the text and the entry in the reference list. For example, if you wished to mention Amsterdam’s (1972) study of children’s reactions to their self-reflections that you saw in Courage and Howe’s (2002) article about infant cognition but were unable to locate Amsterdam’s original article, you would cite it in the text of your paper as:

    

      

        Amsterdam (as cited in Courage & Howe, 2002)…

      

    

    Note that you do not include the year of Amsterdam’s study because you are citing Courage and Howe as your source rather than Amsterdam.

    Then in the reference list you would enter not the Amsterdam study (because you didn’t really read or cite it directly) but rather the Courage and Howe article, which you would cite like any other journal article:

Courage, M. L., & Howe, M. L. (2002). From infant to child: The dynamics of cognitive change in the second year of life. Psychological Bulletin, 128, 250–277. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.128.2.250

A reader who was interested in the Amsterdam study would know that you found it in the Courage and Howe article and that’s where the original reference citation is located. Use secondary citations sparingly, if at all.

  

    

      OTHER ASPECTS OF APA STYLE

    

    

      

        Optional Sections

      

      In addition to the title page, abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, and references, all of which are required in research reports, many research papers include one or more of the following sections.

      

        

          FOOTNOTES.

        

        In APA style, footnotes are rarely used. They are used to present ancillary information and are typed at the end of the paper. In the published article, however, they appear at the bottom of the page on which the footnote superscript appears.

      

      

        

          TABLES AND FIGURES.

        

        As noted earlier, tables and figures are often used to present results. A table is an arrangement of words or numbers in columns and rows; a figure is any type of illustration, such as a graph, photograph, or drawing. The APA Publication Manual provides extensive instructions regarding how tables and figures should be prepared. In the typed manuscript they appear at the end of the paper, but in the published article they are inserted at the appropriate places in the text.

      

      

        

          APPENDICES.

        

        Occasionally, authors wish to include detailed information in a manuscript that does not easily fit into the text itself. In this case, the information can be contained either in an appendix (in the printed version of the article) or in a supplemental file that is maintained online by the publisher of the article.

        Appendices are useful when the additional information is relatively brief, such as a list of stimuli used in the study or a detailed description of materials. In the case of multiple appendices, each appendix is labeled with a letter—Appendix A, Appendix B, and so on. In some cases, the additional material is too long for a printed article, not easily conveyed in print format, or is more helpful in downloaded form (such as a piece of software used in the study). In these cases, authors may decide to present the additional information as a supplemental file that is accessible on the Web.

        Both appendices and supplemental materials are considered part of the published article and cannot be changed or deleted. As such, most journals require that these materials also go through the peer review process. Appendices and supplemental files have the potential to help readers understand or replicate the study design; however, they should be included only if they are essential to the manuscript.

      

    

    

      

        Headings, Spacing, Pagination, and Numbers

      

      

        

          HEADINGS.

        

        With the exception of the introduction, each section we have discussed is labeled. For the other major sections of the paper—abstract, method, results, discussion, and references—the section heading is centered in the middle of the page and bolded, with only the first letter of the word capitalized. For subsections of these major sections (such as the subsections for participants, apparatus, and procedure), a side heading is used. A side heading is typed flush with the left margin and bolded. If a third-level heading is needed, a paragraph heading is used. A paragraph heading is indented and bolded, with the first word capitalized and ending in a period; the text of the paragraph then begins on the same line. For example, the headings for the method section typically look like this:

INSERT PICTURE

The title and abstract appear on the first two pages of every manuscript. The introduction then begins on page 3. The method section does not start on a new page but rather begins directly wherever the introduction ends. Similarly, the results and discussion sections begin immediately after the method and results sections, respectively. Thus, the text begins with the introduction on page 3, but the next three sections do not start on new pages. However, the references, footnotes, tables, figures, and appendixes each begin on a new page.

  

    

      SPACING.

    

    The main text of research reports written in APA style are double-spaced from start to finish. Set your word processor on double spacing and leave it there.

  

  

    

      PAGINATION.

    

    Pages are numbered in the upper right corner, starting with the title page as page 1. In APA style, the running head is typed in the upper left corner of each page, with the page number in the upper right corner. The running head also appears on the title page following the label Running head; however, on subsequent pages the label is removed.

  

  

    

      NUMBERS.

    

    In APA style, whole numbers less than 10 are generally expressed in words (“the data for two participants were omitted from the analysis”), whereas numbers 10 and above are expressed in numerals (“Of the 20 participants who agreed to participate, 10 were women”). However, numbers that begin a sentence must be expressed in words (“Twenty rats were tested”). Furthermore, numbers that precede units of measurement should be expressed in numerals (the temperature was 8 degrees), as should numbers that represent time, dates, ages, and sample sizes (2 weeks; November 29, 1954; 5-year-olds; n = 7).

