APA Sample - University of Colorado Boulder



Sample American Psychological Association Paper

Jeffrey Michael Greenberg

University of Colorado, Boulder

Running head: APA SAMPLE

Abstract

This paper is designed to illustrate and describe the format and content required for papers written according to the rules of the American Psychological Association. The abstract is a brief description of the paper. First, the abstract should introduce the issue that is being studied. Next, the variables should be stated along with a brief description of the methods used in the study. The main results of the study should also be stated. Do not state secondary results or worry about mentioning every analysis that was conducted, just the main one or ones. Finally, briefly mention the implications of the results and let the reader know how they will be discussed within the paper. The abstract should be about 100-150 words and follows the title page with "Abstract" centered at the top and the paragraph not indented.

Sample American Psychological Association Paper

The introduction follows the abstract with the title centered at the top on a new page. The introduction section is designed to describe the specific problem which is being studied, describe the research strategy, and present and explain hypotheses. Opening the introduction should be a statement of what the issue of interest is. A general statement of why the area under study is interesting or worth examining can give the reader a sense that the topic under examination is worthwhile.

The next thing to do is describe the relevant research which has been done relating to the topic. When describing past research, it is important to be clear about how the studies or theories being discussed are relevant to the issue. Do not spend a lot of time reviewing studies which are only slightly related, or in which the conclusions reached are not applicable to your study. The literature review should have a logical progression into the issue of the experiment. Discussion of current knowledge should be set up so as to demonstrate a need for the current study.

After the literature review and justification for examining the issue, the specific study should be described. This description should include a definition of the independent and dependent variables and a clear statement of the hypothesis. It is also important to be clear about how you have arrived at your hypothesis. For example, if your study is designed to discriminate between two competing theories which explain a behavioral phenomenon, be clear about which theory you think will explain the behavior of the participants in your study and why your hypothesis favors one theory and not another.

Method

Participants

The Participants section describes the participants who participated in the experiment. The number of participants should be stated, brief demographic information (university students, sixth graders, number of males and females), and their motivation (class credit, got paid, class assignment). If the type of subject will be a variable, state specifically how the participants were selected. Also mention how they were assigned to groups (randomly, according to a learning disability, etc.). Finally, if anyone did not complete the experiment, state how many and why they didn't finish (lost to computer error, incomprehensible handwriting, not proficient in the language of the study). As a note, it is not uncommon to throw out a subject's data if they do not help to answer your question (e.g. if you can't read what he/she wrote). Data cannot be thrown out because they do not agree with your hypothesis, but if they don't address the issue in the same manner as the other participants, it is acceptable to toss them. If you are trying to find out about the average size of apples and you get a rock in the basket, don't measure it.

Materials and Apparatus

In this section you should describe all of the materials and apparatus used in the experiment. This description should be done, as with all things in the method section, with the goal that if someone wanted to recreate your study, there would be sufficient detail in the method section to do that. If any computers were used, tell the make and model of them. Also tell what software was used (Hypercard, Mindlab, whatever the experiment was programmed in). The materials should also be described in detail whether the study was run using paper and pencil or computer. If the participants see lists of words, how long were they, where did the words come from, and was anything special about them? If they read a passage, how long was it, what was it about, and what was special about it? Also, if you have different groups seeing different materials, what is different about the materials for the different groups?

If the materials are complicated or some important feature cannot be described very well, the actual materials should be listed in an appendix. The writer should refer the reader to the appendix in the body of the paper (see Appendix A), and then include the appendix on a separate page after the references.

Design and Procedure

In this section, you report the design of the experiment and the procedure that was used to test the participants. For the design, the independent and dependent variables should be named, as well as describing how many levels of each variable there were, and what the levels were. This description should be written clearly, so that the reader can easily understand what was being manipulated and how the different conditions of the experiment were set up.

When describing the procedure, you should have the goal of describing exactly what the subject was asked to do from they moment they walk into the room until the experiment is over. Instructions to the subject should be summarized but given in enough detail to understand them. If there is some complicated aspect to the directions, you can quote part of the instructions which were given to the subject. For example, if there is a subtle wording difference between directions given to two different groups, you may want to include the actual sections that were different so the reader can be clear about exactly what was asked of the subject. This may be particularly important if someone could question the validity of the experiment based on some aspect of the instructions (e.g. if a reviewer thinks a particular instruction is ambiguous).

