Differences among the Topic, Problem, Purpose, and Questions

Title

Hypothesis

Topic

ResearchProblem

PurposeStatement

ResearchQuestion

Distance learning

Lack of students in distance classes

To study why students do not attend distance education classes at a community college

Does the use of interactive web pages help to increase students’ interest in distance education classes?

Distance learning and students’ motivation.

The use of interactive web pages will increase students’ interest in distance education.

Writing an APA- Style Research Report

Chapter 16

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Basic tips

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First Draft

• Learn about your institution required guidelines

• Focus more on organization and logical thinking and less on exact wording, spelling , grammar

• Start with research problem (chapter 1)• Provide a context for your research problem

(what we know what we don’t know)

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First Draft

• Convince the reader of the importance of your project

• Assume that your readers know nothing about your research

• Communicate that you have an open mind about what you will find

• Describe your methodology as detailed as possible• Describe how you will use the data to address your

research problem

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Revising your proposal

1. Set the proposal aside for a few days2. Read a print copy of your draft3. Look for disorganized thought, illogical

thinking, and inconsistencies in terminology4. Look for unclear sentences or ambiguous

phrases5. Keep your sentences simple and

straightforward

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Revising your proposal

6. Choose your words carefully (shorter words- feel is not the same as think)

7. Pronouns might be misleading (instead of this, that, use this test, that experiment)

8. Don’t use I or We in quantitative study.9. Comparisons might be misleading (I like my mom more than my sister)10. Spell and Grammar check

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Revising your proposal

11.Make sure all bulleted items have the same grammatical structure

12.One-to-one correspondence in references13.Print it and read it again.

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APA style

Is used by many publications throughout the behavioral sciences, however, it is not universal.

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Some Elements of Writing Style

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Writing Style

• A research report is not the same as creative writing

• Don’t try to persuade, amuse, entertain, challenge, confuse, or surprise your reader

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Impersonal style

• Should be written in an objective style.• Avoid distracting the reader with literary

devices such as alliteration, rhyming, deliberate ambiguity, or abrupt changes in topic.

• Don’t advocate or promote an idea

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Impersonal style

• You should avoid colloquial expressions such as

“ once in a blue moon” ( in place of “ rarely”)

• and jargon such as “ left- winger” ( in place of “ politically liberal”).

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Impersonal style

• You may use personal pronouns to describe what you did as a researcher,

e.g., “ I instructed the participants,” but keep in mind that you are writing a research

report, not a personal journal.

• There is a difference between qualitative and quantitative reports.

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Verb Tense• In your literature review , if not at a specific time

or is continuing into the present, use the present perfect tense

• When you present your results, always use the past tense.

• After you have described the study and presented the results, switch to the present tense to discuss the results and your conclusions (“ the data suggest”).

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Reducing Biased Language

• Be sensitive to labels; call people what they prefer to be called. For example, instead of “schizophrenics” and “ the elderly”

you may use “ people diagnosed with schizophrenia” and “older adults”

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/4596139/Elderly-no-longer-acceptable-word-for-older-people.html (elderly)

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Reducing Biased Language

• Describe people with a level of specificity that is accurate. For example, when describing ethnic groups, instead of general terms such as Asian American or Hispanic American, use Korean American or Mexican American.

• http://www.dailywritingtips.com/10-ethnic-terms/ (Ethnic groups)

• http://www.avert.org/homosexual.htm (LGBT)

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Citations

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Citations

• Previous research has shown that response to an auditory stimulus is much faster than response to a visual stimulus ( Smith & Jones, 2009).

• In a related study, Jones ( 2008) found that…• It has been found that word recall decreases

as a function of age ( Jones, Smith, & Brown, 2002).

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Citations

When a publication has six or more authors, you only include the first author’s last name followed by “et al.” and the date for the first and subsequent citations. (Katz et al., 2002)

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Multiple citation

• ( Jones, Smith, & Brown, 2002; Smith & Jones, 2009)

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Citations

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Literature Review

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Literature Review

• Try to find a few closely related studies rather than many unrelated studies.

• Select only those references that are truly useful and contribute to your arguments.

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Paraphrase

• Quotations should be used sparingly.• As a general rule, it is better to paraphrase a

point using your own words than to quote directly from another work.

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Direct Quote

• For short quotations, fewer than 40 words, the quotation is embedded in the text with quotation marks at both ends.

• Resenhoeft, Villa, and Wiseman ( 2008) report that participants judged a model without a visible tattoo as “ more attractive, athletic, and intelligent than the same model shown with a tattoo” ( p. 594).

