The Principles of Writing in Psychology

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Writing your first research report at university may cause you to ask more questions about how to write it, than it you ask about the topic itself! This section gives you a guide on the element of research reports and how you should present them.

• Writing a research report
• Recommended presentation and style requirements for student papers

Writing a research report

Before beginning to write a research report you will have planned the content and the structure of the introduction, results and discussion sections. You might not well have planned the method section, but this is straightforward. Writing the introduction and discussion sections involves the same approach as is applicable to any literature review. On the other hand, writing the method and results sections involves a somewhat different approach. Essentially these are narratives of what was done and what was found in the research reported. Writing a research report, therefore, involves two somewhat different approaches.

• Title

A title should summarise the main idea of the report in no more than about 10-12 words. Unnecessary words or phrases such as “An experimental investigation of…” should not be included. Because they might not be understood, abbreviations are not used in the title.

• Abstract

Put simply, the abstract of a research report should present a clear, concise summary of the essential elements if the research reported, written in a single paragraph of no more than 120 words. As a guide, the abstract should concisely describe what the research problem was, what was done, what was found, and what this means.

• Introduction

The first step in a research report is to introduce the area of research. For example, if you were reporting an investigation of a problem associated with learning abilities, you would need to make this clear. In addition, you will have to define concepts or terms with which the reader might not be familiar. In particular, you will have to give an operational definition of any construct, such as intelligence to which you refer. You will have to make clear exactly what you mean when you refer to particular concepts or constructs in the context of your report.

You must also:

• Present the problem to be investigated
• Present a theoretical hypothesis
• Ask a specific research question
• Outline your experimental design
• State your research or experimental hypothesis

• Method

Having stated your research hypothesis, you then need to describe how you tested it. This section of the report should be written as briefly and concisely as possible, but it must provide sufficient detail so that the reader can evaluate the validity and appropriateness of the method used. The best approach is to pretend that you have designed the experiment, but that someone else will carry it out. If you have written the method section well, you should be able to give it to any reasonably competent person, who, having read it, should be able to carry out your experiment as you did.

Your subheadings in the method section should be:

• Participants
• Apparatus
• Procedure

• Results

Presenting the results of a simple experiment is quite straightforward, but when the research is complex, care is required. The sequence and presentation of the results will already have been planned. Results must be presented as simply, concisely and clearly as possible.

Reporting statistics can be quite complex and requires careful attention to detail. The results section should present a concise summary of the results of the experiment, usually including descriptive and inferential statistics. In particular, the results section reports the out coming of testing your hypothesis when one is involved.

A point to note is that sources should not be cited in the results section unless there is some particular reason for doing so. This could arise if, for example, some unusual statistical technique were employed.

• Discussion

The discussion should flow on smoothly from the introduction, which ends with the hypothesis to be tested. It follows that the discussion must begin with some comment on whether or not this hypothesis was supported.

Recommended presentation and style requirements for student papers

1. The title of the paper should not appear at the top of the first page.

• A running head is not required.

• All pages, other than the title page and appendices, should be paginated at the top right-hand corner, within the 35 mm top margin. If pagination cannot be readily included, pages on which figures or tables are presented separately may be not paginated. However, they are numbered in that they occupy a particular page in the paper.

• Text should not be right justified.

• When possible, the typeface used throughout a paper (including the title page, should be 12-point Times Roman, with the exception that headings and labels in tables and figures may be in a sans serif typeface such as Arial.

• Headings and major subheadings may be typed in bold face (e.g., References, Method, or Participants).

• When words should be italicised they should be typed in italics, and not underlined.

• Double spacing should be used throughout a paper with the exception that single spacing should be used:

• Within references in a reference list
• For table titles and headings
• For figure captions and labels
• For long quotations,
• For footnotes, and
• In some instances appendices

• Quadruple spacing (i.e., double double-spacing) may be used before any heading – but not subheading - and before and after any figure or table included in a page of text.
• Additional space is not left between paragraphs (i.e., double spacing is maintained throughout the text).
• The first line of each paragraph is indented by five spaces, with the exception of the first line of text in a paper and the first sentence immediately following a heading or sub-heading.
• A double space is left following the end of a sentence.
• Figures and small tables occupying no more than half a page may be included on a page of text, but text may not “flow around” a figure.
• Large figures and tables should be presented on separate pages, as soon as is convenient following the first reference to the table or figure in the text.
• Large figures or tables may be printed “landscape”.
• Paper used should be standard A4 (210 x 297 mm).
• Margins at the top and bottom and on both sides of pages should be 35 mm.
• With the exception of the title page and appendices, pages are paginated at the top right-hand corner.

This content has been taken from The Principles of Writing in Psychology by T.R.Smyth.