Also describe the specific tasks of the experiment. Examples of this section would be which buttons the participants pressed on a keyboard in response to stimuli, whether they received any feedback after answering, how many trials of the task were performed, in what order were the tasks done, how much time the participants were given to do a task, etc. The procedure should be described in the order the experiment was done so it is easy to understand. Make sure to be specific enough so that the procedure could be replicated, but do not ramble about unnecessary details (participants walked into the room at a moderate pace, then after pulling the brown chair away from the table, proceeded to sit down, after which they pulled themselves up to a comfortable position in relation to the table). This much detail is unnecessary, and would annoy the reader.

Results

The results section continues directly after the methods section, and describes the data collected and the statistical treatment of the data. The first thing to do is to state clearly what data are being analyzed. This statement is especially important if the analysis is being performed on some subset of the data collected. For example, “To examine effects of the interstimulus interval, recall of the first seven words of each list were analyzed”. This statement tells the reader that this test is not including recall of all of the words presented, just the first seven from each list. Next, before describing the data, briefly restate the hypothesis being tested. This statement will have been done in detail in the introduction, but briefly restating it will remind the reader of what you expected to happen before you tell them the results.

After this section, you should state the results. Mention all relevant results, including those that go counter to your hypothesis. In mentioning the results, provide both descriptive (means and things that tell about the actual data) and inferential (statistical tests done to examine differences between groups such as ANOVAs. These are called inferential tests because we are inferring a relationship between the groups, not stating the relationship as fact.) statistics. Also very important is to state the direction of the effect. That is, if there is a difference between the groups you examined, tell which group was better, stronger, faster, or whatever. This example of reporting results comes out of the APA manual - “As predicted, the first-grade girls reported a significantly greater liking for school (M=4.63) than did the first-grade boys (M=1.38), t(22)=2.62, p boys), and that the results supported the hypothesis (as predicted). Do not report raw data or individual scores.

If the descriptive data can be better explained by putting them in a table, then they should be put in a table. There is not a specific rule for determining this question, but in general things like 3X2 designs (two independent variables, one having three levels and one having two, making a total of six cells) can be interpreted much more easily if they are presented in a table. In the body of the paper you should refer the reader to the table, and mention what results may be of particular interest (as shown in Table 1, ...). The actual table goes after

____________________

Insert Table 1 about here

____________________

the references, not in the results section, but this note tells the editors about where to put it when the formatting of the journal is done. Do not put inferential statistics in a table; report them in the body of the results section. Also, do not interpret the results in the results section. In other words, tell what the results were, but do not tell what you think they mean or why you think they came out as they did.

Discussion

The discussion section is where you hypothesize about the meaning of the results. It should be opened with a clear statement of support or non-support of the hypothesis. Results should also be related to previous research and theories discussed in the introduction section. You should attempt to interpret the results and draw inferences based on them. In an attempt to do this interpretation, theoretical consequences should be emphasized. In other words, what do you think the results mean and how do they add to the knowledge of the topic as a whole? Has this study helped to resolve the original problem?

Negative results should be mentioned also. You may attempt to explain them with a sound theoretical idea, but do not merely explain them away as a fluke, etc. If negative or unexpected results spawn a new theoretical idea or research direction or study, suggest this idea as a possibility for future research. You may suggest a future study which you think will help to clarify the issue further or examine your question from a different angle.

The important thing to keep in mind is that it will be uninteresting merely to rehash the results. You should give serious thought to the implications of the results before you write this section. Ideas offered should be soundly based, but speculation is acceptable if it is reasonably associated to the results. You have a fair amount of flexibility in this section, so put some effort into it.

References

Wolfe, M., Gerwek, K., & Nevins, S. (1992). Procrastination: Effects of "blowing it off" on college grade point averages. Journal of Educational Psychology, 15, 321-334.

References appear in alphabetical order by first author. The format is just like the sample. The title is not underlined, and the first word after a colon ( : ) is capitalized. The title of the journal is underlined, as is the volume number of the journal.

Table 1

Mean Number of Words Recalled as a Function of Interstimulus Interval and Retention Interval

Interstimulus Interval

3 Seconds 9 Seconds M

0 Seconds 11 14 12.5

Retention

Interval

30 Seconds 9 13 11

M 10 13.5

* This is a sample Table. Notice that the title explains what the numbers represent (number of words recalled), as well as what the variables are.

* Keep in mind this paper does not cover all parts of the APA Manual. It is designed as an aid in writing APA papers, not as a substitute for the manual.

* It is OK to include StatVIew tables with an explanatory title even though they do not conform to APA style.

Figure 1

Mean Imprinting Test Scores Plotted as a Function of Age (in hours) and Rearing Condition (Isolation or Social).

[pic]

Age (in hours)

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