Research Paper Continuation: Follow Paper 2 Instructions and write according to instructions (I have attached a sample paper and structured out the format for Paper 2). - I have attached Paper 1 inst

PAPER II 0

Maria Reid

Florida International University

Purpose of Paper II: Study One Method, Results, and Discussion

1). Psychological Purpose

The psychological purpose behind Paper II is to make sure you can tell your reader what you did on your study, how you did it, and what you found. By now you have read several empirical studies in psychology, and you should be familiar with the Method, Results, and Discussion sections. Now is your chance to write Method, Results and Discussion!

Like those prior studies you looked at in Paper I, you will provide information about your participants, materials, and procedure in your Method section. Your participant section goes first, and it includes descriptive statistics about your sample (means and standard deviations for age as well as percentages for gender and race/ethnicity). Your materials and procedure sections include information about what you did and how you did it. You should write this section for an audience who is unfamiliar with your specific study, but assume that they do know research Method. Thus educate your reader about your materials and procedure, giving enough detail so they could replicate the study. This includes explicitly describing your independent and dependent variables and talking about how you presented those variables to your participants. My suggestion is to look over the articles you summarized in Paper I and see how they wrote their Method. This will give you a good idea regarding the level of depth and detail you need in your own Method section.

Your Results section follows. The purpose of this section is to make sure you can show how you analyzed the data and describe what you found. You will have a lot of help in this section from your lab instructors.

Finally, I want you to include a short description of your findings. Tell me if you supported or did not support your hypotheses and explain why you got those results (you can actually speculate here if you like, but make it an “educated” speculation!)

2). APA Formatting Purpose

The second purpose of Paper II: Method, Results and Discussion is to once again teach you proper American Psychological Association (APA) formatting for these sections. In the pages below, I will tell you how to format your paper using APA style. There are a lot of very specific requirements in APA papers (as specific as what to italicize), so pay attention to the instructions below as well as the APA powerpoint on canvas!

3). Writing Purpose

Finally, this paper is intended to help you figure out how to write a Method, Results, and Discussion section. Many students find statistics daunting, but my hope here is that writing this paper will help you understand both the logic and format of statistics in results sections. We will once again give you a lot of feedback and help in this paper, which you help you when you write Papers IV and V later in the course. Make sure that you write this for an audience familiar with APA Method and results, but also for someone who needs you to tell them what you found.

Note: The plagiarism limit is higher in this paper (up to 65%) since your classmates are doing the same design. Don’t go higher than that, though! 65% is the maximum allowed!

Sorry for the length of the instructions! They are long, but take it one section at a time and you will get all of the content you need in your paper and get a great grade!

Method

1. Title Page: I expect the following format (1 point):

   1. The title page for your Paper II is identical to the one you used for Paper I: Literature Review Study One. For proper APA formatting, I suggest you either copy your title page from Paper I or review the title page instructions I gave you in Paper I.

2. Abstract, Graphs, and Tables? These are optional

   1. You DO NOT need an abstract for Paper II: Method, Results, and Discussion (Study One). You can choose to include one if you want, but they will not be graded.

3. Method Section: I expect the following format (15 points):

   1. For this paper, the Method section starts on page 2.

   2. Write Method at the top of this page, make it bold, and center it (see the top of this page as an example!)

   3. The participants section comes next. The word Participants is bolded and left justified. In this section …

      1. Tell me who your participants were (college students, family members, friends?) and how many there were.

         1. Note: If a number starts a sentence, then spell out the number. That is, “Two-hundred and five participants participated in this study.”

         2. If a number is mid-sentence, you can use numerals. “There were 205 participants in this study.”

         3. But keep numbers consistent. If you spell out a number at the start of the sentence, carry that through and spell out other numbers in the sentence.

         4. For statistics, always use numbers (for the mean, SD, %, etc.)

      2. Provide frequencies and descriptive statistics for relevant demographics.

         1. For some variables—like ethnicity and gender—you only need to provide frequency information (the number of participants who fit that category). “There were 100 men (49%) and 105 women (51%) in the study.” Or “The sample was 49% male (n = 100) and 51% female (n = 105).”

