Designing and Reporting Experiments in

"This book will help undergraduate psychology students to write practical reports of experimental and other quantitative studies in psychology. It is designed to help with every stage of the report writing process including what to put in each section and recommendations for formatting and style. It also discusses how to design a study, including how to use and report relevant statistics. As such, the book acts both as an introduction and reference source to be used throughout an undergraduate course."--BOOK JACKET.

Peter Harris is Senior Lecturer in psychology at the University of Sheffield.

Preface

xiii

To students

xiii

How to use this book

xiii

To tutors

xvi

Part 1 Writing experimental reports

1

(100)

Some preliminaries

3

(13)

Experienced students, inexperienced students and the report

6

(1)

Writing the report

7

(1)

The importance of referencing in the text

8

(2)

The report as a research instrument

10

(2)

Finding things to write about: how to get more references

12

(3)

Where to start

13

(1)

Ways of adding to your references

14

(1)

Experimental ethics

15

(1)

The Introduction section

16

(9)

The first part of the Introduction: reviewing the background to your study

17

(1)

Inexperienced students, experienced students and the Introduction

18

(3)

Your own study

21

(4)

The Method section

25

(16)

The Design subsection

27

(2)

The Participants subsection

29

(2)

The Apparatus or Materials subsection

31

(2)

The Procedure subsection

33

(4)

Interacting with and instructing participants

37

(2)

Optional additional subsections of the Method

39

(2)

Pilot test

39

(1)

Ethical issues

39

(1)

Statistical power

40

(1)

The Results section

41

(18)

Describing the data

42

(3)

Analysing the data

45

(1)

An example Results section

46

(2)

Mistakes to avoid in the Results section

48

(2)

Rejecting or not rejecting the null hypothesis

50

(1)

Reporting specific statistics

51

(8)

Chi-square, χ2

52

(1)

Spearman rank correlation coefficient (rho), rs

52

(1)

Pearson's product moment correlation coefficient, r

52

(1)

Mann-Whitney U test, U

53

(1)

Wilcoxon's Matchod-Pairs Signed-Ranks Test, T

53

(1)

Kruskal-Wallis one-way analysis of variance. H

53

(1)

Friedman's ANOVA, χ2r

54

(1)

The t test (independent and related), t

54

(1)

Analysis of variance (ANOVA), F

55

(2)

Do's and don'ts when reporting ANOVA

57

(1)

Statistics of effect size

58

(1)

The Discussion section

59

(13)

How well do the findings fit the predictions?

61

(1)

What do the findings mean?

61

(3)

What are the implications of these findings?

64

(1)

What to do when you've been unable to analyse your data properly

65

(1)

External validity: the generalizability of findings

65

(2)

Some tips to help you to avoid some common failings in the Discussion

67

(1)

Two example Discussion sections

68

(4)

The cheese and nightmare experiment

68

(2)

The mnemonic experiment

70

(2)

The Title and Abstract

72

(4)

The Title

72

(1)

The Abstract

73

(3)

References and appendices

76

(4)

The References section

76

(1)

General rules for the References section

76

(1)

Citing specific types of reference

77

(1)

Citing electronic and online sources

78

(1)

Appendices

79

(1)

Producing the final version of the report

80

(21)

Writing style

80

(1)

Definitions and abbreviations

81

(1)

References in the text

82

(3)

Tables and figures

85

(2)

Graphing data

87

(6)

One IV with two levels

88

(1)

Error bars

89

(1)

One IV with more than two levels

90

(1)

More than one IV

91

(2)

Drafting the report

93

(1)

Producing the final version

94

(7)

Check list for report writing

97

(1)

What the marker is looking for

97

(4)

Part 2 Designing experiments

101

(94)

Experimenting in psychology

103

(18)

Experimenting

103

(13)

The experiment

104

(3)

Experimental and control conditions

107

(1)

Control: eliminating confounding variables

108

(2)

Experimental and null hypotheses

110

(4)

FREE SHIPPING

Rent More, Save More! Use code: BBRENTAL

5% off 1 book, 7% off 2 books, 10% off 3+ books

Designing and Reporting Experiments in Psychology

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials

FREE SHIPPING

Rent More, Save More! Use code: BBRENTAL

5% off 1 book, 7% off 2 books, 10% off 3+ books

Designing and Reporting Experiments in Psychology

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials

Digital License