Lecture 3.

2
Writing up guidelines for practical 2
 Important information for
this week
Ø MCQ Quiz
15 questions in 30 minutes
8- 2 pm (UK) and 12-6 pm (Dubai), Thursday 3rd
March

Ø Practical 3 Questionnaire
Complete by 4th March (Friday, 12 pm Edinburgh
time, 4 pm Dubai time)
 Recap : Practical 2

Group 2
Group 1
Read essay by
Read essay by
female author
male author

Each person assigned mark Each person assigned mark

from 0-100, noted age and from 0-100, noted age and
gender gender
 Recap

• In week 5: Each of you took part in practical 2.

• In week 6: Each of you collected data from a minimum of

2 university students (not HW Psychology students)

• In week 7 (today): Analyse data collected from practical 2

• In week 8 (next week): Guidelines on how to write up

practical 2
 Writing-up this practical

Please refer to the below documents that are on

the ‘Assessment’ module on CANVAS.
Ø Guide to report writing
Ø Practical report_marking criteria
Ø Sample practical report 1
Use these alongside the instructions provided in
the following slides.
• On CANVAS – Unit 3 – Lecture 3.2, you will find the
template for practical 2 - ‘Practical 2_report template’.
 Parts of a practical report

Ø Title
Ø Abstract (written at the end, after writing the rest
of the report)
Ø Introduction (provided to you for practical 2)
Ø Methods
Ø Results
Ø Discussion
Ø References (provided to you, but will need
updating for any new references)
 Introduction
Move from the general to the specific

• Put the study in its wider context. What is the importance of

studying the impact of gender on evaluation of work? (include
citations where necessary)
In both the sciences and the arts there are many more eminent males
than there are females. Some researchers have suggested that this may
because there is a direct bias in the evaluation of works by males and
females. North & Hargreaves (1996) analysed responses to a
questionnaire printed in The Sunday Times newspaper. Readers were
asked to nominate their 'favourite' and the 'greatest' in two musical
categories, namely 'classical music composer' and 'pop music performer'.
Although 1,098 questionnaires were returned, no female classical music
composer received more than a single nomination in either the 'favourite'
or 'greatest' categories. Although females fared slightly better in the pop
music categories, only one (Annie Lennox) was placed in the top ten for
'favourite' performers, and none were placed in the top ten for 'greatest'
performers. Of the other artistic domains investigated in the questionnaire
(namely films, paintings, novels, and plays), only the nominations for
literature gave rise to a substantial number of nominations for works by
females (e.g. Jane Austen, Charlotte and Emily Brontë, George Eliot).
• Start with the main theory or idea

Cultural beliefs about the attributes of males and females are transmitted through
stereotypes (see review by Hamilton & Sherman, 1994). The general psychological
literature in this area demonstrates that stereotypes have a powerful effect upon the
way in which we interact with the world. They can mediate specific aspects of
information seeking (Kunda, 1990), information processing (Hamilton, Sherman, &
Ruvolo, 1990), the interpretation of information (Darley & Gross, 1983), attention
(Bodenhausen, 1988), inference (Bodenhausen & Wyer, 1985), and retrieval of
information from memory (Bodenhausen & Lichenstein, 1987). Of particular relevance
to understanding the way in which gender stereotyping occurs is Bem's (1981) gender
schema theory, which specifically suggests that gender forms the foundation of the
internal cognitive frameworks which people employ in processing new information: it
follows from this theory that gender stereotypes should affect how people differentially
interpret works by males and females. Thus, stereotypes of male and female abilities
may impede the progress of females, and prevent their work from being evaluated
positively.
• Give BRIEF details of RELEVANT studies: it is not an essay
– Describe the major well-known research in the field

Many psychological studies have shown that evaluative responses to a piece of

work can be influenced by manipulating the gender of its alleged producer. Perhaps
the best known of these studies was carried out by Goldberg (1968), who first used
the experimental methodology typically employed. Female participants were given
booklets containing six articles, in half of which the articles were attributed to males
and in the other half to females. Articles allegedly by males were given higher
ratings on 44 of the 54 measures (e.g. competence). In support of this, Paludi &
Strayer (1985) found that an academic article written allegedly by a male was
valued more positively than one allegedly by a female. In a similar vein, Ward
(1981) found that “While there was no tendency for 'female' works to be appraised
less favourably on quality (style, content, persuasiveness, professionalism, and
profundity), there was a marked tendency for males to denigrate the female author
per se (status and competence in the field)” (p. 163).
• Rationale for your own study
• i.e., explain how previous research led to what you have
done
• what is new about your research?
However, much of the research that has shown that work supposedly by
females is evaluated more harshly than work by males was conducted in the
1960s, 1970s, and 1980s. It is arguable that similar effects might not be
found in present day society, which we at least believe to be more
egalitarian. Accordingly, the present research investigated whether attributing
an essay to a male author led to it being assigned a higher mark than when
the same essay was attributed to a female author. If the gender stereotypes
identified by earlier research persist into the modern day then work
supposedly by a female should receive a lower mark than when it is
supposedly by a male. Alternately, if gender stereotypes no longer exist then
there should be no difference in the marks assigned to work that is
supposedly by males and females.

