Basic components of a lab report:

Introduction

•      Background information. Explain the psychological principle/idea/question you wanted to test and describe what relevant previous research has been done. State your

research question. Use citations.

•     State the dependent and independent variables of your study.

•      Form ahypothesis for your study.

•     What are the predicted results?

Method

•      Explain what you did (who were the participants, what did they see, what did you use to run the experiment, what was the procedure/sequence of events, etc). Feel free to give  an example trial.

•     Write it in such away that another person might be able to replicate your experiment

Results

•      Describe the data in words (don’t start interpreting the results yet, just state the facts).  Report means (descriptive statistics) for each condition. Use units (seconds, percentage accuracy, etc).

•     Show your results in tables and/or graphs (in APA style).

•      Report results of the statistical tests you used.

Discussion

•      Interpret these results. Link the results back to the psychological principle you were testing. Did they support your hypothesis? How do they compare to the previous

research you mentioned in the introduction? You will probably need to use citations here too.

•     What limitations were there in your experiment?

•     What future research ideas can you think of? What would the nextstep be?

Reference list

•      List the academic sources you drew upon (e.g., the previous research), in APA style.

•      Every in-text citation should be in full here, and viceversa. Don’tinclude references here that aren’t cited in your report.

What is APA formatting and why should I care?

APA (American Psychological Association) formatting is a writing style and formatting guide  for academic documents that is widely used in psychology. Using a consistent format makes reports clear and easily understandable. It ensures that sources are cited correctly (and therefore credit is given where credit is due).

APA formatting refers to: 1) The way the report is organised (introduction, methods, etc), 2) The style of writing used (should be clear and formal), and 3) The specific formatting used (double-spacing, using title case for headings, using in-text citations, table and figure format, etc.)

We expect your lab reports to be in APA format. We don’t expect them to be perfect, but    we do expect you to make a considerable effort, and you will be marked on it. There are lots of guides on APA formatting online. There is an APA exemplar on Moodle, and you can find   some resources on the library website too.

References

Tips for finding and using references:

•      No quotes are needed – everything should be rewritten in your own words (but you should still cite other researchers’ ideas if needed).

•     Gather relevant information from at least two journal articles you’ve found on the topic - this does NOT include the lab handout, you should not be referencing this.

Doing a literature search

●    Start by identifying your keywords. The more refined your keywords are, the more luck you will have with finding a relevant article.

●    If you already have a reference (like the one at the end of your lab handout),you can look at the reference list in that article to see if there are any relevant titles, and

then search for those.

●    Another way to find a relevant article is to look for articles that have cited

(referenced) an article you already have (this is sometimes called a “forward citation search”). Some ways to do that are mentioned below.

●    Once you’ve found a potentially-relevant article, first read the title and the abstract to see if it sounds relevant. Then if it does, download the full article to read.

Search options

Three common search options are below. There is noone correct option to use; each has its own strengths and weaknesses, and you might simply prefer one over the others, that is

fine.

Library searchhttps://www.waikato.ac.nz/library/

●    Remember that you need to login

●    Searching for new articles via keywords: Enter keywords into searchbox. You can   narrow down your search results using filters on the righthand side. Have a look at the results. Are they helpful? Relevant? Should you do a new search with different keywords? Or choose different filters?

●    Looking up a reference you already know: Type the title or a short version of the title into the searchbox. The title comes up, and all you need to do is click on FULL TEXT   AVAILABLE. Then look for the PDF link and download the article.

●    Finding citing articles (forward citation search): After searching for an article title as   above, once you’ve found its entry, click on the title to open more information. Then scroll down, and click the red “Find sources citing this” button to see a list of articles  that have referenced the article you searched for.

Google scholar

●    Use Google Scholar from theLibrary Databasespage or this link

https://scholar.google.co.nz/?inst=9879587795640358215so that