1 / 19

HOW TO WRITE A REPORT!

HOW TO WRITE A REPORT!. REPORT?…What's that about. Great, that time of year has come and you get to be a 'real psychologists'! What will differentiate a good report from bad report will be whether you are able to be objective and think like a psychologist.

hye
Download Presentation

HOW TO WRITE A REPORT!

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. HOW TO WRITE A REPORT!

  2. REPORT?…What's that about. • Great, that time of year has come and you get to be a 'real psychologists'! What will differentiate a good report from bad report will be whether you are able to be objective and think like a psychologist.

  3. ‘An investigation into the influence of Music on memory.’ • Before you set your title out you would have completed some background reading in your choice of topic. • Officially this is called a literature review.

  4. ABSTRACT. • The Abstract should be about 250 words long. It should concisely summarise the • Aim- The aim was to investigate…… • Background-Your hypothesis (H1/H2). • Design- Independent/Repeated Measures. Variables. • Sample- Selection ?Girls ?Boys. • Results and statistical conclusions of your study- Inferential & Descriptive..Main findings. • It should be written in the 3rd person and past tense, in other words you should not write ‘I found….’instead ‘The experiment was carried out

  5. INTRODUCTION. • You should inform your reader of the background to your investigation. Psychologists tend to use an: • ‘upside down pyramid’ approach to writing introductions. HUH????

  6. INTRODUCTION. General introduction Specifics Actual Aim Your Hypothesis Approx 250-500 words.

  7. INTRODUCTION con…. • Also state the implications of setting a 0.05 level of significance. • Even in the event of your results being found to be statistically significant you recognise there is a 1: 20 probability that your results occurred by chance.

  8. METHOD….. • Your method should include descriptions of the following: • Design • Materials • Variables • Sample • Procedure. • Not necessarily in the above order.

  9. PROCEDURE • An exceptionally crucial section of the report as this is what the reader would follow if they were to replicate your investigation. • It should outline from start to finish what your participants did without exception, and end with you thanking them and thoroughly debriefing each participant. • A step-step guide of what to do. (Like a recipe in a cookbook all steps would need to be followed in order to make that perfect soufflé!!!)

  10. RESULTS • First things first..you need to draw a table to put in input your raw data, this is the actual scores/answers you take from each participant. • Present your results in a meaningful way. • The next step will be to tabulate some descriptive statistics…….

  11. Descriptive Statistics????? • These are the first calculations we complete with the raw data. • Mean-Add all scores together and divide by number of participants. • Median- The Middle value. • Mode- The most frequent answer. • Range- The highest value minus the lowest value.

  12. Tables/ Graphs. • You could display your results via a bar chart, histogram, pie chart scatter gram.. Any of the above are acceptable as are others that are not included in this example

  13. RESULTS • Next step is an inferential statistic such as: • Chi-squared (test of association) • Mann Whitney • T-Test • Spearman's Rho (test of frequency)

  14. Inferential Statistics. • You will use an inferential statistic in your results. This will allow you to accept/reject your null hypothesis, and thus reject/accept your experimental.

  15. DISCUSSION. • Refer to your introduction and your aim • Keep it structured and remember the audience the report is aimed at..academics like yourself, teachers etc. • Explain your findings referring to some psychology (ie the introduction/previous research). • Refer to your descriptive statistics (graphs and charts) to back up what you say - otherwise what was the point of doing them! Use language like 'As can be seen from Fig ? on page ….'

  16. Discussion. • Identify limitations in your investigation e.g. your design, method, sampling technique etc. • Identify further improvements that could be made • Identify future research Lastly in the report you need to end with a conclusion.

  17. CONCLUSION.. • A conclusion is a brief statement. • What you were aiming to do. • What you found (Descriptive/Inferential). • Did the findings support or reject your hypothesis. • What the research was based on (piece of research).

  18. APPENDICES.. • An example of raw data, • Stimulus sheets (word lists etc) • Consent form • Debrief sheet • Standard instruction sheet. • Calculations (statistics) • References • Also ensure you have a contents page at the front of the report.

  19. References • References. • Cardwell, M. Flanagan, C. (2004) Psychology A2 The Complete Companion. Cheltenham: Nelson Thornes Ltd. • Baker, J. Bezance, J. Zellaby, E. Aggleton, J. (2004) Chewing gum can produce context-dependent effects upon memory. [online] Page 1, 2, 3. Available from: http://www.scq.ubc.ca/papers/1103gum.pdf [Accessed on 4/3/09] • Godden, DR. Bsddeley, AD. (1975) Context-dependent memory in two natural environments: on land and underwater. [online] Available from: http://www.uniview.co.uk/pdf/newgodmerge.pdf [Accessed on 4/3/09]

More Related