Method Section for Lab 2 Field Experiment

In the method section, you want to tell the reader who your participants were and what they did. For today's field experiment, 2 sections are appropriate and are listed below with questions you should answer in each section.

Participants. How many total subjects were there and where did they come from (e.g., college students, faculty). Why did they participate (e.g., required for a class, paid, unwitting subjects...) What are the relevant demographics of the group? In our case today, we'll only be able to report gender (# women and # men in sample) since we didn't take the time to stop participants and ask about ethnicity or age.

Materials & Procedure. These are really two sections that are often combined in to one in short papers. In a materials section, you describe the materials and/or apparatus you used to get the data from your subjects. In our case today, you'll want to describe how we defined a smile, frown or neutral expression and what you all went through during your training session to be sure you were eliciting these expressions consistently (both each time you did it and consistency compared to each other). In the procedures section, you'll want to say what went on in the experimental session step-by-step. Questions you want to address (in any order that seems sensible to you) include:

How did you decide which facial expression to display for each participant?

How did you and the recorder work together such that the recorder was “blind” to condition?

What was the independent variable in the study? What were the 3 levels (a.k.a. conditions) of the independent variable?

What was the dependent variable? How did the recorder decide how to categorize the dependent variable?

Note, the reader won’t care that you left Science Hall and went to Duggan library and felt nervous. That level of detail is too much. You want detail though – enough so that someone else at another institution could replicate your study (so, you might say, for example, that you used participants from the campus library, athletic center and other indoor and outdoor locations around campus…)

Results Section For Lab Task

The results section is where you tell the reader the specifics of what you found in your study. You should first write, in words, what you found and then add the numbers on a second pass through your Results section. You DO want to explain what the numbers you got mean with respect to the conceptual variables, but don’t worry about explaining WHY you got the results you did. The results section is the nuts & bolts of what you found. The discussion section is for the “why” type discussion of these results.

You’ll want to report the basic descriptive information about the measures you used (for example, for today report the total number of smiles, frowns and neutral expressions the participants expressed (regardless of condition). In the results section, you also tell the reader what statistics (or, in the simplified example we are doing today, percentages) you conducted and what the results indicated.

(Some) Basic Elements of a Results section:

· Give the descriptive statistics for the relevant variables (e.g., total number for each expression).

· After the descriptives, provide a brief rephrasing of the hypotheses for the study. Then tell what statistical test was run (or, in today’s case, what comparison was made) and what the results were.

· As you do the above, explain which results came out as predicted, and which did not (if any).

· Don’t merely give the numbers without any explanation. Your results section should have text that flows with the numerical information as a way for the reader to double-check your reports of how the data turned out.

A Primer in General formatting in APA style

1. Page number and short title at top right.

2. Margins should be one inch all around, double-spacing, left justified (default setting).

3. Write out word for number when it starts the sentence (e.g., “Fifteen participants....”) and when number is 0-10 (unless it is labeling a Table or Figure).

4. Avoid passive voice if possible.

5. For now, head entire section with the word “Results” centered as a main heading. For secondary headings, indent, underline and place on same line & same paragraph as accompanying text.

Bar Graph

For today’s assignment, please make a graph in order to practice this skill. Use Powerpoint – I can sit down with you and we can work through the steps together.

-A bar graph is appropriate for today's data.

-Give your graph a descriptive title (e.g., Participants’ expressions as a function of experimenters’ expression)

-Be sure your axis labels are clear (label the Y axis as experimenters’ expression, the X axis as the # of participants displaying expression, and use separate bars above each of the 3 conditions on the Y axis to denote the participants’ smiles, frowns or neutral expressions.)

e.g.

Note: Ordinarily, tables and graphs are used when the numerical information is too complex/lengthy to present in the text of the paper. I may or may not have chosen to use a visual display of info for today’s data if I were really writing up this study.