Report writing

• Sections of practical report

  • abstract
  • Introduction
  • Method
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • appendices
• introduction

  • rationale - state what gap there is
  • briefly outline current study
  • clearly state hypothesis - don’t state null

  described as funnels - start with broad info then narrow it
• method

  should provide enough info that reader could replicate the study

  subheadings:

  • participants - sampling method, who, how many, sex, inclusion/exclusion, avg age, ethical approval
  • design - design of study, any experimental conditions, IV and DV clearly outlined
  • materials - questionnaires, experimental tasks, stimuli, specialist hardware
  • procedure - order of study, where, how long, informed consent, debrief
• Results

  • opening statement - brief outline of analysis being conducted
  • Descriptives - ppt characteristics, tables, figures
  • Inferential statistics - the analysis that tests hypothesis, presented in the correct way
• discussion

  • findings - state, relate and interpret them. reject or accept hypothesis
  • limitations - improvements to method, different research design
  • future directions and implications
  • conclusion - briefly summarise findings, how it relates to previous findings and implications of our findings
• abstract

  first section but written last, a summary of the entire paper.

  a sentence or two about each section.
• appendices

  should include:

  • R output
  • any figures used to determine normality
  • materials