Homework 4 Results and Discussion for Final Project

In a sense, your results and discussion should be easier than the intro and methods--you have already designed and run the study; now all you have to do is report what you found, and say what it means. APA style still counts for this assignment. Refer back to your previous assignments and the APA manual.

Results
Your results don't normally start on a new page. However you may start a new page for this assignment. Start by centering "Results" in the middle of a line for your heading. Concentrate on describing WHAT happened in your data, not WHY it happened. Make it clear what results you are reporting (e.g., which variable, if you have more than one). If you had to sum together two or more numbers, make sure you report that here:

Each participant's total evilness score was computed by taking the mean of the annoyance scale, the immorality scale, and the unkindness scale.

Report your findings, with the appropriate statistic (refer to homework 3 and the APA manual for how to report the statistics). Make sure your report the direction of your results (e.g., don't just say there was a difference in the two groups; report which group was bigger). Also, tell whether the results were consistent or not with your hypothesis:

As predicted, men scored higher than women on the Oreo consumption scale.

Consistent with the hypothesis, there was a main effect for gender, F (1, 39) = 6.82, p < .05, with women performing better than men.

Some of you will be reporting more than one result.

Make sure actual means or frequencies (whichever is relevant) can be found somewhere in the paper--either in the text of the results, or in a table or graph. If you have means, report how many scores made up the mean, and also report the standard deviations with means (this will be easy to compute with Mystat!). If you use a table or graph, make sure you refer your readers to it. Avoid being redundant--don't report the same information in the text that you report in a table or graph. Note that tables and graphs are not appendices.

Discussion
Your discussion is the "take home" message you give your reader. Did you find what you expected or not? This is also the section where you get to say why you found what you found--save it for here, and avoid discussing "whys" in your results. You should restate what your hypothesis was. If your results were consistent with your hypothesis, then your discussion is basically a reiteration of your introduction. The reasons you gave in your intro for why you thought your hypothesis would be true can be used to justify why you found the results you found. Just as you did in the intro, you may cite references in your discussion. If you found what you predicted, then think of your discussion as hitting on the same points as your intro did (don't use the exact same words though). Reiterate once again why you think you found the pattern you did.

If you didn't find what you expected (highly probable, given the many limitations of your research projects, and the general difficulty of psychology research), then your discussion is a place to say why. Once again, you should remind your reader what your hypothesis was. However, now instead of simply reiterating the reasons for your hypothesis that you provided in the intro, you need to say why you didn't get the results you predicted. In your intro, you provided all these great reasons and compelling logic why your hypothesis should be true; now it's time to think why it might not be true. Just saying "I was wrong" doesn't cut it! Was there something weird about your sample? Was the independent variable not powerful enough? Did people possibly have trouble understanding the questions you asked? Did people suspect your hypothesis, and show reactance? Was motivation too low because they had 29 other questionnaires to fill out? The possible reasons for why you didn't find what you predicted will vary depending on your project and your pattern of results. In other words, if people reported socially undesirable responses, you can't say the lack of results was due to self-presentation (subjects trying to make themselves look good). If your results were significant in the OPPOSITE direction, you can't say the problem was too small a sample. If you bring up possible problems with the study, you must say how and why you think they affected your results.

If your results were not as expected, you might find it helpful to bring in additional references that you didn't discuss in your intro--references that might help to explain why you found what you did. (Be sure to add them to your reference list!)

Regardless of whether you found what you predicted or not, you need to summarize the "state of affairs" in your discussion. Is there a sex difference in Oreo consumption patterns? Do twinkies make people depressed? What can you conclude from your study? To what extent should people believe your findings, and base their subsequent research or actions on it? If you did a correlational study, you should address issues of causality.

Your discussion often also involves discussing "real world" implications of your work. Who might be interested in your results, and what might they do with them?

Another part of the discussion is to highlight future directions or predictions. If you think the reason you didn't find significant results is because people weren't motivated to try hard, then you should discuss how you might motivate them in a future study. If you found results as you predicted, then you might talk about possible limiting conditions on your effect: You found a sex difference in college students, but do you also think you would find one in older adults? Go ahead and speculate about what you might find.

Abstract
For this assignment, you will also write an abstract for your paper. An abstract is very brief summary that captures the essence of your project. It comes at the beginning of a research report. You also can find abstracts in "Psychinfo." Although it is short, your abstract is very important. It will often determine if people read any further (this, however, is not an issue for your 303 projects; we'll read them anyway!). You want to make sure your abstract accurately captures the content of your paper, so people who are interested in your topic will want to read your paper, and people who are not interested in your topic will know to skip it.

Your abstract goes on a separate page. Center "Abstract" at the top. Return once (remember, everything is double-spaced). DO NOT indent the first line of the text of your abstract.

Your abstract should not be more than 120 words. In this 120 words, tell what you were studying, who your subjects were, what you did to them (your method), what you found, and what you concluded. Getting all this into 120 words forces you to be very concise and may take several drafts!

IMPORTANT FINAL INSTRUCTIONS:
Have someone proofread your paper, leaving enough time prior to turning the paper in so that you can fully incorporate any suggestions made by your proofreader. After they have proofread the paper, fill out the attached form. Obviously, the more knowledgeable your proofreader is, the more valuable his/her comments will be. One possible ideal choice would be a senior psychology major.

Also! You must include a copy of your intro and methods section when you turn in the results and discussion (it can be a new copy, or the one that was already graded). Also, include your reference section. If there are additional references you cite in your discussion that were not cited in the intro, be sure they have been added to the reference section.

Order for papers: Title page (separate page), abstract (separate page), intro, method, results, discussion, references (new page), appendices (new page[s]), tables (new page[s], with no page number), figures/graphs (new page[s], no page number).

DO NOT under any circumstances be tempted to fabricate your data. It is totally deceitful, not to mention cause for a failing grade in the class. You are being graded on how you analyze your data, and how well you interpret your results, NOT on whether those results are significant. A compelling explanation for why a predicted pattern of results was not found is often the start of great research! Also, just as all research psychologists are required to do, you should hang on to the "raw" data at least until the end of the quarter (your questionnaires for most people; tally sheets for others) in case any questions arise about your data.