• Hypothesis
The study hypothesises that there will be a difference in the mean marks of
essays supposedly written by a male and female author.
 Method
Use prose and not bullet points throughout the
method section

Participants
Say how many participants there were, how
many males, and how many females, mean
age(and standard deviation of this), who the
participants were and sampling technique
adopted
Materials
– Describes any important equipment
• Do not include trivial items e.g. pencils rather than
pens: only include something if it might have
affected the data had you used something
different
• Describe the two essays
• In this case, describe the standard instructions for
marking the essays (i.e., award a mark of 70+ to
exceptional work, 60-69 to good work, 50-59 to
average work, 40-49 to poor work, and 0-39 to
very poor work)
Design
– State the IV and the levels of the IV, DV and which
design you used
Be clear when specifying all the variables.

Procedure
– Step-by-step guide to what was done
• Only include relevant details (i.e. would doing
things a different way have influenced the
results?)
• Don’t forget to include details relating to ethics –
information sheet/consent and debrief!
Ethical consideration
• Ethical approval was provided by the Ethics committee,
School of Social Sciences.
• Specify the rights of participants made know to them i.e.,
the right to withdraw from the study at any time, have
information withdrawn, to omit or refuse answering a
question, data confidentiality and anonymity
 Results
• Talk the reader through the analyses, and don't just present a list
of numbers
• Start with descriptive followed by inferential statistics
• Note the style of writing the t equation, e.g. (t (31) = -1.41,
p=0.17).
• Values to be rounded to 2 decimal places.

The mean mark assigned to the essay supposedly by a male (Mathew)

was … with a standard deviation of … The mean mark assigned to the
essay supposedly by a female (Michelle) was … with a standard
deviation of …
An … test was carried out to investigate any difference in scores given
when the essay was supposedly written by Mathew or Michelle.
The result of the t-test was significant/non-significant (t (insert df value
here) = insert t-value here, p = insert p value here). This implies that….
 Discussion
• This section tells readers what the results mean
• Move from the specific to the general

• Begin by stating the aim of the study and the findings in non-
statistical terms, depending on whether you did/did not get
significant results. If you did, mention which version of the essay
got the higher marks

• Interpret the results in terms of a theory

– This is consistent/inconsistent with previous research showing
that …and then refer back to the evidence described in the
introduction.
– If your findings are consistent with research suggest reasons
WHY this association might exist?
– If your findings are not consistent with research suggest
reasons WHY this might be the case.
– Here, you might want to consider new research that helps with
grounding your findings.
– Findings ‘suggest’ rather than ‘prove’, they ‘support’ rather than
‘confirm’: psychology is based on probability statistics
• Are there any major limitations/strengths of your
study?
– Was there anything ‘unscientific’ about the research
that means we can’t trust the findings. Are they
generalizable

• Suggest some ideas for future research that follows

from your findings, and how this could be carried out.

• Are there any practical implications of your findings

for the real world?

• End with a concluding paragraph that summarises your

main argument
• You can now go back and write your Abstract
• The abstract should have information (a couple of
sentences) from every section of the report-
introduction, methods, results and discussion.
• Keep concise and meaningful and avoid any
unnecessary details.
• It should not be more than 150- 200 words.
• The abstract and the main report should be able to be
read independently of one another.
 References
• The references to the research cited in your
introduction have been provided in the
‘References’.
• If you add any new citations to your report,
please add them to the reference section
 Practical 2 dates
• Coursework 2 (practical 2) is due before 12
noon (UK) and 4 pm (Dubai) on Thursday 17th
March (Week 10).

• Submit your online practical report via Turnitin

on CANVAS.

• Important: Please fill in the student declaration

of authorship form and attach as a covering
page (can be found under the Assessment
module on CANVAS)
Questions/comments