reporting psychological investigation

• an abstract is a short summary including the major elements such as aims, hypotheses, method/procedure, results and conclusions
• introduction is a look at relevant theories, concepts and studies
• method should include sufficient detail so that other researchers can replicate it. It should include:

  • design- independent groups or not, if it is a naturalistic observation and reasons for choice
  • sample- how many participants, sampling method, target population
  • apparatus/materials
  • procedure- list of everything that happened including briefing, standardised instructions
  • ethics- how these were addressed
• results are a summary of key findings. Need to include:

  • descriptive statistics- tables, graphs and charts, measures of tendency and measures of dispersion
  • inferential statistics- reference to choice of test, calculates and critical value, level of significance, accept/reject null
• discussion is a summary of key findings, relationships of results to previous research. limitations of study and suggestions for how they might be addressed in a future study and world implications of the research
• how to reference:

  • journals- authors, date, article title, journal name, volume, page
  • book- authors, date, title of book, place of publication, publisher
  • web- source, date, title, weblink, date accessed