***Have you read the Plagiarism
Handout & Chapter 2 of the APA Manual?***
How to Write
Introduction and Method Sections
(This
handout provides general instructions but also tips relevant to the campus
survey project in particular.)
Introduction
Use
the following as a guideline for what to include in the introduction and how to
organize it.
1. Try to capture the reader’s interest right away. You might want
to introduce your topic by posing an interesting question. In this opening paragraph do NOT use jargon. See more on the next page.
2. Next, introduce the relevant literature. In the next few paragraphs discuss previous
literature that can speak to your question.
Conceptually define all your terms when you first introduce them. Discuss findings or theorizing that is
relevant to your question. This will be the longest section of the
introduction. You should organize this section of your paper in such a way
that you logically build to YOUR study.
Here is a vastly oversimplified
example of this sort of logical progression:
Past
research suggests that, among women, self-esteem is correlated with physical
attractiveness (Crocker, 1989; Davidson & Wells, 1990). This research found that.... Other studies, however, have shown that
self-esteem and physical attractiveness are only minimally related (Robinson,
Geller & Thomas, 1988, Hobson & Mills, 1992). Most of these studies
included both males and females (e.g., Robinson, Geller & Thomas, 1988) or
both college-aged and older women (e.g., Hobson & Mills, 1992). For example, Hobson and Mills sampled both
female students at a small college and female faculty and staff.
Hopefully it is obvious to you that my next point is
that the gender and/or age thing is what is responsible for the contradictory
findings... I might then review the literature on gender (age) and self-esteem
and/or gender (age) and physical attractiveness. This will lead to MY study
(see #3).
Note: There
are many ways to integrate the previous literature into your explanation of the
purpose of the present research. You
might find a contradiction in the literature that leads to your study (as in
the example above). Alternatively, you
might find: 1) a reason why the views reflected in the reviewed literature
might be wrong; or, 2) a gap in the
literature – something you consider important that has not been dealt with in
your reading; or, 3) a point that, although it is dealt with in the readings,
ought to be extended further in some other dimension. The framework you choose
will, of course, be guided by what you find in your literature search.
3. Introduce the present study. The reader should have been able to
predict you were going to examine the variables you discuss here from the
reasoning you laid out in #2. Go ahead and use the past tense as though you
have already done this research. Example:
“The present research examined the relationships between X and Y.” This
will save editing later on. Explain what variables you looked at and generally what you did to look at them
(e.g. administered a survey). This
short paragraph is where you narrow your paper to your very specific topic.
4. Finally, state your predictions formally. This will probably be the final sentence of
the above paragraph. Make sure to talk
about the DIRECTION of the correlations you predict (negative or
positive). Example: “I predict a negative correlation between X
& Y...”
Opening Statements
Remember
that your paper is telling a story to an educated audience interested in your
research. The first task of your paper is therefore to get the reader
interested in what you have to say! You might want to start with an
interesting, very general question or point raised by your research. Avoid
clever openings that don’t lead fairly directly into the topic of your paper.
5 rules of thumb for your
first paragraph:
1. Write in English prose,
not psychological jargon.
2. Don’t plunge readers into the middle of your problem or theory. Take the time and space necessary to lead
them up to the formal of theoretical statement of the problem step by step.
3. Use examples to
illustrate theoretical points or to introduce unfamiliar concepts or technical
terms. The more abstract the material, the more important such examples become.
4. Whenever possible, try to
open with a statement about people, not psychologists or their research (this
rule is often violated, so DON’T use journal articles as a model here).
5. I’d suggest writing your
brilliant opening paragraph after you've written the rest of the
introduction.
Examples of the 1st
sentence of Opening Statements (which ones are better?)
1. Recently, Ekman (1972), Izard
(1977), Tomkins (1980) and Zajonc (1980) have pointed to psychology’s neglect
of the affects and their expression.
2. Individuals differ radically from
one another in the degree to which they are willing and able to express their
emotions.
3. Research in the forced-compliance
paradigm has focused on the effects of predecisional alternatives and incentive
magnitude.
4. Festinger’s theory of cognitive
dissonance has received a great deal of attention during the past 20 years.
(2 is better than 1 which is
too abrupt; 4 is not great, but better than 3 which has too much jargon)
Now
read the following paragraph:
The individual who holds two beliefs that
are inconsistent with one another may feel uncomfortable. For example, the person who knows that he or
she enjoys smoking but believes it to be unhealthy may experience discomfort
arising from the inconsistency or disharmony between these two thoughts or
cognitions. This feeling of discomfort
has been called cognitive dissonance by social psychologist Leon Festinger
(1957), who suggests that individuals will be motivated to remove this
dissonance in whatever way they can.
Note
how this example leads the reader from familiar terms (beliefs, inconsistency,
discomfort, thoughts), through transition terms (disharmony, cognitions), to
the unfamiliar technical term cognitive
dissonance, thereby providing an explicit, if non-technical, definition of
it.
Information
taken directly from: Bem, D. (1997). Writing the empirical journal article. In M.P. Zanna & J.M Darley (Eds.) The Compleat Academic.
Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Method
All
method sections need three basic categories of information:
Participants – who was in your study and
did they volunteer or get some sort of course credit.
Materials – what were your measured
variables (a.k.a. operational definitions)
Procedure – what exactly did you do
(literally during the study session)
You
may choose to use three different heading for this information (as presented in
the example below), or you might want to combine procedures and materials into
one section. Format the method section
however it works best for you – but be sure to put participant information first
and in its own section. Write in the past tense. The below example and the
sample paper should help provide you with some commonly used (conventional)
ways of writing out this information.
Method
Participants were __N___ college students
enrolled in introductory psychology classes. The students received extra credit
in exchange for their participation.
Note: In the participants section, gender, age (or year in school), and
ethnicity are typical standard demographic statistics to include . You should
also report any other demographic statistic that relates to your hypothesis.
Measures
Contingencies
of Self-Worth. Selected subscales from the contingencies of worth
scale (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001) were used. The subscale of interest for this
study was the school competency scale. The measure of school competency as a
basis of worth consisted of # items. An example item is: “…..” Participants indicated the extent to
which they endorsed each statement using a 7-point Likert type scale (1=strongly
disagree, 7=strongly agree). After reverse coding the appropriate items, the
scale was created by averaging across items.
The internal consistency for the scale was adequate (alpha = xx).
Another Scale or Variable. Continue in a new paragraph with a new heading for any other
scales THAT ARE RELEVANT TO YOUR HYPOTHESIS. You do not need to report scales
that you are not relevant to your hypothesis.
For example, if you aren’t interested in self-esteem, then don’t discuss
self-esteem. Its okay to leave it out even though it is part of the data set –
if you mention self-esteem, I’ll be expecting (as the reader) to read results
about self-esteem. Be sure to always include a reference for the
scale/variable (unless you wrote all the items), the response format,
the internal consistency, and an example item. NOTE: FOR THIS SURVEY, I’M ANTICIPATING YOU WILL
PICK ONE OF THE THREE CONTINGENCIES OF WORTH AND SEE HOW IT RELATES TO MASTERY,
PERFORMANCE AND WORK AVOIDANCE GOALS.
THUS, YOU WILL BE DISCUSSING THOSE 4 VARIABLES. IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT,
BE SURE TO DISCUSS IT WITH ME.
Tell
what participants were told about the study, how they run (e.g., what order the
questionnaires you described above were in), debriefed, etc. You’ll probably want to combine Materials
& Procedure for this campus survey paper.