1

Interesting Title

Your name (Student number) and Partner Name (Student number)

PSY100

PRA_ _ _

Instructor: Will Huggon

Date due

The title page has only the title, authors and course information on it. The title is capitalized and

centered. If the partners do not wish to share the grade then each author must indicate the half

they were responsible for (First Half which is the Introduction and Method, or the Second Half

which is the Results and Discussion) along with their student I.D. and Lab section numbers. The

title should describe the nature of the experiment in a minimum number of words.
 2

This is the introduction to your paper. Notice that there is no introduction heading. For

the rest of the paper, there are headings, just not for the introduction. The introduction starts on a

new page providing a statement of the objectives of the research, a summary of relevant studies

in the literature, specific hypotheses that are being tested and a justification or rationale for the

predicted outcome (so your IVs and hypothesizes plus rationale). Please note that for our

reports, we do NOT ask you to do a literature review. You could cite relevant sections from

the textbook, however this is not required. If you do, it looks like this: the first time you cite an

author, use all the authors’ names (Huggon, Huggon, & Huggon, 2011). The next time you cite

the same authors, just use the first author’s name (Huggon et al., 2011). See the Reference

section below. The only time you use page numbers in a cite is when you are doing a direct quote

from someone; for example: quoting the students, the teaching style of Huggon was “amazing”

(Huggon et al., 2011, p. 11) – but you should probably just paraphrase (put it into your own

words and cite that way).

Method

The method section should be concise yet complete enough that a reader could replicate

your study exactly. The participants employed, the materials used and the procedures followed

all have their own subsections.

Participants/Design

All relevant details about the participants in the study need to be detailed. Typically, with

human participants, one reports the number of participants, their gender, mean age, and any other

attributes that would affect the outcome of the study. For instance, if you were studying the

difference between left and right handers you would need to report the number of each type you

had.
 3

Materials

All materials and equipment are described including essential components and how they

were put together. For our purposes you would describe the stimuli employed and how they were

displayed.

Consent form. A verbal consent is used. It was awesome (see Appendix A).

Next material. Eorihowehi

Next material. Dskhsdf ksdhskdhfskdh skfhsdhsdkhs

Procedure

The exact procedures must be carefully described so that the reader can interpret the

outcome of the study and replicate it if desired. To use the handedness example, the reader would

need to know which hand participants were using in which experimental conditions. Describe the

participants' task and task instructions. Use the past tense when describing what you did as well

as when reporting results in the next section.

Results

Simply describe the results of experiment in the Results section. Use tables or figures

(graphs) to summarize the data, and refer to them when writing a general overview of the main

findings. This is not the time to offer an interpretation or speculation. Keep to the facts. Spend

time thinking about how to present the data unambiguously and prepare rough copies of your

tables and/or figures before you write the text. The final copies of tables or figures must be

clearly labelled and titled.

-------------------------------
Insert Table 1 about here
-------------------------------
 4

At the end of the paragraph where the table or figure is first referred to place the Insert

instructions exactly as shown above. Each table or figure must appear on its own page at the end

of the report. Follow the example of a journal article for format guidelines. In figures, the

independent variable goes on the horizontal axis (abscissa) and the dependent variable goes on

the vertical axis (ordinate). Label the axes clearly and include a legend to show what the different

symbols represent.

Discussion

The discussion allows you to interpret the results, examine the factors that determined the

outcome, and state whether your hypotheses were supported. Start with a brief statement about

the major findings, and then discuss each result in the order that they were presented in the

Results section. Although beyond the scope of these reports, one normally compares the

experiment to relevant studies in the literature and comments on how the outcome would be

explained by existing theories. If you have a finding that you can't explain tell the reader and

offer some speculations. The discussion should also describe any shortcomings in the design or

procedures and suggest improvements or directions for further study. End with a clear statement

about the conclusions warranted by the main findings.

 5

References

American Psychological Association. (2009). Publication manual of the American Psychological

Association (6th ed.). Washington, D.C. Author.

Huggon, W., Huggon, T., & Huggon, P. (2011). How to write a good study proposal. Journal of

Awesome APA Writing Style, 1(5), 1-4.

Weiten, W. and McCann, T., (2012). Psychology: Themes and Variations (Third Canadian

Edition), Belmont, Wadsworth/Thomson Learning.

You do not need any references for this report. In general though, when you refer to an

article or book in a research paper indicate the reference at that point (Weiten & McCann, 2012).

If you reference any publication you must have read it to cite it. If you cite a personal

communication (e.g., a lecture or email) with Dr. Urbszat, Dr. Huggon, or your lab instructor

then you do not include a reference (since there is no published record or data) but you do

include a citation as follows (W. Huggon, personal communication, January 7th, 2013) in the

body of your paper.

References appear on their own page at the end of the paper. For future purposes you can

refer to the APA publication Manual or visit their website (www.apa.org). See also:

http://blog.apastyle.org/apastyle/2010/11/how-to-cite-something-you-found-on-a-website-in-

apastyle.

Html http://www.apastyle.org/learn/faqs/cite-individual-email.aspx
 6

Figures or Tables or Graphs

 7

Appendix A

stimuli that were used in detail (like your full instructions)

 8

Appendix B

"The authors are guaranteeing that all subjects employed in the study were read the

INFORMED CONSENT INSTRUCTIONS and gave their oral consent to participate in

this research."

Your raw data clearly labelled so that the reader can follow your design (grid: 8 subjects x 4

conditions)