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 days
2. Read a print copy of your draft
3. Look for disorganized thought, gaps, illogical
thinking, and inconsistencies in terminology
4. Look for unclear sentences or ambiguous
phrases
5. Keep your sentences short, simple and
straightforward
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 Revising your proposal
6. Choose your words carefully (feel is not the same
as think, and we know is not the same as we
believe)
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 references
13.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.

• 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/4596
139/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
(LGBTQ+)
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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 citations
• ( 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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 Abstract
1. 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,
research problem, 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- Procedures
1. The settings and locations,
2. Variables and operational definitions
3. 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.How your planned research study is related to
other knowledge in the area.
2.What will be done
3.What might be found

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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
• https://www.csulb.edu/sites/default/files/gro
ups/thesis-and-dissertation-
office/content_library-2016-university-
guidelines-manual.pdf
• Sample Paper
• https://owl.english.purdue.edu/media/pdf/20
090212013008_560.pdf

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