         2. Other variables—like age—are continuous (rather than categorical), so use descriptive statistics here (the range, mean, and the standard deviation). “Participants ranged in age from 18 to 77 (M = 24, SD = 3.50).” or “The average age of participants was 24 (SD = 3.50).” Your TA can help you find the mean and standard deviation for this assignment, though information is also available in a lab powerpoint.

         3. Make sure to italicize the n, M, and SD (the letters, not the numbers)

   4. Materials and Procedure

      1. For this section, things are flexible. Some studies include Materials and Procedure in the same section while others break them up into two sections. This is a matter of choice.

         1. In general, the more complex the design, the better it is to split up the Method and results. In one section, the author may describe the materials; in the next, they describe what participants did with those materials (the procedure). This is one option for you. However …

         2. However, your “Paper II: Method, Results and Discussion (Study One)” is simple enough that I strongly recommend combining them into one overall Materials and Procedure section.

      2. Again, the words Materials and Procedure are flush left. In this section …

         1. Provide information about your materials and your procedure.

            1. I suggest starting with your procedure. Tell your reader what your participants did in the order participants did them. Be specific here. I have the following recommendations:

               1. First, talk about the oral informed consent procedure.

               2. Second, talk about the three versions of the Study questionnaire. Provide enough detail so that your readers know how the three conditions differ. As a reader, I need to able to replicate your design, so you need to give me enough detail so I can do so.

               3. Third, talk about your dependent variables (that is, your survey questions. For these dependent variables, once again provide enough detail so I know exactly what questions you asked. For example, “Participants provided their gender, age, and race”. For other dependent variables, tell me how the responses were recorded (yes/no, true/false, a scale of 1 to 6, etc.). If you used a scale, note the endpoints/anchor points. That is, does a 1 mean it is high or is it low? “Participants were asked, ‘How frustrating was this task?’, and they responded on a scale from 1 (very frustrating) to 9 (not at all frustrating).’” Note that the descriptions of the points in the parentheses are in italics. Do not list all of the questions on the questionnaire but you do have to list the ones that you analyzed.

               4. Finally, mention debriefing

   5. There is no set minimum or maximum on the length of the Method section, but I would expect at least a page or two (though probably more. After all, your own research script took up several pages – you should provide a similar level of depth and detail in your Method section!). Missing important aspects of your IVs and DVs or presenting them in a confused manner will lower your score in this section.

4. Results Section: I expect the following format (10 points):

   1. The results are the hardest part of this paper, and your lab powerpoints will help you with this part of the paper (also refer to the crash course statistics quizzes, which walk you through similar analyses!).

   2. First, write Results at the top of this section, center it, and use boldface. This section comes directly at the end of the Method section, so the results section DOES NOT start on its own page.

   3. For this assignment, include statistics about the most important variables in your study, including your IV (See note #3 below) and the DVs you feel are most important to your hypotheses.

   4. For this paper, you must run at least three different analyses on three different dependent variables. One must be a chi square for the question asking participants which to recall the theme of the advertisements (our manipulation check, which looks at the three options for the nominal variable in Part VI). At least one of the remaining two analyses must be a One Way ANOVA (I actually recommend that both of your last two analyses focus on One Way ANOVAs). The third analysis can be either an ANOVA or a t-Test. Since all ten of the Riley Washington impression questions in Part II are scaled 1 to 6, I recommend running ANOVAs on two of those ten dependent variables (on in the sexual category and one in the romance condition). Now, you could run an ANOVA on the question “Riley seems sexy” OR you could run a t-Test on the question “Riley seems sexy”, but because it is the same dependent variable, that only counts as one DV. We count the number of DVs you analyze – NOT the number of statistical tests you run!

      1. Chi square: Your first analysis will be a chi square, which you use if your DV is categorical (yes / no; yes / no / maybe; male / female, or ... in our case, we have our “Theme” based questions in Part IV (See note #3 below). So let’s discuss the chi square, which does not look at means but rather counts how many responses there are compared to how many you would expect.

