Reporting, Peer Review and Referencing

• Scientific Reporting

  • after conducting research and analysing their results, psychologists write it up for publication in journal articles
  • written in a conventional format
  • they are structured and formulaic, to make it as easy as possible for a reader to understand the background, aims, methodology and findings of a particular experiment or technique
• abstract

  • the first section of the report
  • summary of the study including aims, hypothesis, method, results, conclusions and implications
  • it allows the reader to determine if the rest of the report is worth reading
  • usually about 200 words long
• introduction

  • review of previous research that are relevant to the study
  • leads logically to your research so the reader is convinced why you're doing the research
  • like a funnel - starts really general and then narrows down to be more specific
  • researcher states their aims and hypothesis
• method

  • a detailed description of what the researcher did
  • enough detain for someone to precisely replicate the study
  • design
  • participants
  • apparatus/materials
  • procedures
  • ethics
• results

  • what was found, including descriptive statistics, inferential statistics and categories and themes for qualitative data
• discussion

  • interpret results and consider their implications
  • summary of the results - briefly reported in non-statistical form and explanation about what they show
  • relationship to previous research - the results are compared to research in the introduction and possibly other research
  • strengths and weakness of the methodology, with improvements suggested
  • implications for theories and possible real-world applications
  • the contribution that the investigation has made into the existing knowledge base within the field
  • suggestions for future research
• references

  • full details of any journal articles, books or websites that are mentioned
  • enables readers to track down sources used
  • to give credit to other researches/acknowledge their ideas
  • avoid plagiarism
• appendices

  • where any materials and raw data are presents
• referencing

  • Last name, first initial. middle initial. (year). Title of journal article. Name of journal, volume number (issue number), page numbers
• peer review

  • the process of subjecting a piece of research to independent scrutiny by other psychologists working in a similar field who consider the research in terms of its validity, significance and originality
  • allocation of funding - reviews enable council to decide which research is worthwhile
  • to validate the quality and relevance of research
  • to suggest amendments or improvements - prevents or corrects faulty data entering the public domain
  • the internet
• evaluation

  • anonymity - the peer remains anonymous but a minority of reviews may use this to criticise rival researchers
  • publication bias - editors of journals want to publish significant headline grabbing findings to increase circulation of publications
  • burying underground research - the process may suppress opposition to mainstream theories because they wish to maintain the status quo