This research methods in psychology video will cover report writing. A report is designed
to tell other psychologists everything they need to know about why a study was conducted,
how the study was conducted, what was found and what that means. It also needs to get that
information across as efficiently as possible. For that reason reports are set out in a very
predictable format. INTRO
I recommend looking at a psychology research article, some are behind paywalls but many
of them are free to view. If you put in the name of the researcher and year
into Google your likely to find it. When you open it up these articales
the sections and the and the order your likely to see them in is this.
The Abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion, and finally references
So let's talk about these in turn and make sure we understand what's in each section and its purpose.
Abstract The abstract is usually written
last even though it's placed first in the paper. It's one or two paragraphs, and is effectively a
summary of the entire paper. It includes what the researcher's aim was and the hypothesis.
Some information on how the study was conducted, so the method, who the participants were,
and some of the main results and conclusions. Obviously, a lot of information to pack into two
paragraphs, but there is a very good reason for an abstract. In the planning stage of a study,
the point where the research question is decided. a psychologist will do a literature
review of the studies that already exist, potentially looking at hundreds of papers.
If they had to read every paper in full to find the information they needed or to figure out the
paper wasn't relevant it would take too long. Abstracts help speed up the research stage by
identifying papers that should be read in more detail, and ones that can be ignored.
Introduction The introduction is a
guide to the background theory and research that has come before the study, and the reason why the
current study is being conducted. This will give a reasoning for the aim, then the introduction will
usually end with the hypothesis. Method
The method is effectively a how-to guide on conducting a study. Replication is
important in science so you need to give all the information that another researcher would need
to replicate your study, and hopefully repeat your results. We can break the method down to,
Design, so research methods, experiment or observation? Which design, independent groups,
repeated measures, covert, overt. What are the levels of the independent variable, what is the
operationalized dependant variable? Were controls like Counterbalancing and random allocation used?
Participants, how many were used? Relevant personal characteristics like age range,
education level. How about the sampling method, opportunity or something else?
Materials, so any equipment needed to conduct the study, like hidden cameras,
stopwatches, or EEG readers. But also paper questionnaires, pictures, or word lists.
Procedure. The procedure is effectively a step by step guide on how to actually
do the stages of the study using what I have just mentioned. If the reader is
using a list of standardised procedures to reduce extraneous variables they can include that here.
For each of the choices they have made in the method the researcher may justify these choices.
Results The results section is an
objective summary of the data collected, so there will be tables of descriptive statistics, so maybe
mean scores and ranges. Relevant graphs are used to help the reader interpret the data visually.
There will also be a calculation using the appropriate statistical test to show if the
results are significant. Discussion
The results section doesn't talk about what the data means, that's the job of the discussion
section. This section will be where the hypothesis is accepted or rejected and
the researcher considers how this finding fits in with previous research and potential implications.
The researcher will also critisise the weaknesses of their own study, identifying potential
extraneous variables and other problems and ways to avoid them in a replication.
It would finish with suggestions for future research based on their own work and findings.
References The referencing section an alphabetical list
of all the researchers work you have used and when you quote them in your paper you can just give a
short reference (Asch, 1956, p.4). This provides credit for their ideas, so avoiding plagiarism,
plagiarism is claiming other people's ideas or work as your own. But the referencing section
also allows other researchers to easily track the researcher's sources and find related studies.
For that reason, references are written in a strict format. Psychologists use the Harvard
referencing format. Now there are a fair number of rules if you are referencing a journal article,
book or website. I don't have time to cover every variation here, but you do
need to know the basics of writing a reference. When you first mention another researcher's
ideas so in your introduction or perhaps discussion you can put the author's surname, date
of publication of their work and page number in brackets like this. Or if you mention their name
directly in the text put the date of publication and page number in brackets after their name.
This will help the reader find the full reference in the referencing section. In the referencing
section, Start with the author's surname, then initials. Then the date of publication is written
in brackets. Followed by then the name of the journal article or book. Then the location of
publication and then the name of the publisher. Here are a few examples
For A-level thats all you need, If you are watching this for a degree there
are some additional points you need to be aware of such as punctuation,
how to reference different volumes, editions and pages as well as how to reference websites and
videos. As I said I'm not going to go into all of that here, however I will give a couple of tips.
But in all honestly, if your making a reference section at uni, just follow this this link,
find the unique reference number of whatever your referencing called
the doi and it will spit out a formatted reference. https://citation.crosscite.org/
Secondly, start a word document early on at uni, whenever you use a reference in an
essay copy the reference into it in alphabetical order. Chances are when your writing an essay a
year or two later you may remember a there was a relevant study you can use in your current essay.
This document will help you find that study and you can just copy the reference
into your new essay’s referencing section. Finally super lazy but works pretty well.
If you are writing an essay and want to quickly find related studies to demonstrate wide reading,
the reference section is a great place to start, as well as checking out cited by links on the
journal articles web page, this way youc an find more modern studies and replications. Of course
you have to read them to find out if they are actually relevant, but sometimes fidinging them
is half the battle. Outro
I have 8 tutorial videos covering the AS and A-level research methods sections from 2017 to
2020, these videos have worked examples to every question and are full of exam tips. Patrons at
the neuron level and above can access these, and many, many more hours of exam tutorial videos,
as well as over a hundred printable resources from across the A-level over on psych boost .com
I do want to thank all the students and teachers who have supported psych boost
over on patreon during the development of the research methods unit. It's their
support that allows me to teach part time so I can make psych boost on youtube for everyone.
So thanks to them, and I will see you all in the next research methods video