In this writing assignment, you will write the results and discussion sections for the manuscript describing the experiment that you designed and ran.

In this writing assignment, you will write the results and discussion sections for the manuscript describing the experiment that you designed and ran.  You must also include (1) at least one figure and figure caption and (2) a properly formatted References page that includes any papers that you cited in your results and discussion sections.  (You may also include references from your introduction and method sections.)

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Results:Do not describe WHY the results occurred in this section!   Just describe the “What”.

• Include the word Results centered in bold type as a heading. o First, describe any manipulations that you performed on the data.  For example, if you coded or scored responses or grouped survey questions in some way, you should describe how this was done.
• Next, provide a summary of your results including the relevant descriptive statistics such as means, standard deviations, and/or correlations as well as the inferential statistical tests that will tell you whether the differences or correlations could be considered “statistically significant”.
  • REFER TO THE APPROPRIATE RESULTS SENTENCES TEMPLATE (AVAILABLE ON MOODLE) FOR FORMATTING AND WORDING SUGGESTIONS.
• Include a figure (either a graph or table) to supplement the text. See the back of this page for more details and refer to the sample papers online for more examples.
  • Be sure to label all axes of the graph clearly.
  • Be sure to include a figure caption. The figure caption should appear below the figure.
  • Place each figure with its figure captions on separate pages at the end of the document, after the References page.
  • Reference the figure(s) within the text so readers know where and what to look for (e.g., See Fig. 1). Do not simply describe the entire figure, but emphasize the important information in the figure and try to supplement it with specifics (e.g. mean values) from the figure.
  • Do NOT include tables of SPSS output in your paper. Construct a new table if you want to include those data.

Discussion:  Make a strong argument as to your “Best Explanation” of your results.  Focus on coming up with a logical

“Why” for your results and then describing how you would test this explanation with future research. o            Include the word Discussion centered in bold type as a heading. o    This section should begin with a restatement of the hypothesis that you made in the introduction.  Describe whether or not the hypothesis was supported.

• Relate and compare your results to the previous research that you cited in your introduction. Are the results the same or different than the results reported by others in the literature (that you cited in the Introduction)?  If your results disagree with the previous literature, why is that the case?
  • Include APA-formatted citations in your text and references on your References page o Give interpretations for why the results occurred and what the results mean. Based on your results and previous research, include what appears to be the best explanation of the results you obtained.
• Indicate any problems and limitations of the study such as:
  • Reasons you didn’t detect an expected effect
  • Confounds that provide alternative explanations of your significant results
  • Limits to generalizability of your findings o Then, describe how the problems and limitations of the study could be addressed by future research. Also, describe any future research that would be needed to clarify the overall question that you are interested in.  Describe questions that were raised by your results or future research ideas that were motivated by the outcome of your study (in other words, what should be done next to study your topic further?).
• Finally, you should summarize the conclusions that can be drawn from the study and the implications that the experiment has on everyday life (if any). End the section with a statement that brings the paper to a close.

REFER TO THE EXAMPLES

• Refer to the example paper in your textbook as well as the papers that you have encountered while researching your topic. Use those papers to get a feel for the tone of the Results and Discussion sections and the type of information that should be included in each section.  Also note how the figure captions are written.
• Refer to the presentations given in lab for tips on the types of information to include in your results and discussion sections.

PSY 3001W Lab 10

Figure Caption and Figure:

Figures are placed at the end of the manuscript.  Only one figure appears on each page (i.e., there is a separate page for each figure).  The figure caption for each figure appears on the same page as the figure, beneath the figure.

The figure caption should be a very brief description of the contents of the figure to orient the reader to what is

plotted.  The caption should not interpret the contents of the figure or list the numerical values that are plotted in the figure.

See the figure below for an example of a bar chart showing means and standard deviations of two groups.  Instructions for preparing bar charts in Excel are available in the Lab 10 folder on Moodle.  (You may also use other software, such as SPSS, to prepare your figure.)

You can prepare GRAPHS in SPSS, but do not include TABLES of numerical SPSS output copied straight from SPSS in your paper.  If you are unclear as to what is appropriate to use as a figure, ASK.

In preparing your figure, be sure to:

• Place the dependent variable on the vertical (Y) axis and the independent variable on the horizontal (X) axis.
• Label the axes to indicate what variable is plotted on each. Show the units of measurement in parentheses, if applicable.
• Number the vertical axis at reasonable increments of the DV. Also, label each of the levels of the IV on the horizontal axis.
• Plot each group mean as a separate bar.
• Plot the standard deviation of each group as an error bar extending a full SD above and a full SD below the top of each plotted mean.

Example Figure and Figure Caption:  The example caption and figure below show a graph of the results from a study comparing the lengths of buns for samples of hot dogs and bratwursts.  The parts you would include in your paper are below the following dotted line.

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SAUSAGE TYPE

Figure 1.  Mean bun length for the hot dog and bratwurst groups.  The error bars represent standard deviations.