1. Title Page : concise and descriptive
- clearly indicates your topic and independent and dependent variables
2. Abstract: a summary of your project and its findings, which should tell the whole story of your study, including:
- the overall purpose of the study and research problem(s) you investigated
- the basic design and methods of the study
- the major findings and trends found in your analysis of the study results
- a brief summary of your interpretations and conclusions
3. Introduction & Theoretical Framework (Literature Review, Research Questions, and Statement of Hypothesis)
- a review of the literature that you used to build your research questions and study hypothesis
- should be more than a summary of the articles you read
- brings together theories and results from a number of studies to provide background for your project and demonstrate how your research study hypothesis fits into this current research area
- provides a compelling narrative about how the articles you've read have built up to your research questions and study and make the case for why your research questions and study are important
- end with an explicit statement about your research hypothesis
4. Methods: provides detailed information about your experimental study design. Your Methods section should include:
- the study populations, including the number/sex of participants, and subject recruitment procedures
- Your independent and dependent variables
- the experimental design of your study, i.e. within or between groups design, and why it's appropriate for your research area
- the procedures your research design followed
- refer to each material item that you used in the study, and where they can be found in appendices
5. Results: report the findings of your research study, written in the past tense, without bias or interpretation.
- describe your data analysis
- focus on being concise and objective
- organize your results around tables and figures that summarize the results of your statistical analyses
- include summary text that describes the results in your tables and figures
- organize your key findings in a logical sequence, generally following your Methods section
- don't omit relevant findings, even those that don't support your predictions
- discuss limitations of the reliability and applicability of your study results and provide alternative solutions
6. Discussion: interpret and describe the significance of your findings in light of what is already known about the research area you're investigating.
- explain whether or not the results were expected, explanations for the results, and patterns and trends that emerged from your results and their meanings
- include references to previous research: compare your results with findings from other studies
- use evidence from research sources to build arguments about what your study findings mean
- analyse your evidence and observations to show how they link to your broader study hypothesis and research questions
7. References List: a list of the sources you cited in your research paper in APA Style
8. Appendices:
- all research/presentation/testing materials that were presented to participants
- Consent and Debriefing forms
- list in the order that they were presented in the Methods section
For more citation and writing help, contact the Writing Center and make an online appointment to meet with one of their consultants. For help with your data analysis and using SPSS, stop by the Math Learning Center to meet with a tutor.