In Depth 

        

        Who Deserves the Credit?

      

      As researchers prepare papers for publication or presentation, they often face the potentially thorny question of who deserves to be listed as an author of the paper. Many people contribute to the success of a research project—the principal investigator (P.I.) who initiates and oversees the project, research assistants who help the P.I. design the study, other researchers not directly involved in the research who nonetheless offer suggestions, the clerical staff who types questionnaires and manuscripts, the individuals who collect the data, statistical consultants who help with analyses, technicians who maintain equipment and computers, and so on. Which of these individuals should be named as an author of the final paper?

      According to the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (2009), authorship is reserved for those individuals who have made substantial scientific contributions to a study. Substantial scientific contributions include formulating the research problem and hypotheses, designing the study, conducting statistical analyses, interpreting results, and writing major parts of the research report—activities that require scientific knowledge about the project. Generally, supportive functions—such as maintaining equipment, writing computer programs, recruiting participants, typing materials, or simply collecting data—do not by themselves constitute a “substantial scientific contribution” because they do not involve specialized knowledge about the research. However, individuals who contribute in these ways are often acknowledged in the author note that appears on the title page.

      In psychology, the authors’ names are usually listed on the paper in order of decreasing contribution. (The norms about the order of authorship are different across sciences.) Thus, the principal investigator—typically the faculty member or senior scientist who supervised the project—is listed first, followed by the other contributors. However, when an article is substantially based on a student’s thesis or dissertation, the student is usually listed as first author. If two or more authors have had equal roles in the research, they sometimes list their names in a randomly chosen order and then state that they contributed equally in the author’s note.

      The order in which authors are listed is based on the magnitude of their scientific and professional contributions to the project and not on the sheer amount of time that each person devoted to the project. Thus, although the P.I. may spend less time on the project than assistants who collect data, the P.I. will probably be listed as first author because his or her contributions—designing the study, conducting statistical analyses, writing the manuscript, and overseeing the entire project—are more crucial to the scientific merit of the research.

To the new researcher, APA style is complex and confusing; indeed, veteran researchers are not familiar with every detail in the APA Publication Manual. Even so, these guidelines are designed to enhance effective communication among researchers, and behavioral researchers are expected to be familiar with the basics of APA style. When preparing a manuscript for submission, researchers often refer to the Publication Manual when they are uncertain of how the manuscript should look.

  

    

      WRITING A RESEARCH PROPOSAL

    

    In some cases, researchers write about their research before rather than after it is conducted. For example, students who are designing a research project for a course, investigators applying for a research grant, and student researchers writing proposals for honors, thesis, or dissertation research must describe their plans in advance in a research proposal. In most cases, a proposal is written to convince other people of the importance, feasibility, and methodological quality of the planned research. The goal of a proposal is to demonstrate that the research idea is a good one, that the study is well conceived, and that the design and analyses will adequately address the question under investigation.

    In most regards, a research proposal follows the same format as a research report. For example, all proposals include an introduction that reviews the existing literature and provides a rationale for the study, and, like research reports, they are usually written in APA style. However, proposals involving future research differ from reports of completed research in a few important ways.

    First, parts of a research proposal are written in future tense. Unlike a research report, which describes a completed study using the past tense, the abstract and method of a research proposal are written in future tense because they describe a study that may be conducted in the future. The elements of a proposal’s method section are the same as those of a research report, but the participants, materials, and procedure are described in future tense.

    Second, a research proposal does not include a results or discussion section because there are no results to describe or discuss. Instead, proposals often include a Planned Analyses section that describes how the data will be analyzed and a Predicted Results section that describes the predictions in detail. (Sometimes these two sections are combined into a single Planned Analyses and Predicted Results section.) The author’s goals are to convey that he or she knows how to analyze the data that will be collected and has thought carefully about his or her predictions of what the results will reveal.

    In brief, in addition to a title page (and often an abstract), a typical research proposal consists of the following sections:

• An introduction that presents the rationale for the study, including an overview of the topic, a review of other relevant research, and a description of how the study will add to our knowledge. Typically the Introduction ends with a statement of the research goals or major hypotheses.

• A method section that provides clear and specific descriptions of the participants, materials or apparatus (if any), and procedure. Enough detail should be provided so that another researcher could run the study according to your specifications simply from reading the method. The method section of a proposal is written in future tense.

• A brief section labeled Planned Analyses should describe how the data will be analyzed.

