Experimental Psychology PSY 433
Download
Report
Transcript Experimental Psychology PSY 433
Experimental Psychology
PSY 433
Chapter 5
Research Reports
Goals of the Final Report
Communicate to the scientific community.
Clearly describe your project in sufficient detail
to permit replication.
Convince readers that your findings support
your conclusions.
How strong is the evidence?
Does it justify your statements about theory?
Summarize your contribution to the ongoing
debate on an important question.
Pay special attention to your abstract!
You Are Telling a Story
Introduction -- state your research question,
review the literature, make your predictions
(hypotheses).
Methods – describe how you explored the
question in sufficient detail to permit
replication.
Results – describe your findings and test your
hypotheses using statistics.
Discussion – analyze your results and put
them back into the context of your question.
Parts of the Article
Title page
Abstract
Text:
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion
References
Appendix, Tables and Figures
Abstract
This may be the only part of your paper that
most people read, so make it count!
Write this last.
Tell the story of your study, with one sentence
per report section.
Do not exceed 120 words.
Use of Tenses
For the final report, revise the sections
that were written for your proposal
because they will be graded again.
Your proposal was written in the future
tense (e.g., “subjects will…”), but for the
final report…
Put the Methods section in the past
tense.
Report your results in the past tense.
Reporting Results
Only include the results that are relevant to
your research question, not all data collected.
Go from the general to the specific.
Provide tables for:
Multiple analyses.
Complex experiments (factorial designs).
ANOVA
Organize your results section around your
hypotheses, testing one at a time.
Describing Data
Don’t forget to include descriptive
statistics (means, SDs).
“The mean number of words recalled
was calculated for each group. The
means and the standard deviations for
each group are shown in Figure 1.”
“Recall was higher for the drug group
(M = 15, SD = 5.43) than for the
placebo group (M = 10, SD = 4.98).”
Reporting Inferential Statistics
“The data were analyzed using an
independent t-test. The t-test showed no
significant difference between the mean of
the placebo group and the mean of the
drug group, t(34) = 1.35, p = .782.
“Using one-way ANOVA, gender
differences were found to be significant,
with females scoring higher on the
average than males, F(1, 23) = 23.89, p
=.025.”
Show more complex analyses in a table.
Report Exact p-Values
The old approach simply tested results
against a standard of p<.05 by looking up the
critical value in a table.
Significance was an all-or-nothing judgment.
Only the critical value (cutoff) was known, not
the exact p-value for your statistic.
Today, SPSS gives exact p-values for every
result. Report those exact values (p=.031).
NEVER report p > .05 for a non-significant
result. It implies use of p > .05 as a standard.
Ethics of Reporting Statistics
Don’t change your hypotheses (prediction) to
fit what you actually discovered. Instead say
you were surprised by your results.
Decide how many subjects to test in advance.
Don’t stop collecting data because you already
have significant results.
Don’t add more subjects because your results
are almost significant and would become so
with a few more subjects.
State your reason for ending data collection.
Avoid “p-Hacking”
p-hacking is the practice of trying different
approaches to data analysis until you find one
that gives significant results. It is unethical.
Collect at least 20 observations per condition.
Report all experimental conditions, even
failed manipulations (studies that didn’t work).
List all variables collected in a study, even if
they are not analyzed in your paper.
If there is any doubt, report results with and
without excluded subjects, covariates.
Changes in Reporting
The internet is making possible different
approaches to report writing.
Because journals are no longer limited in
space, authors can supply complete data
sets, stimuli (materials) and alternative
analyses.
This represents a movement toward greater
transparency.
Exact, not conceptual replications are needed
results are marginal.
References
Format varies depending on the type of material
being referenced (e.g., book, article, web site).
Only list the sources actually mentioned in the text of
your report.
Everything listed in the references must be cited in text
Everything cited in text must be listed in the
references.
When you mention a source referenced in another
paper say: “as cited by…” and cite the source you
actually read, not the original quoted by someone
else.
Tables and Figures
Tables go first – always use APA format.
Tables contain numbers or words.
Figures are pictures and typically present
graphs of data, sample stimuli, equipment
setup, diagrams of experiment flow,
flowcharts of cognitive processes or diagrams
of theoretical models.
Tables have titles that go at the top. Figures
have captions that go at the bottom.
Include at least 1 of each in your final report.
Discussion
First, state what you discovered during your
experiment.
Do not repeat results but interpret them and
state whether your hypotheses were
confirmed.
Tell whether your findings are consistent with
what others have found.
Describe any threats to validity and problems
with your experiment (confounds, bias,
limitations of generalizability, problems).
Conclusion – what are the consequences?
Contents of Final Report
Must contain all sections listed in the APA
Publication Manual, including:
Title page
Abstract
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion
References
Tables and Figures