Instructions for Paper II: Study One Methods, Results, and Discussion (Worth 35 Points)
Purpose of Paper II: Study One Methods, Results, and Discussion
1). Psychological Purpose
The psychological purpose behind Paper II is to make sure you can tell your reader what you did in your study, how you did it, and what you found. By now you have read several empirical studies in psychology, so you should be familiar with the Methods, Results, and Discussion sections. Now is your chance to write your own sections!
Similar to the studies you cited in Paper I, your Paper II will provide information about your study participants, materials, and procedure in your Methods section. Your participant section goes first, and it includes descriptive statistics about your sample (means and standard deviations for age as well as percentages for gender and race/ethnicity). Your materials and procedure section includes information about what you did and how you did it. You should write this section for an audience who is unfamiliar with your specific study, but assume that they do know research methods. Thus educate your reader about your materials and procedure, giving enough detail so they could replicate the study. This includes explicitly describing your independent and dependent variables and discussing how you presented that material to your participants. My suggestion is to look at the articles you cited in Paper I and see how they wrote their Methods sections. This will give you a good idea about the level of depth and detail you need in your own Methods section.
Your Results section follows. The purpose of this section is to show how you analyzed the data and describe what you found.
Finally, you will include a short description of your findings in a Discussion section. Tell me if you supported or did not support your hypotheses and explain why you got those results (you can actually speculate here if you like, but make it an “educated” speculation!)
2). APA Formatting Purpose
The second purpose of Paper II: Methods, Results and Discussion is to once again teach you proper American Psychological Association (APA) formatting for these sections. In the pages below, I will tell you how to format your paper using APA style. There are a lot of very specific requirements in APA papers (as specific as what to italicize), so pay attention to the instructions below as well as the APA formatting powerpoint presentation!
3). Writing Purpose
Finally, this paper is intended to help you figure out how to write a Methods, Results, and Discussion section. Many students find statistics daunting, but my hope here is that writing this paper will help you understand both the logic and format of statistics in your results sections. We will once again give you a lot of feedback and help in this paper, which you help you when you write Papers IV and V later in the course. Make sure that you write this for an audience familiar with APA methods and results, but also for someone who needs you to tell them what you found.
Note #1: The plagiarism limit is higher in this paper (up to 65%) since your classmates are doing the same design. Don’t go higher than that, though! 65% is the maximum allowed!
Note #2: You do NOT need to include your literature review / hypotheses in Paper II, as Paper II focuses just on your methods, results, and discussion. However, you’ll include those Paper I components later in Paper III, so do keep them handy!
Note #3: Unlike Paper I, there is no set minimum or maximum page limit for Paper II. However, we are still looking for good detail about your study design and your study results
Note #4: Sorry for the length of the instructions! They are long, but take it one section at a time and you will get all of the content you need for your paper. It also increases your chances of getting a great grade!
Instructions for Paper II: Study One Methods, Results, and Discussion (Worth 35 Points)
• Title Page: I expect the following format (1 point):
• The title page for your Paper II is identical to the one you used for Paper I: Literature Review Study One. For proper APA formatting, either copy your title page from Paper I or review the instructions I gave you in Paper I. You can change your title if you like, but make sure it helps to describe your study (much like a title in PsycInfo describes what the authors did in their paper)
• Abstract?
• You DO NOT need an abstract for Paper I. In fact, because your abstract needs to summarize the results for both study one and study two, you cannot write it until you run both studies and have results to summarize. So omit the abstract until you get to Paper V.
• Methods Section: I expect the following format (15 points):
• For this paper, the methods section starts on page 2.
• Write Method at the top of this page, make it bold, and center it (see the top of this page as an example!)
• The participants section comes next. The word Participants is bolded and left justified. In this section …
• Tell me who your participants were (college students, family members, friends?) and how many there were.
• Note: If a number starts a sentence, then spell out the number. That is, “Two-hundred and five participants participated in this study.” If a number is mid-sentence, you can use numerals. “There were 205 participants in this study.”
• But keep it consistent. If you spell out a number at the start of the sentence, carry that through and spell out other numbers in the rest of the sentence.
