Effective Writing in Psychology

Finding Different Perspectives About Your Idea 116 Developing the Logic of Your Argument 119 10 The Introduction Section 123 Introducing the Topic 124 Different Approaches to Starting the Introduction 124 How to Begin 127 Reviewing the Literature 128 Reasons for Reviewing the Literature 128 Clarifying Terms in the Research 129 Introducing Your Research: Generating a Hypothesis 130 11 The Method Section 133 Participants and Subjects 134 Materials and Apparatus 141 Procedure 143 Design 144 12 The Results Section 147 Your Hypotheses 148 Deciding What to Present 149 Reporting Significant and Nonsignificant Results 150 Marginally Significant Effects 151 APA Style and Presentation of Your Results 152 Creating Tables 155 Creating Figures 160 The Connection between the Text and the Tables and Figures 164 The Difference between Results and Discussion Sections 166 Some Final Points About Presenting Results 169 13 The Discussion Section 171 Summarizing Your Results 172 Connecting Different Aspects of Your Results 173 Dealing with Nonsignificant Results 174 Comparing Your Results with Those of Others 175 Stating the Importance and Implications of Your Results 176 Acknowledging the Limitations of Your Study 177 14 References Citations in the Text and the Reference List 179 Citing References in the Text 180 Citing Sources with Three to Five Authors 182 Citing Sources with Six or More Authors 182 Citing Personal Communications 183 Citing Multiple Sources within Parentheses 183 Order of Citations in the Reference List 184 Using Your Word Processing Program to Create the Citation 184 Examples of How Different Types of References Should Be Laid Out 185 15 Final Touches: The Abstract and Formatting Details 193 The Abstract 194 Formatting Details 195 Part III Communicating Beyond the Research Paper 215 16 Creating Poster Presentations 217 Differentiating Visual and Written Communication 218 Reducing the Amount of Information 218 Visual Style 219 Your Behavior: The Ethic of a Poster Session 222 Creating Your Poster Using PowerPoint(r) 224 17 Giving Oral Presentations 231 The Difference between Oral and Written English 231 Adapting APA Style to Oral Presentations 236 Preparing for Your Talk 236 Creating Graphics for Your Presentation 238 Giving the Presentation 239 18 Presenting Your Work on the Internet 243 New Capabilities with Internet Publication 244 Using a Word Processor to Create Manuscripts for the Internet 245 Advantages of Internet Publishing Software 247 Publishing Your Poster on the Web 249 Uploading Your Manuscript to the Internet 249 19 Submitting Your Plan to an Ethics Committee 251 Ethical Standards in Research 251 Writing a Proposal for an Institutional Review Board for Research with Human Subjects 253 Writing a Proposal for the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) for Animal Research 258 Appendix A Example of APA-Style Manuscript with Common Errors 261 Appendix B Corrected APA-Style Manuscript 269 References 277 Author Index 285 Subject Index 288