         1. Consider the DV in Part VI of your questionnaire Here, you can run a chi square looking at the frequencies of the three answer options

         2. We are interested in the chi square (χ2) and p value. We also provide percentages for each of our groups (rather than means and SD).

            1. “Using the priming condition as our independent variable (Sexuality, Romance, or Education) and the general ad theme participants recalled seeing as the dependent variable, we saw a significant effect, χ2(4) = 68.49, p < .05. Most participants in the sexuality condition recalled see an ad theme based on sexuality (98%); most participants in the romance condition recalled see ads about romance (96%); and most participants in education condition recalled seeing ads about education (90%). This indicates that participants saw our manipulation as intended.”

            2. Make sure to italicize the χ and p

            3. Make sure to use the greek letter χ or the English equivalent, which is Chi square. Do not use X.

            4. Your p value must be reported as p <.05 if it is insignificant. If it is not significant, then the exact value should be reported, e.g. p = .21

      2. ANOVA: Since you have a condition independent variable with three levels (e.g. Sexuality, Romance, or Education), the most appropriate test is a One-Way ANOVA if your DV is scaled (like a 0 to 6 scale or a 1 to 6 scale). Your lab and lecture powerpoints show you how to conduct an ANOVA, but there are some guidelines I want to give you about how to write your results. Below, I am going to walk you through one analysis specific to this paper. However, keep in mind that you can run ANOVAs on several different DVs.

         1. First, there are several dependent variables to choose from. For my example analysis below, I want to focus on Part II in your survey. Since each of the ten questions in Part II are scaled variables that range from 1 to 6, each uses an interval scale, which is perfect for an ANOVA. (Other questions we can look at are all of those ranging from 1 to 6 in Part III).

         2. Second, given that this study has one IV with three levels and one DV that is on a continuous (ratio or interval) scale, a One-Way ANOVA is the best test to use to see if there are significant differences among the levels. We look first at the ANOVA table (or F table) and focus on the between subject factor. We note the degrees of freedom, the F value itself, and the p value. (We’ll get into two-way ANOVAs later in this course, but here we only have one independent variable, so it is a one-way ANOVA. Yes, we have three levels to our IV, but it is still only one IV).

         3. If the p value is significant (less than .05), we have one more step to take. Since this is a three level IV, we need to compare mean A to mean B, mean A to mean C, and mean B to mean C. We do this using a post hoc test (try using Tukey!). That will tell us which of the means differ significantly. You then write up the results. For example, let’s say I ran an ANOVA on the dependent variable “Riley seems sexy”. My write up would look like this (though note: I completely made up the data below, so don’t copy the numbers but you can copy the format!) …

            1. “Using the priming condition (Sexuality v. Romance v. Education) as our independent variable and ratings of “Riley seems sexy” as the dependent variable, we found a significant condition effect, F(2, 203) = 4.32, p < .05. Tukey post hoc tests showed that participants thought Riley seemed more sexy in the sexual condition (M = 4.56, SD = 1.21) than participants in both the romance (M = 2.24, SD = 0.89) and education (M = 2.23, SD = 0.77) conditions. The romance and education conditions, however, did not differ from each other.”

               1. Note there are lots of possible outcomes. The one above essentially says that condition S (Sexuality) differed from R (Romance) and E (Education), but that R and E did not differ from each other (In other words, S ≠ R = E). However, we might also find that NONE of the three conditions differ from each other (S = R = E) or we might find that ALL conditions differ from each other (S ≠ R ≠ E).

               2. As an example for this latter (S ≠ R ≠ E), I would predict no differences between the three conditions for the dependent variables “Riley seems educated” and “Riley seems outgoing”

            2. Make sure to italicize the F, p, M, and SD (as in the example)

            3. Pretty simple, right! I suggest going back and doing this same procedure for at least one additional scaled DV .

            4. However, if you choose you can do a t-Test on one of those other dependent variables as well. Here’s how:

      3. t-Test: If you have only two levels to your IV (e.g. Sexuality or Education only), things are even more simple.

