PREPARING A METHOD AND RESULTS SECTION

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PREPARING A METHOD AND RESULTS SECTION

• Psyc301 Week 3

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Todays Schedule

• Briefly Discuss Critiques
• Quick (I promise!) observational project group
  sharing.
• Methods and results section.

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Journal Critique

• Overall, good job!
• Most lost points were from objective criteria
• Subjective Things
• Too informal
• Using sample size isnt always a good answer
• Need to back up
• Not backing up statements
• The experimental design was good etc.
• Using direct quotations instead of paraphrasing.

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Lets Review

• Dependent Variable
• Independent Variable
• So, the Independent Variable PREDICTS CHANGE in
  the Dependent Variable

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Its Sharing Time!

• What we want to hear
• Your concept
• How you looked at it
• Variables, locations, times
• What did you find?
• What surprised you most?
• Anything interesting or funny?

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The method and results section

• Switching Gears

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So What is a Method Section?

• Method
• Who was involved? (Participants)
• How did you do it? (Procedures)
• Results
• What happened in the end

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The Recipe Analogy
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And some more APA

• Guidelines for the readers to evaluate the study.
• Give the reader all of the necessary details to
  recreate the study.
• You wouldnt give someone half a recipe, right?
• But not so detailed that its exhausting.
• But you wouldnt tell them what color bowl to put
  it in.

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Deeper in the recipe

• Participants
• Materials
• Design (Only sometimes)
• Procedure

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Participants

• Ingredients
• Describes the who and the where
• Total of subjects, in each category
• Major characteristics
• Age, sex, race, ethnicity, etc
• Confidentiality!

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An example
Fifty-six men, 51 women, and 1 respondent who did
not indicate his or her sex participated in the
experiment for credit toward a course requirement.

• APA Style Fifty-six
• Fill potential holes
• 1 respondent who did not indicate his or her
  sex.
• but this is possibly wrong.
• Dont give out any extra info you dont need.
• Dont tell them which color bowl!

(Dunn, 2008)
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Materials

• The mixers and pans
• Any specific lab equipment used
• Questionnaires
• Machines
• Anything used for data collection

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Another example
Stimuli and Apparatus Digital audio recordings
were made in a large IAC sound-attenuating booth
by means of a SHURE 5155D microphone in the
booth, which was linked to a Denon PMA-680R
stereo amplifier and Radius 81/110 computer with
SoundScope software (GW Instruments, Inc.,
Somerville, MA). Test sessions were videotaped
to ensure that infants mood was comparable
across sessions) to preclude maternal vocal
changes arising from infants mood change).

• APA- italicized heading
• Note the specifics here. Yawn! But needed.

(Dunn, 2008)
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Procedure

• How long do we bake this for?
• What happened from beginning to end.
• Step by step, chronological
• General description of design and tasks

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Procedure

• Exactly what it was like for a participant
• How the Ps were assigned to conditions
• What instructions they were given
• Debriefing?
• Any ethnical concerns

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And another example!
Procedure At Time 1, we screened participants
using an expanded Schedule for Affective
Disorders and SchizophreniaLifetime diagnostic
interview (SADS-L), which assesses lifetime
history of several psychological disorders. If
participants met criteria for Bipolar II disorder
or Cyclothymia, they were invited into the study
and were asked to also complete the Beck
Depression Inventory (BDI), The Michigan
Alcoholism Screening Test (MAST Selzer, 1971),
and The Drug Abuse Screening Test (DAST Gavin,
Ross, Skinner, 1989). For the prospective
follow up, we interviewed the participants every
4 months using an expanded Schedule for Affective
Disorders and SchizophreniaChange (SADS-C)
diagnostic interview.

• Exactly what the Ps experience during the
  experiment was like.

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Results Section Telling your story

• How was the cake?
• Presents your studys findings
• How does it relate to the hypothesis?

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Three ways this is all explained

• Verbally The experimental group scored higher
  than the control group.
• Statistically We compared means
• Numerically The experimental group had an
  average score of 85, the control group scored
  70
• Only reporting, not discussing

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Results Section Telling your story

• Restate the hypothesis
• Tell why you used a certain statistic
• Which stat?
• Present a summary of this statistic
• State the conclusion, but dont discuss what it
  means (yet)!

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And another example!

• Our hypothesis was that students who had a large
  meal before class would do better on an exam than
  those who did not.
• The experimental group scored higher on the exam
  than the control group.
• Upon comparing means, the experimental group had
  an average score of 85, the control group scored
  70.

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Making this all APA-ifiyed

• Methods
• Participants
• ______________________________
• Materials
• ______________________________
• Procedure
• ______________________________
• Results
• ____________________________
• ________________________________

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Some more details

• Double-space
• Headings are centered
• Subheadings are in italics and on the left.

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No points for creativity

• Formal research writing
• Avoid colloquialisms
• Youre not IMing this to the editors
• Avoid overusing I and we

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Using Numbers

• Use your book or websites for specifics
• General rules
• Spell out numbers zero through nine.
• Dont extend to more than 2 decimal places (7.24)
• Dont use a zero if you dont need to (7.00)
• Never begin a sentence with a number

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Reporting Central Tendency

• Mean M
• Median Mdn
• Mode Md
• Total Number N
• Smaller Group Number n

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In Class Assignment

• Methods and results section practice
• Hand in for participation points and the end of
  class.
• For Next Week
• Written methods and results sections of your OWN
  study.
• This is an independent project.
• Guidelines are on the website!

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The Basics

• Hypothesis When students are given caffeinated
  coffee before an exam, they will score higher
  than a group who just got decaf.
• 50 total students, half got coffee, half got
  decaf, randomly
• Mean score, non coffee group was 78.2
• Coffee group was 88.4
• You can decide the rest!