Running Head: SHORT VERSION of TITLE

First Words

10

Running Head: SHORT VERSION OF TITLE

The Effect of the Independent Variable(s)

on the Dependent Variable(s)

Your Name

Butler University

Word Count: 1734

Abstract

The abstract is a brief summary of the research report. It is placed on the second page of your paper and is double-spaced with no paragraph indentation under the centered heading, "Abstract." An abstract should be concise, specific, and non-evaluative. It should include the research goals or questions of interest and should summarize who your subjects were, what they did, the results, and the discussion or implications. As a rule of thumb, abstracts should be about 100 words long.

The Effects of the Independent Variable(s)

on the Dependent Variable(s)

The introduction begins on the third page of your paper, and the title of your paper is centered and typed immediately above the text. The purpose of the introduction is to show how the experimenter arrived at the specific problems being considered in the present experiment. It is here that the writer develops the argument for performing the experiment. First, describe each of the problems in their broadest or most general context and follow with more specific information about the issues that must be considered. The main thrust of the introduction is to explain why the study was conducted and why certain independent and dependent variables were used when the experiment was carried out. Because this is a lab report and you were assigned the experiment is not the reason that is to be given here. Instead, you should develop an argument for why the research is needed with these particular variables, and then should proceed with the logic that seems most appropriate; usually lab studies are attempts to replicate previous findings.

To support you reasoning, specific works by other investigators should be cited when appropriate. It is appropriate to cite another investigator when 1) you wish to paraphrase or state in other words what that investigator has written; or 2) if you simply cannot restate what that investigator said because he or she said something very well or very concisely. Then you may quote that investigator's statements. In either case, these works are referenced at the time they are mentioned in your introduction. Wherever you decide to mention these works, the placement of the reference should not distract the reader as he or she tries to make sense of your introduction. A citation could be put (Lachman, Lachman, & Butterfield, 1979) somewhere near the beginning of the sentence; or at the end (Sperling, 1963). Note, too, that when works with more than one author are referenced in parentheses, they are listed with an ampersand (&) between their names, rather than "and." This is to save space.

When two studies need to be mentioned at the same time, a semi-colon is used to separate them (Turvey, 1978, p. 200; Sperling, 1963). Every time a work is mentioned by you, it must be referenced or cited, even if it was referenced earlier in the text. When referencing a book or when quoting another author directly (Lachman et. al., 1979, p. 148), it is necessary to include the page number where the information can be found. Another space-saver is when reciting a reference with more than two authors by only listing the first author's full name and adding "et. al.," which means "and others," as in the above reference. Finally, you may wish to cite a work that you have not actually read, but which you feel is important to your argument. This should only be done very rarely. If you find that you need to cite this reference a great deal, you should look up the reference and read it yourself. In this type of citation, you only list the name(s) of the author(s), and then you list the author(s) and date of the work from which you got your information; for instance: Darwin, Turvey and Crowder (cited in Howard, 1983, p. 359) found that Sperling's (1963) procedure worked equally well for auditory information.

After you have built a strong argument that includes a description of the independent and dependent variables, the background research is linked to the present study (which you will be describing in the Methods section), by stating the hypotheses--what is expected to happen as a result of the experimental manipulation based on the argument you have developed. The hypotheses should be stated in the form of: If such and such is the case, then this result is predicted or expected. You might also use, It was hypothesized that subjects in one condition would perform differently on the dependent measure than subjects in the other condition. Hypotheses in the introduction should not be stated in null format. There should be at least one hypothesis for each independent and dependent variable in the study.

Method

Participants

Describe the participants used in the study. Any important characteristics should be listed. Include the number of males and females, the ages or age range of the subjects, why they agreed to participate, etc.

Materials

The equipment and the materials used in the study are described in a few sentences. Unless the equipment is custom-built or interconnected in some importantly different way, a simple description by device and manufacturer is usually enough; for example, a Sony stereo tape recorder, or Apple Macintosh iBook computer.