         1. Here, you will run a t-Test (a t-Test looks at differences between only two groups). Again, your lab presentations tell you how to run this, but you can do it on your own as well (you can even run this if your study originally has three levels to the IV – when you go into the t-Test menu in SPSS, choose “define groups” and select 1 and 3 (Sexuality = 1 and Education = 3). This will let you look at two of the groups! You could also select “2 and 3” or “1 and 2” where the Romance condition = 2).

         2. Rather than an F value, we will look at the t value in the t-Test data output. Here, we have one number for the degree of freedom, we have the t value, and we have the p value.

         3. The nice thing about a t-Test is that since you only have two groups, you do not need a post hoc test like Tukey (you only need that if you have to compare three means. Here, we only have two means, so we can just look at them and see which one is higher and which is lower when our t-Test is significant). Then just write it up …

            1. “Using the priming condition (Sexuality v. Education) as our independent variable and ratings of “Riley seems sexy” as our dependent variable, we found a significant condition effect, t(203) = 8.12, p < .05. Participants rated Riley as more sexy in the sexuality condition (M = 5.56, SD = 1.21) than participants in the education condition (M = 2.23, SD = 0.77).”

            2. Repeat for other dependent variables

            3. Make sure to italicize the t, p, M , and SD (as in the example)

      4. Statistics order recommendation: For this paper, start your results section with the chi square (your manipulation check). Then talk about your main analyses. Make sure the analyses line up with your hypotheses.

   5. There is no page minimum or maximum for the results section, though I would expect it to be at least one paragraph for each dependent variable

5. Appendices (4 points)

   1. I want to make sure you are including the correct numbers in your results section, so I want you to include all tables for each of your analyses in a series of appendices. Your tables must be in APA format.

      1. Appendix A: Include your tables for the percentages from your chi square and the crosstabs as well as the chi square statistics

      2. Appendix B: Include your tables for the means for your both dependent variables as well as the ANOVA statistics for ANOVA

      3. Appendix C (only if you did a t test): Include your tables for the means for your dependent variable as well as the t test statistics for a t test, if you did this.

   2. APA formatted tables must have a heading and a title. The heading should be something like Table 1, Table 2. The title should tell me what type of statistics used, the dependent and the independent variable. I should not have to look back at the text to know what is in the table. Here is an example of a good title: Means of depression scores by gender.

   3. APA tables do not have any vertical lines and a minimal of horizontal lines. A line at the top and bottom and one setting off the header.

6. Discussion Study One (2 points)

   1. In this section, tell me about your findings and if they did or did not support your results. It might help to refer back to your hypotheses “We expected to find A but instead found B” or “We expected to find A and our results supported this hypothesis.” Explain using plain English why you think your study turned out the way it did.

   2. IMPORTANT – Do NOT give me statistics again here. I can find those in your results section. Here, all I want is a plain English summary of your findings.

   3. Also, don’t give me results for a DV if you did not run an analysis on that DV. Only tell me about the results you actually looked at in the results section.

   4. There is no length requirement for this section, but I recommend at least four or five sentences

7. Overall writing quality (3 points)

   1. Make sure you check your paper for proper spelling and grammar. The FIU writing center is available if you want someone to look over your paper (an extra eye is always good!) and give you advice. I highly recommend them, as writing quality will become even more important on future papers. I also recommend visiting the FIU Research Method Help Center if you need additional guidance with writing or statistical analyses.

Other Guidelines for Paper II – Method and Results (Study One)

• Page size is 8 1/2 X 11” with all 4 margins should be one inch.

• PLEASE use a spell checker to avoid unnecessary errors. Proofread everything you write. I actually recommend reading some sentences aloud to see if they flow well, or getting family or friends to read your work.

• Use the Paper II Checklist on the next page before you turn in your paper to make sure it is the best paper you can write!

Checklist – Paper II: Study One Method, Results, and Discussion

Use the check sheet below to make sure your paper is the best it can be! Make sure you answer “Yes” to all questions before submitting your paper! The first two sections duplicate the Paper I checklist, but those elements in purple are unique to you Method / Results / Discussion Paper II