Writing Empirical Psychology Papers (for Beginners)

Please note:  The below reviews the commonly accepted practices in writing an empirical APA-style paper (6th Ed).
However, it was originally written for a specific class.  Remember to refer back to your own assignment and your professor for more information.
A Word about APA Style
Additional Links

Overall Shape of the Paper

Daryl Bem (download a PDF of his chapter here) suggests that crafting a well-written empirical article is like "telling a story."  Your story has a beginning that sets up the primary problem to be solved (the Introduction). The primary problem is the gap in the existing research, or the question that is unanswered by existing research. You will be explaining that question, and why it is important, to the reader. Your story has a middle (the Method), a climax (the Results) and an end (the Discussion).  Although your language will remain formal and you must attend to the proper content required by APA-style, your paper will probably turn out better if you keep this notion of story-telling in mind as you write. Never forget that you are communicating with an audience through your paper.

A well-written article should be shaped like an hourglass. That is, the Introduction begins very broadly by introducing the topic and defining terms, and then begins to narrow to more specifically focus on the variables in your study. At the end of the introduction, the paper is at its most specific (or "narrow") in that the Method and Results both provide extremely focused information about your study.  The Discussion begins by reviewing your specific findings, but then starts to slowly broaden out again as the implications are discussed. By the end of the Discussion, the paper has become as broad in focus as it was at the beginning of the Introduction.  Thus, an hourglass shape.

Introduction

 Use the following as a guideline for what to include in the introduction and how to organize it.

(1) Try to capture the reader’s interest right away in the first few statements. You want to introduce your topic.  One way to do this is by posing an interesting question. You do not have to summarize your entire argument in this first paragraph. It is mostly a stylistic paragraph to orient the reader to the general topic and your question. It would be easiest to write this paragraph after you've finished the rest of the paper. (For more on this, see the section on "Opening Statements" at: http://dbem.ws/WritingArticle.pdf)

(2) The main goal in the introduction is to provide a review of the relevant psychological literature, providing definitions and past research findings that inform the reader on your topic. Your goal is for the reader to understand the need for more research in the area (i.e., your proposed study), and to be able to clearly see the reasoning for your hypothesis. You should organize this section of your paper in such a way that you logically build to your study. You aren't just citing research, you are crafting a line of reasoning which leads to your research question. Avoid simply summarizing each of the different studies you read in a “list” type format. Remember this is a paper and you need to present information in a coherent way that moves from the broad to the specific, and in a way that leads the reader to the gap or question in the literature that you’ve noticed. You can accomplish this goal in many ways (look through multiple published articles for ideas), but you might try the below as a starting point:

Citations:

Throughout the entire paper, remember to provide a citation for any information that is not your own idea (including information from textbooks).  Put the citation at the very first mention of the cited material (not, for example, at the end of the paragraph).  Read and follow the guidelines on in-text citations found at the web page: Finding, Reading, and Citing Sources and consult the APA Manual.

Method

All method sections need three basic categories of information:

Participants – who was in your study and did they volunteer or get some sort of course credit.

Materials – what were your measured variables (a.k.a. operational definitions)

Procedure – what exactly did you do (literally during the study session)

You may choose to use three different heading for this information (as presented in the example below), or you might want to combine procedures and materials into one section.  Format the method section however it works best for you – but be sure to put participant information first and in its own section. Write in the past tense.

The below example should help provide you with some commonly used (conventional) ways of writing out this information.

Results

The results section is where you tell the reader several things about your data and data analysis.  First, provide basic descriptive information about the scales you used (report the mean and standard deviation for each scale).  If you have more than 3 or 4 variables in your paper, you might want to put this descriptive information in a table to keep the text from being too choppy and bogged down (see the APA manual for ideas on creating good tables).  Most central to the Results section, you tell the reader what statistics you conducted to test your hypothesis (-es) and what the results indicated. 

Include the following, in this order, in your results section:

• In some papers, the Results section begins with the descriptive statistics for the relevant variables (e.g., mean, standard deviation). The statistics you present in this first paragraph should be overall means for the entire sample rather than means broken down by condition. Again, you want a single mean and standard deviation for each (continuous) variable. You do not want a mean for each condition for each variable. You will provide the means by condition later. Also, remember that you cannot claim one number is higher or lower than another without a significance test. Save those types of comparisons for later sections.
• Provide a brief rephrasing of your hypothesis(es) (avoid exact restatement).  Then tell the reader what statistical test you used to test your hypothesis and what you found. If you did more than one test, report each test in its entirety (what you did and the results), one at a time.
• For each test:
• Explain which findings were in the predicted direction, and which were not (if any).  Were differences statistically significant (i.e., p =.05 or below)?  Don't merely give the statistical numbers without a supporting sentence. 
• You cannot use statistics as though they were parts of speech (i.e., nouns). For example do not write  “The correlation between private self-consciousness and college adjustment was r(60) = - .26, p = .01.”  Instead, translate important data for the reader into words and provide the statistics as evidence for your reported results.
• For example, “The negative correlation between private self-consciousness and college adjustment indicated that increased self-consciousness, predicted poor adjustment, r(60) = - .26, p = .01."
• However, don't try to interpret why you got the results you did.  Leave that to the Discussion.
• You should also include an effect size statistic (if you know what that is and how to compute it). When comparing means (t-test or ANOVA), the "d" is usually appropriate. When reporting correlations, Pearson's "r" is the effect size.

