Week 4 discussion reply to peers

Word count 200, there are to replies 

– Good evening Professor and fellow classmates,

This week’s discussion entailed the importance of each section of the written report. Each section of the written report is significant as it highlights and explains a part of the experiment that is essential to understanding for the reader. Whether it be to understand and analyze the experiment conducted or if you were to the recreate the experiment.

            The written report begins with a rather crucial aspect of the experiment, the title. The title will be the first form of the experiment that will give you an inside look of what is being researched and tested. “A simple way to achieve the goal is by including independent and dependent variables” (page 487 Myers & Hansen, 2012). Another key factor to the title, is to limit the length to 12 words. Following the title will be the abstract, which is ultimately a summary of the report. The tricky part of the abstract is that is must be within a limited word count, 150-200 words to be exact. It is also best written in past tense, including all aspects of the experiment within limited wording. The introduction will “set the stage of what’s to follow” (page 489 Myers & Hansen, 2012). It explains the research you conducted, a brief explanation of how the experiment will be, and what your hypothesis is. The introduction also answers a series of questions in order for the reader to have a clear understanding of the experiment. We then have the method section that explains to the readers how the experiment was completed by explaining any “measure” taken during the experiment. This includes describing the method used, materials, and also procedures therefore it can be replicated. There is also the participants section that explains to the reader some important characteristics such as how many participants, their relevant characteristics, if recruited or selected, and even how the participants will be compensated. Then we have the measures section that will pretty much highlight the methods used for data collection, including questionnaires, observations of behaviors and equipment used for the experiment. The manipulations section describe the treatment conditions, including control conditions. One should also include the instructions provided to the participants and overall procedures in this section. Lastly, we have the design, results, discussion and references section which is all rather self explanatory.

Best,

Ariel A.
Word Count: 389

Citations: Myers, A. & Hansen, C. (2012). Experimental psychology (7th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Cengage Learning

–Jessica Grant 

Week 4 Discussion Post

Written Research Report

A written research report is something like baking a cake. You need different ingredients to make sure the cake turns out the way it is supposed to. It is the same thing when it comes to writing a research report.  There are different sections that need to be discussed to create the report.  The major sections are the title, abstract, introduction, method, results, discussion and the list of references.

The title needs to be descriptive and give the readers an idea of what the report is about, according to (Myers & Hansen, 2012). The abstract is a summary of the written report. As stated by (Myers & Hansen, 2012), the abstract is probably the most frequently read portion of any article. The introduction will tell the reader what you are doing and why you are doing it. The method section will tell the reader how you conducted the experiment. For the participants section, it will explain important characteristics of the sample, like how many and other additional information. In the measures section, descriptions of the measures used for the data collection should be included, according to (Myers & Hansen, 2012).  There is a section called manipulations where you would describe the content of treatments in each condition. You will also need to explain what type of design in used in your experiment. The results section should explain what you have found. For the discussion section, the purpose is to evaluate the experiment and interpret the results, as stated by (Myers & Hansen, 2012). The reference section is the last thing and it is a list of any articles or books mentioned in the report.

All the parts that are incorporated in a research report play an important role. If one component is missing, the reader will not get the full aspect of the experiment. The parts work together as a whole to create a well-versed report.

WC:320

Reference

Myers, A., & Hansen, C. H. (n.d.). Experimental psychology, 7th ed. Wadsworth Cengage, 2012.