• A Predicted Results section describes the specific patterns of findings that the author expects. In addition, alternative patterns that might reasonably be obtained are sometimes noted.

• The references section lists all sources that were cited.

USING PSYCINFO

    

    An important part of scientific writing—whether one is writing a manuscript for publication, a research proposal, or a paper for a course—involves becoming familiar with the published literature on the paper’s topic. Thus, researchers and students must be able to locate articles, books, chapters, and other documents that are relevant to whatever they are writing.

Not too many years ago, researchers and students who wanted to locate published articles on a particular topic had to engage in a laborious and time-consuming search through years and years of Psychological Abstracts—a set of volumes that listed all of the articles that were published in psychology journals each year. Today, however, they rely on PsycINFO, a computerized database for finding journal articles, books, book chapters, dissertations, and other scholarly documents in the behavioral sciences. PsycINFO includes not only material in psychology per se but also publications involving psychological aspects of other fields such as communication, marketing, nursing, education, physiology, public health, psychiatry, sociology, law, and management. The database contains citations and summaries for over 2 million sources published since 1887.

    Most universities and colleges have subscriptions to PsycINFO that allow students and faculty members to use the database. Typically, access to PsycINFO is managed by the college or university library, and many public libraries have access as well. Sometimes, students and faculty members can log on to PsycINFO from their own computer over the Internet, but often users must use a computer terminal in the library. The specific way that users access PsycINFO differs depending on the institution, so you should check on your library’s Web site or contact a reference librarian for details.

    Once users are logged on to PsycINFO, they can search for publications by entering search terms such as the topic (perhaps you are looking for articles about moral development), the author’s name (maybe you want to see every publication by a particular researcher), the year of publication (if you want only recent publications), or a particular journal’s name (because it publishes articles on the topic that you are writing about). As when doing any kind of computerized search, the trick is to select exactly the right terms that will give you the number and kinds of citations that you want. Thus, you must think carefully about the terms that authors tend to use when they write about your topic of interest. If you don’t use the right terms, you may miss many important citations or perhaps find none at all.

    On the other hand, if you use terms that are too broad, you may be overwhelmed by too many citations. For example, imagine that you are interested in finding publications that deal with the relationship between depression and eating disorders. What terms would you use? If you search for articles about depression, you will get more than 90,000 hits, so that doesn’t seem to be a useful approach. If you narrow your search for articles that are about both depression and eating disorders, you get about 700 citations, which is more manageable but, depending on how deeply you want to delve into the topic, may still be too many to wade through. So, you could search for articles that have both depression and eating disorders in the title of the article. That search will yield about 100 citations, which might be a reasonable number for starters. But before you start looking at the summaries of those articles, chapters, and books, consider the possibility that a search that looked for citations with depression and eating disorder in their titles would miss an article with a title such as “The relationship between depression, anorexia, and bulimia,” which is obviously relevant to your interests. So, you would want to also conduct searches for articles with depression and anorexia and with depression and bulimia in their titles as well.

    When PsycINFO gives you too many potentially relevant references but you cannot think of terms that allow you to narrow the scope, you have a number of other ways to limit your search. For example, you can choose the kinds of publications you wish to consider (do you want books and dissertations to be included, or just articles and chapters?), the age of the participants used in the study, the language in which the article was published (there’s not much sense getting things you can’t read), and the year of publication (perhaps you want to focus only on research conducted in the last 20 years).

Once you have a reasonable number of citations to examine, read through the summaries of the publications that PsycINFO provides, looking for those that are most closely aligned with your interests. Although all of the citations contain your search terms, many of them will nonetheless be irrelevant to your specific concerns. When you find one that you want to explore further, you can mark it. When you are finished reading all of the summaries, you can instruct PsycINFO to print the citations and summaries of all papers that you marked, save the citations and summaries to your computer, or e-mail them to you. Then it’s time to start reading the sources.

Conducting a useful search on PsycINFO requires a good deal of thought and patience, and usually involves conducting many searches that try different combinations of terms. You can find many good guides to PsycINFO on the Internet, and your library may have instructions as well. And, if you ever get frustrated using PsycINFO, just remember how researchers and students used to look for articles in the days before computerized searching.

  

    

      SAMPLE MANUSCRIPT

    

    What follows is an example of a research report that has been prepared according to APA style.1 This is a manuscript that an author might submit for publication; the published article would, of course, look very different. I’ve annotated this manuscript to point out some of the basic guidelines that we have discussed in this chapter.

    

      1 The sample manuscript is a shortened and edited version of a longer article by Ashley Batts Allen and Mark Leary entitled “Reactions to others’ selfish actions in the absence of tangible consequences” that was published in Basic and Applied Social Psychology (2010).

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