• For statistics or scales, always use numbers (the mean, SD, %, etc.)
• Provide frequencies and descriptive statistics for relevant demographics.
• Some variables—like ethnicity and gender—are nominal/categorical, so you provide frequency information (the number of participants who fit that category). “There were 100 men (49%) and 105 women (51%) in the study.” Or “The sample was 49% male (N = 100) and 51% female (N = 105).”
• Other variables—like age—are interval or ratio, so use descriptive statistics (the range, mean, and the standard deviation). “Participants ranged in age from 18 to 77 (M = 24.03, SD = 3.50).” or “The average age of participants was 24.03 (SD = 3.50), and ranged from 18 to 77.”
• Make sure to italicize the N, M, and SD (the letters, not the numbers)
• Make sure to include a “callout” to the demographics table at the end of the participant section. That is, write “See Table 1” to direct readers to your demographics table.
• Then, supply the table right below the callout. APA allows the tables to be in-text after the callout OR in an appendix at the end of the paper. This methods course prefers the former, so include your SPSS tables in-text after the callout. You should include the descriptive statistics table, the table for gender, and the table for ethnicity. See the example paper for a visual aide.
• Materials and Procedure
• For this section, things are flexible. Some studies include Materials and Procedure in the same section while others break them up into two sections. This is a matter of choice.
• In general, the more complex the design, the better it is to split up the methods and results. In one section, the author may describe the materials; in the next, they describe what participants did with those materials (the procedure). This is one option for you. However …
• However, your study is simple enough that I strongly recommend combining them into one overall Materials and Procedure section.
• Again, the words Materials and Procedure are flush left. In this section, provide information about your materials and your procedure. I suggest starting with your procedure. Tell your reader what your participants did in the exact order that participants did them. Be very specific here. I have the following recommendations:
• First, talk about the oral informed consent procedure.
• Second, talk about the Twitter Apology survey. Provide enough detail so your reader could replicate your design if they wanted to do so. YOU need to give them enough detail so they can mimic what you did. (Hint: If you want, copy and paste the various questions or refer the reader to an appendix with the actual surveys at the end of the paper)
• I want to stress this detail concept – Pretend that I have no idea what you did or what your materials look like, but I want to replicate your study. Thus teach me your design and your procedures. Be VERY clear and detailed about what you did and how you did it.
• Go into painstaking detail about what EACH section of the survey page looked like, including what the participant instructions say and the look of the stimulus materials. If there are advertisements on the page, describe them. If there are pictures, describe them. If there is a profile, describe it. If these items are identical across all conditions, note that fact.
• Importantly, describe how the surveys differ. That is, you have three versions of the survey, with the main difference in the last few tweets. Describe those tweets (you can even copy and paste them if you want!)
• Note: At the end of the semester (for Paper V), someone other than your instructor / TA may grade your paper. They may know NOTHING about Apology research or research regarding social media, but they do know methods. Write this section for that methodology expert.
• Third, talk about your dependent variables. That is, discuss your survey questions. For these dependent variables, once again provide enough detail so I know exactly what questions you asked. For example, “Participants provided their gender, age, and race”. For other dependent variables, tell me how the responses were recorded (yes/no, true/false, a scale of 1 to 6, etc.). If you used a scale, note the endpoints (your reader needs to know whether a higher number is better / worse than a lower number). For example, “Participants were asked, ‘How frustrating was this task?’, and they responded on a scale from 1 (very frustrating) to 9 (not at all frustrating).’” Your study has a few really important DVs (including several DVs about how sincere the apology seemed, or whether the apology seemed to acknowledge the conduct was wrong or whether it showed an expression of remorse). For these DVs, you again need to tell me what they are specifically!
• Fourth, make sure to highlight which specific DVs you analyzed. If there are DVs that participants completed but you did not analyze, feel free to say that participants completed them but since they were not analyzed, they are not discussed further.
• Fifth, make sure to be specific about your attention / manipulation check question! What did you specifically ask? How did you measure responses?
• Finally, mention debriefing. You don’t need a lot of detail as, most researchers understand what goes into a generic debriefing statement
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