The stimuli that were used should also be described in enough detail that someone reading the description could replicate the experiment using the same materials. You should describe the number of stimuli in each condition, how they were selected, how they differed from stimuli in other conditions, and how they were presented. For example, you should describe the number of stimuli used in the Müller-Lyer lab, how many right and left trials were used, how the stimuli were arranged on the screen.

Procedure

All the important details of the procedure must be described so that readers could replicate the experiment. Provide a complete description of the overall plan of the experiment and a step-by-step listing of the task that the subject has to perform, including the instructions that were given to the subjects. This is also the place to describe the time course of stimuli presentation for the computer labs.

Results

Obviously, this section's purpose is to describe the results. Results sections should generally start with a refresher of what the independent and dependent variable(s) of the study were and then describe what analyses were performed such as t-tests or ANOVAs. The results section is no place for raw data. Present the data in reduced or analyzed form, like means and standard deviations of the dependent variables broken down by condition. If you have just a couple of numbers to present, they can be incorporated into the text as in "There was a difference in the sample means for digit (M = 8.3, Sd = 1.2) and letter (M= 7.2, Sd = 1.3) spans." If you have more numbers to present, you should include them in a Table or Figure and refer to them in the text as is "Mean recall scores for all conditions are presented in Figure 1." The results of statistical analyses should be presented in the text of the results section as in "A within group t-test was used to compare subjects mean performance on digit and letter span. This test showed that mean digit span was significantly different from mean letter span (t(7) = 5.67, p < .05)."

Figures and tables are not presented in the text of your paper but at the end of the report after the references. Graphs and pictures are called Figures and are numbered consecutively throughout the document. If you present a figure in the report then it must be refered to in the text as is: mean memory span for all conditions is presented in Figure 1. Numbers and results presented in tabular form are refered to as tables and are number consecutively and must also be explicitly refered to in the text. For example, mean number of words recalled for both "hello" and repeat trials is presented in in Table 1. As a final note, the result section is not the place to discuss the the implication of the results but to simply describe them. It may be a difficult decision to decide what is description and what is discussion. To make the distinction more clear, think of description as the process of guiding the reader through the results, pointing out the most important points, but you don't tell the reader why these are important until you get to the Discussion, where you then discuss or interpret these important or main points.

Discussion

The study was run to answer some questions. The Introduction laid out the logic as to why certain things should happen or would be expected to happen. The Results described what did happen. The purpose of this section is to relate the results to the hypotheses and to the studies discussed in the introduction.

If the results came out as expected, then this should be stated after summarizing the logic in the introduction. If the results did not turn out as expected, then reasons for why this might have occurred should be presented. There may be other studies which were not discussed in the Introduction section that predict the unexpected results. These studies should be discussed, and the results explained in terms of their predictions.

Finally, the discussion section may include improvements for future studies and ideas for new studies which will examine further topics of interest.

References

Craik, F.I.M. and Lockhart, R. S. (1972). Levels of processing: A framework for memory research. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 11, 671-684. As cited in , B. H. Kantowitz, H. L. Roediger, H. L. & D. G. Elmes (1997). Experimental Psychology: Understanding Psychological Research (6th ed.). Minneapolis/St.Paul, MN: West Publishing Company.

Lachman, R., Lachman, J. L., & Butterfield, E. C. (1979). Cognitive psychology and information processing: An introduction (pp. 130-160). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Sperling, G. (1963). A model for visual memory tasks. Human Factors, 5, 19-31.

Turvey, M. T. (1978). Visual processing and short-term memory. In W. K. Estes (Ed.), Handbook of learning and cognitive processes, Vol. 5 (pp. 197-218). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.

Table 1

Mean (and standard deviation) memory span as a function of type of material and order of presentation.

Order

Material Letters First Digits First

Letters 6.44 (1.4) 6.25 (2.2)

Digits 7.75 (1.5) 8.25 (1.2)

Figure Caption

Figure 1 Mean memory span as a function of type of material and order of presentation.