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More than 40

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language

• It also is customary to distinguish between citations of empirical results and citations of theory or interpretation.

• To report an empirical result, for example, you could use: Jones ( 2008) demonstrated… To cite a theory or speculation, for example, you might use: Jones ( 2008) argued…

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Samples of APA-style research report

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Title Page

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Title Page

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Title

1. Avoid unnecessary words. “ A study of women in higher education” or “ Investigating the relationship between IQ and Math score.”

2. If possible, the first word in the title should be of special relevance or importance to the content of the paper.

3. Avoid cute or catchy titles

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Abstract1. A one- sentence statement of the problem or

research question. 2. A brief description of the subjects or

participants ( identifying how many and any relevant characteristics).

3. A brief description of the research method and procedures.

4. A report of the results .5. A statement about the conclusions or

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Abstract

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Introduction & (lit review)1. A general introduction to the topic of the paper and why this problem is

important and deserves new research. 2. The relevant literature; only the articles that are directly relevant to your

research question. Do not provide detailed descriptions. The literature review should not be an article- by- article description of one study after another; instead, the articles should be presented in an integrated manner.

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Intro & literature review

3. The specific goal, hypothesis, or question that the research study addresses. State the problem or purpose of your study, and clearly define the relevant variables.

4. Briefly describe the research strategy . Also explain how the research strategy provides the information necessary to address your hypothesis or research question.

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Method• A- Subjects or participants (selection procedures)• B- Procedures1. The settings and locations,2. Operational definitions3. Ethical standards met and safety- monitoring procedures, 4. Groups or conditions and how many individuals were in

each condition, 5. Instructions given to participants, 6. Any experimental manipulation or intervention 7. Research design and Statistical analysis

• C- Instruments , equipments, tools (validity & Reliability)

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Results

• Usually, a results section begins with a statement of the primary outcome of the study, followed by the basic descriptive statistics (usually means and standard deviations), then the inferential statistics ( usually the results of hypothesis tests), and finally the measures of effect size.

• The results section simply provides a complete and unbiased reporting of the findings, just the facts, with no discussion of the findings

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Reports of statistical significance

( 1) the type of test used, (LSD, Tukey, Bonferroni, Sidak, Scheffe)

( 2) the degrees of freedom, ( 3) the outcome of the test, ( 4) the level of significance, ( 5) the size and direction of the effect

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Sample Result

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Discussion

• The discussion section should begin with a restatement of the hypothesis.

• In the discussion section, you offer interpretation, evaluation, and discussion of the implications of your findings.

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Discussion

• It can be helpful to think of the discussion section as a mirror image of the introduction. Remember, the introduction moved from general to specific, using items from the literature to focus on a specific hypothesis. Now, in the discussion section, you begin with a specific hypothesis ( your outcome) and relate it back to the existing literature.

• In the last paragraphs of the discussion section, you may reach beyond the actual results and begin to consider their implications and/ or applications.

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References

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Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

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Tables & Figures

• As a general rule, tables and figures supplement the text; they should not duplicate information that has already been presented in text form, and they should not be completely independent of the text.

• Tables, formatted according to APA specifications, are each typed separately on a new page. The table number and title, respectively, are displayed at the top of the page, each at the left margin.

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1- Title page thesis

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Dissertation

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2- Abstract

Running head

No indent

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free-floating table

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Regular table

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Table Space

The main text of the manuscript will begin with three empty line spaces between the end of the table and the text

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Figures

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Figures

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• This is an Example of a Landscape Figure (Tables will read in the same direction).

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Research Proposal (Part 1)

The basic purpose of a good research proposal is to provide three kinds of information about the research study.

1.Why is your research important2.How your planned research study is related to

other knowledge in the area.3. What do you expect to find?

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Proposal (part 2)

4- How the data will be collected and analyzed,

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Proposal (part 3)

5- other plausible outcomes, implications of the expected results

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Difference between a proposal and a research article

1. An abstract is optional in a research proposal. 2. The literature review in the introduction is typically more extensive than the review in a research report. 3. The results and discussion sections are typically replaced either by a combined Results/ Discussion section, or a section entitled Expected Results and Statistical Analysis or Data Analysis and Expected Results.

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http://owl.english.purdue.edu

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The Research Report

• CSULB Style and Format Guidelines • http://www.csulb.edu/library/guide/serv/

documents/thesis_manual.pdf

• Sample Paper• https://owl.english.purdue.edu/media/pdf/

20090212013008_560.pdf

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Group Discussion

• Describe the four parts that are typically contained in an introduction section of an APA-style research report.

• Describe the ways in which a research proposal is different from a research report.

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