Psych reports and referencing

• Reporting psychological investigations

  • Developing knowledge and understanding of psychology relies on communication between researchers. It is therefore important to share findings with other psychologists.
  • One way to do this is to publish research, known as a ‘Research Report’ in research journals
  • To get research published in a peer review Journal, psychologists must follow a certain format when writing up their research
• Standard research report layout

  1. Title
  2. Abstract
  3. Introduction
  4. Method
  5. Results
  6. Discussion
  7. References
  8. Appendices
• Title

  • Tells the reader what the research is investigating
• Abstract

  • Provides the reader with a short summary of the study
• Introduction

  • Provides the reader the background literature and rationale of the study
• Method

  • Describe how the study was carried out
• Results

  • Summarise the findings
• Discussion

  • Discuss the findings and their implications
• References

  • To inform the readers about all the sources of information the researcher you
• Appendices

  • Additional material that would interrupt the flow of the research report
• Referencing (1)

  • Referencing is an important aspect of psychological reports/journals.
  • We are discussing ideas that build on others ideas and are not our own. It is therefore important that we use references to show this. If we don’t, this is plagiarism (taking others ideas and presenting them as if they are our own)
  • In the text of our report/essay, we do this by using citations e.g. (Milgram et al, 1969). A citation just includes the surname and date.
• Referencing (2)

  • We then use our reference section to put full details of the source.
  • The reference section of a journal includes full details of any sources, such as journal articles or books, that are used when writing a report. There is a set format depending on whether the information comes from a book, journal article etc. and there are different conventions for references (e.g. Harvard, APA, etc.)
• Harvard Referencing

  • Surname, Initial (date) Title: Subtitle. Edition. Place of publication: Publisher.