question archive Write a full report for a quantitative study, following guidelines from your Level 4 and Level 5 Research Methods modules and in Assessed Work in Psychology (AWiP)
Write a full report for a quantitative study, following guidelines from your Level 4 and Level 5 Research Methods modules and in Assessed Work in Psychology (AWiP)
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Write a full report for a quantitative study, following guidelines from your Level 4 and Level 5 Research Methods modules and in Assessed Work in Psychology (AWiP). Read and follow the AWiP, in particular the Section called “Writing Reports on Quantitative Research” pp 19-28. Each of the sub-sections in that section gives useful advice. Also see the marking criteria for this report: Marking Rubric. This gives you advice on what to include.
Important: You can discuss your ideas and analysis in your seminar group– however, you MUST work individually at the analysis and write-up otherwise you run the risk of an Assessment Offence allegation.
Structure of your report:
Your report should be arranged under the standard headings and sub-headings (see below).
Each section - except for the title - should start with the name of the section.
Title Page: your report title and word count (excluding references and appendices).
Title
Abstract
Introduction
Method
Design
Participants
Materials (or questionnaire)
Procedure
Data analysis
Ethical Issues
Results
Discussion
References
Appendices
You should consider appropriate and up-to-date theory and research in order to present literature and basic data about your chosen research topic.
Reviewing the literature:
Remember, you need to explain your rationale for your choice of predictors, and you should substantiate this by drawing on the relevant research literature.
Your topic should indicate an identifiable body of literature, including relevant papers which you can review for your Introduction, and then discuss in relation to your own findings in your Discussion. You are not expected to provide a comprehensive review of the related literature, but you should be aware of the key relevant ‘problems’ and issues etc. that are indicated in a selection of relevant studies, theories etc.
Tips for writing a literature review
- Read widely around your topic.
- Ask questions about your topic which you hope to answer in your review.
- Record the source of your information along with the details that you have found.
- Note that the intext citation for APA style consists of the author/s’ name and the date in brackets
- Use terms such as ‘the authors present”, “the article shows that” to demonstrate that what you are saying refers back to that author and is not your own ideas.
Appendices:
These should include:
- A copy of the scales you are using for your report.
- The SPSS outputs for statistical tests and for any assumption checking.
Avoiding plagiarism
Never use other people’s words – always makes notes in your own words, and then construct your own work. You should always try to understand the material, and then summarise in your own words. Follow the ‘avoiding plagiarism’ advice given in previous modules.
Additional Point: Remember that if you include a lot of material in quotation marks with proper referencing, that is not plagiarism. However, it will not gain you a good mark because you are unlikely to have shown sufficient evidence of your own knowledge. In general quotations are not required, and if used should be very few and short.
Marking rubric
This is available in the Assessment folder on BB.
FAQs
Participant information
Q: When writing the Participants / Procedure section, do we explain that the data was collected collectively between students (each student was responsible to collect 5 participants), or do we write it as if I (the researcher) individually recruited all the participants?
A: This should be reported factually and briefly. Students should briefly describe the aims and scope of the full survey (as in to collect different viewpoints of people 18 years and over on current affairs, gender roles, attitudes to same sex marriage, climate change, social attitudes to mental health and religion/spirituality). They should explain that the data was collected as part of ready-made Qualtrics survey (name the survey) for which each student was expected to recruit 5 participants.
Questions on scales
Q: For the materials section of the report do we need to mention all of the scales that made up the University of Westminster diversity attitudes survey or just the ones we are considering in our hypothesis?
A: It's fine to refer only to the ones you used in your hypothesis.
Q: When reference the scales, do I use the Psychtests citation or the source?
A: You should reference the source when citing the scales.
Q: When I put the scales that I used in the appendix, for the ones with subscales, do I just put the questions that I used, or do I still put all of the questions from the scale?
A: Either is fine - as long as it is clear which sub-scale you used.
Reporting Cronbach’s alpha
Q: Do I report Cronbach’s alpha in materials or results?
A: Different journals and researchers report these in different places. You won't be penalised if you report this in the methods or the results sections. If you also wanted to report the Cronbach's alpha from the original authors (if this is available) you could include that in the methods when you describe the scale; and then report Cronbach's alpha for your data in the results.
Q: Do we need to include the SPSS output for our Cronbach's alpha values in the appendix?
A: Yes, you should include all SPSS outputs for any analyses conducted for your report. That is, all those mentioned in the main report.
Q: Is it normal to have negative values in the inter-item correlation for Cronbach alpha and a low Cronbach value?
A: It is possible to have a low Cronbach's alpha value. However, do check that you have included the reversed items for a scale or sub-scale; also ensure that if the scale you are using has sub-scales that you have calculated Cronbach's alpha for just the sub-scale and not all the items in the scale. If after checking for this and you still have a low Cronbach's alpha value, then simply report this.
Computing and reversing
Q: When I'm looking at the means in descriptives for my data, I had to compute the sum for one of my scales, but the mean for the other two, this makes the value very high for one scale compared to the others, so I am confused as to what I would report.
A: Some scales (or subscales) are calculated using means and others sum. You simply report these as usual when describing your data. See Calculating Variables for further details.
Q: When reverse coding variables in SPSS when you have two different scales, they have different values; one scale is 1-5, another is 1-7 and SPSS won’t let you do two lots of reversing. What do I do?
A: For scales (questionnaires) which use a different Likert scales you need to do this separately. So, you can do all those items which need reversing on a 5 -point scale. And then after clicking on the 'reset' button you can reverse those on a 7-point scale.
Results
Q; Will we be deducted marks if our overall model is not significant or we didn't find significant values between our predictors and DV?
A: marks will not be deducted for results which are not significant.
Missing data
Q: How should we deal with missing age and sex data?
A: It's up to you whether you keep these cases in or remove them. It may depend on whether you use either of these variables within your regression analysis.
Reporting positive and negative coefficients
Q: If one of the predictor variables has a negative coefficient could that mean that the predictor variable is not significant?
A: It is the p value that tells us whether or not a particular value is significant.
Do revisit what you learned in previous modules about positive and negative coefficients - whether for correlation or regression analyses.
Tables
Q: It says the final report should include table of correlations. Is this referring to the output from the multiple regression?
A: This refers to a table of correlations of your DV and IVs. If you selected for this to be included when you conducted your multiple linear regression - then yes, otherwise you can do this separately.
Q: Do we need tables for everything we report in the results section if we've already reported it in full sentences? Or can we write it up in results and have the SPSS output in appendix?
A: See the Analysis section of this document for information on what to include in the report. Below is an example of a table of correlations in APA style as it should be written in your results. As you know, regardless of how you present your results in your report you still need to include the SPSS output of your analyses in the appendix.
Example of APA style table of correlations.
Discussion
Q: Is it okay to use scales we haven't used for predictors as discussion points?
A: This is up to you. It may depend on the point you are making and how relevant it is to the discussion.
Appendices
Q: For the appendices, do we put all the scales under one appendix or a new appendix for each scale? Also, do we put all SPSS output in one appendix or separate the assumptions checks and the multiple regression results?
A: It's entirely up to you how you present your appendices. Please also see the AWiP document
