Methodology

        

        RM 0300 (UG25) 01 - Research Writing

        The purpose of a methodology sect is twofold

        First-By providing details of the sample and procedures you it is possible for other researchers to replicate your study.

        Second- After the reader knows the details of your method it becomes possible to judge the reliability and validity of your experiment.

        Note: the appendices is where more detailed information can be provided (media, graphs, links, etc)

        Organization

        The Method section generally includes two sections.

        1. Participants (or Subjects) (If you did not recruit the participants then you could title this section Sample)

        2. Procedures

Often other sections are included like

Material

Apparatus

Measures

Stimili

        Participants

        People are usually participants: other animals are always subjects.

        If you are describing human beings who provided data for an experiment the

        First indicate how many people participated.

        Second other relevant information like age, sex etc.

        If the more specific information is not necessary then your must still report the number of participants.

        Report age ranges and mean age of participants. Indicate the unit of measure.

        Use the terms men and women instead of males and females

        Use people of humankind rather than mankind.

        Racial and ethnic group labels are proper nouns. Capitalize them.

        Always be sensitive to the changing standards for offensive language.

        Statistics may be reported in the Participants subsection if they describe preexisting differences or similarities between groups.

        It may also be necessary to indicate how many dropped out of the study and why.

        Power Analysis

        Indicate how the sample size was determined.

        This will involve a power analysis indicating that with the given sample size, the analysis for the main hypothesis had sufficient power to find an effect if one was present.

        Ethical Treatment

        Your research should adhere to the requisite standards for the treatment of participants.

        Researchers should be in compliance with the what every set of standards their research requires

        Use “it” “that” or “which” when referring to animals. Don not use “he/she” or “who”.

        Procedure

        There are two points of view that you must be aware of in this part of the manuscript: the researcher’s and the participant’s.

        Use the researcher’s point of view to describe how the experiment was organized, and

        use the participant’s point of view to describe the task.

        Start with the organization

        What were the conditions? Did everyone participate in every condition (within-subjects design), or were people grouped in some way (between-groups design)?

        Provide names for your groups or conditions that help the reader to remember the key distinguishing features.

        The alcohol-information group and the no-information group are better designations than Group A and Group B. Feel free to give a short name or abbreviation to a group after describing it.

        Capitalize the name of the condition only if the name is a letter or includes a number.

        Be careful with the terms group and condition.

        They are related and almost equivalent in the researcher’s mind, but they are not linguistically equivalent.

        People can be in groups; they cannot be in conditions.

        Groups can perform tasks, but conditions cannot.

        It is often best to use participants as sentence subjects.

        Use the term condition carefully. People are assigned to conditions, not the other way around. People cannot be in conditions, and conditions cannot perform tasks.

        Use the participant as the focus rather than the experimenter.

        That is, say that the participants read, rated, completed, listened to, or watched.

        This is preferable to saying that the experimenter gave the participant something to read, rate, complete, listen to, or watch.

        Summarize instructions to participants.

        Explain the method of scoring only if it is not obvious.

        Finally, if your participants were deceived in any way, indicate that they were debriefed at some point in their participation.

        Remember Your Audience

        How to randomize: Do not explain that you had one hat for men and one for women and that you put each condition label in each hat and pulled one out every time you got ready to test someone. Just say that participants were randomly assigned to conditions or treatment groups. If additional details are relevant (e.g., there were equal num-bers of men and women in each group), state them briefly.

        The meaning of such terms as counterbalance, control, and being blind to experimental conditions: Do not say that half of the group randomly got red first and then green and the other half got green first and then red. Just say the order of presentation of the colors was counterbalanced.

        How to phrase instructions that stress speed and accuracy: Do not say that participants were told to read as fast as they could but to try not to make mistakes. Just say that instructions stressed speed and accuracy.

        How to create an answer sheet for their own use: Just say that answers were recorded or responses were recorded verbatim.

        When to construct reminders for themselves: Do not say that the correct answers were written lightly in pencil on the backs of the cards so that the experimenter would know which answers were correct. Say nothing.

        How to handle ordinary materials: Do not explain that participants used pencils to write on their answer sheets and that they gave them to the experimenter when they were finished. Just describe the answer sheets.

        Do not tell readers more than they need to know

        Assume common sense and familiarity with experimental methodology.