Tips:

• Note that for t-test and ANOVA findings, the "result" consists of the following in the following order: (1) the t (or F), degrees of freedom, the p value, and the effect size; and, if significant, (2) the means. In other words, keep the means together with the related significance tests.  In addition, for two or three way ANOVA results, you should first provide all of the relevant information (including means if significant) for each of the main effects (including indicating non-significant effects), and then report on interactions (including indicating non-significant interactions).
• Examine this document for more information about how to report statistics in a result section or consult the APA Manual.
• If your result was non- significant, but p < .10, it is commonly accepted to still talk about the results.  You might write something like the following text in your paper:  “While the correlation was not significant using the standard alpha level of .05, the p-value was less than .10; r (49) = .23, p = .08.”  BUT, you must provide a rationale for why you should still be able to discuss this non-significant correlation (e.g., power, effect size issues).  You may cautiously interpret such a correlation. Don’t make grand conclusions or use strong language based on the existence of a marginally significant finding. Also, you should indicate that a marginal finding is non-significant in a table; only refer to the statistic as “approaching significance” in the text of the paper.
• If putting your statistics in the body of your results section seems to make the section difficult to read (i.e., if you feel the reader is distracted from your results by too many numbers and statistics), consider putting the statistics in a table.  For example, with simple bivariate correlations, you should create a correlation matrix (see the link below under Tables for an example).  If you include a table, you should, in the text of the result section, refer readers to your table instead of typing out the statistics for each finding. (See below for Tables.)
• You need to report the actual statistics in some way in your result section, but regardless of whether you use a table or type the statistics in the text, you should put sentences describing the results in this section.
  
  
  • E.g.  “As expected, college adjustment was positively correlated with the amount of contact with friends and family members (see Table 1).”  
  • E.g.  “No significant relationship was found between the importance of one's social life and social adjustment to college, r = -.11, n.s.
  • E.g. “As shown in Table 1, some of my predictions were supported.  There was a significant correlation between extroversion and life satisfaction.  However, life satisfaction was not significantly related to college adjustment.”
  
  
• It is helpful to write the words of the results section first, and then go back to insert the numbers and statistical information.  Really - write the words only first.  Then go back and add numbers.

Tables

If you are using Microsoft Word as your word processor, create the table, then you can adjust the "borders and shading" for each cell/row/column to get the table formatted properly. Another tip is to play around with double-spacing and/or using the "Format" "Paragraph" "Spacing before/after" features.  Other word processors, PowerPoint and Excel can produce similar tables. Do not use Figures or Tables produced by SPSS.

Click on this link to see 2 examples (PDF). 

See the APA Manual for more specific instructions for certain kinds of tables.

Discussion 

• Provide a very brief summary of the most important parts of the introduction and then the results sections. In doing so, you should relate the results to the theories you introduced in the Introduction. Your findings are just one piece among many -- resist the tendency to make your results the final story about the  phenomenon or theory of interest.  Integrate the results and try to make sense of the pattern of the findings.
• In the case of a correlational project, be careful to not use causal language to discuss your results – unless you did an experiment you cannot infer causality. However, it would be impossible to fully discuss the implications of your results without making reference to causality. That is fine. Just don't claim that your results themselves are demonstrating causality.
• Talk about any limitations relevant to the interpretation of your findings (all studies have weaknesses/qualifications).
  
  
  • If your results did support your hypothesis, the limitations section often includes a discussion of possible "third variable" explanations, unmeasured mediators, and/or issues with the generalizability of your results. 
  • If your results did not support your hypothesis, the section on limitations often includes discussion of various features of the study which might be responsible (e.g., operational definitions, self-report biases, unmeasured moderator variables, the size or composition of the sample). Where possible, support your speculation with references.
  
  
• BE SPECIFIC when discussing limitations.  For example, if you claim that a third variable might affect your correlation, tell the reader what that third variable is and how it affect the results. If you think that the use of a convenience sample (and thus, a non-representative/random sample) is a limitation, you must explain what segment of the population might respond differently than did the participants in your sample and why.
• Discuss about future directions that research could take to further investigate your question. This might relate back to any weaknesses you’ve mentioned above (or reasons why the results didn’t turn out as expected).  Future directions may also include interesting next steps in the research.
• A discussion section is about “what we have learned so far”; and “where we should go next”;  Your final conclusion should talk briefly about the broader significance of your findings.  What do they imply about human nature or some aspect of it? (Don't wildly speculate, however!) Leave the reader feeling like this is an important topic.  You will likely refer back to your opening paragraph of the introduction here and have partial answers or more specific responses to the questions you posed.

Other Parts of the Paper

Title page -  Try to write a title that maximally informs the reader about the topic, without being ridiculously long; 10-12 words is the maximum recommended by APA. Use titles of articles you've read as examples of form. Also provide the RUNNING HEAD (an abbreviated title that appears in the header of each page along with the page number). Provide your name and institutional affiliation (e.g., Muhlenberg College). Format as per APA style.

Abstract: Write the abstract LAST. An abstract is a super-short summary and is difficult to write.

In 250 words or less your abstract should describe:

    --the topic of research (an "introduction" type sentence)

    --the specific question and method of doing so (a "method" type sentence)

    --the results (no numbers, just words)

    --a hint about the general direction the discussion section takes

References: Use APA style.  See your APA manual, textbook and/or a sample paper for examples of how to cite and how to make a reference list.  Make sure that all references mentioned in the text are also mentioned in the reference list and vice versa. Also see Finding, Reading and Citing psychology sources for information.

Tables and/or Figures:  Use APA style. Tables go at the very end of your paper.  Make sure you refer to the table or figure in the text of your paper. 

Other useful links: 

Finding, Reading and Citing Psychology Articles- help with PSYCHINFO, reference pages and other citation issues

Writing Empirical Papers: Advanced (PDF)

General Writing Tips on Writing Psychology Papers

Avoiding Inappropriate Paraphrasing

More Writing and APA Style Links

Information about purchasing an APA Manual

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