Reporting Psychological Investigations

• 6 sections which make up a scientific report


  abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, referencing
• abstract


  a short summary of all the major elements of the study (aim hypotheses, methods, results and conclusion)
• introduction


  a literature review of the general area of investigation. looks at past research on a similar topic. includes the aim and hypothesis
• method


  a description of what the researcher did including design, sample, apparatus/materials, procedure and ethics
• results


  a summary of the key findings of the investigation, including descriptive and inferential statistics
• discussion


  discussing the results in he context of the evidence presented in the introduction. includes awareness of limitations of study and the wider implications of the research
• references


  a list of sources that are referred to or quoted in the articles e.g. journal articles, books or websites, and their full details
• format for reference of a book


  author(s), date, title of book (in italics), place of publication, publisher
• format for reference of an article


  author(s), date, title of article, journal title (in italics), volume (italics), page numbers