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Sample American Psychological Association Paper
Jeffrey Michael Greenberg
University of Colorado, Boulder
Running head: APA SAMPLE
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Abstract
This paper is designed to illustrate and describe the format and content
required for papers written according to the rules of the American
Psychological Association. The abstract is a brief description of the paper.
First, the abstract should introduce the issue that is being studied. Next,
the variables should be stated along with a brief description of the
methods used in the study. The main results of the study should also be
stated. Do not state secondary results or worry about mentioning every
analysis that was conducted, just the main one or ones. Finally, briefly
mention the implications of the results and let the reader know how they
will be discussed within the paper. The abstract should be about 100-150
words and follows the title page with "Abstract" centered at the top and
the paragraph not indented.
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Sample American Psychological Association Paper
The introduction follows the abstract with the title centered at the
top on a new page. The introduction section is designed to describe the
specific problem which is being studied, describe the research strategy,
and present and explain hypotheses. Opening the introduction should be
a statement of what the issue of interest is. A general statement of why
the area under study is interesting or worth examining can give the reader
a sense that the topic under examination is worthwhile.
The next thing to do is describe the relevant research which has
been done relating to the topic. When describing past research, it is
important to be clear about how the studies or theories being discussed
are relevant to the issue. Do not spend a lot of time reviewing studies
which are only slightly related, or in which the conclusions reached are
not applicable to your study. The literature review should have a logical
progression into the issue of the experiment. Discussion of current
knowledge should be set up so as to demonstrate a need for the current
study.
After the literature review and justification for examining the issue,
the specific study should be described. This description should include a
definition of the independent and dependent variables and a clear
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statement of the hypothesis. It is also important to be clear about how you
have arrived at your hypothesis. For example, if your study is designed
to discriminate between two competing theories which explain a
behavioral phenomenon, be clear about which theory you think will
explain the behavior of the participants in your study and why your
hypothesis favors one theory and not another.
Method
Participants
The Participants section describes the participants who participated
in the experiment. The number of participants should be stated, brief
demographic information (university students, sixth graders, number of
males and females), and their motivation (class credit, got paid, class
assignment). If the type of subject will be a variable, state specifically how
the participants were selected. Also mention how they were assigned to
groups (randomly, according to a learning disability, etc.). Finally, if
anyone did not complete the experiment, state how many and why they
didn't finish (lost to computer error, incomprehensible handwriting, not
proficient in the language of the study). As a note, it is not uncommon to
throw out a subject's data if they do not help to answer your question (e.g.
if you can't read what he/she wrote). Data cannot be thrown out because
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they do not agree with your hypothesis, but if they don't address the issue
in the same manner as the other participants, it is acceptable to toss them.
If you are trying to find out about the average size of apples and you get a
rock in the basket, don't measure it.
Materials and Apparatus
In this section you should describe all of the materials and
apparatus used in the experiment. This description should be done, as
with all things in the method section, with the goal that if someone
wanted to recreate your study, there would be sufficient detail in the
method section to do that. If any computers were used, tell the make and
model of them. Also tell what software was used (Hypercard, Mindlab,
whatever the experiment was programmed in). The materials should also
be described in detail whether the study was run using paper and pencil
or computer. If the participants see lists of words, how long were they,
where did the words come from, and was anything special about them? If
they read a passage, how long was it, what was it about, and what was
special about it? Also, if you have different groups seeing different
materials, what is different about the materials for the different groups?
If the materials are complicated or some important feature cannot
be described very well, the actual materials should be listed in an
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appendix. The writer should refer the reader to the appendix in the body
of the paper (see Appendix A), and then include the appendix on a
separate page after the references.
Design and Procedure
In this section, you report the design of the experiment and the
procedure that was used to test the participants. For the design, the
independent and dependent variables should be named, as well as
describing how many levels of each variable there were, and what the
levels were. This description should be written clearly, so that the reader
can easily understand what was being manipulated and how the different
conditions of the experiment were set up.
When describing the procedure, you should have the goal of
describing exactly what the subject was asked to do from they moment
they walk into the room until the experiment is over. Instructions to the
subject should be summarized but given in enough detail to understand
them. If there is some complicated aspect to the directions, you can quote
part of the instructions which were given to the subject. For example, if
there is a subtle wording difference between directions given to two
different groups, you may want to include the actual sections that were
different so the reader can be clear about exactly what was asked of the
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subject. This may be particularly important if someone could question the
validity of the experiment based on some aspect of the instructions (e.g. if
a reviewer thinks a particular instruction is ambiguous).
Also describe the specific tasks of the experiment. Examples of this
section would be which buttons the participants pressed on a keyboard in
response to stimuli, whether they received any feedback after answering,
how many trials of the task were performed, in what order were the tasks
done, how much time the participants were given to do a task, etc. The
procedure should be described in the order the experiment was done so it
is easy to understand. Make sure to be specific enough so that the
procedure could be replicated, but do not ramble about unnecessary
details (participants walked into the room at a moderate pace, then after
pulling the brown chair away from the table, proceeded to sit down, after
which they pulled themselves up to a comfortable position in relation to
the table). This much detail is unnecessary, and would annoy the reader.
Results
The results section continues directly after the methods section, and
describes the data collected and the statistical treatment of the data. The
first thing to do is to state clearly what data are being analyzed. This
statement is especially important if the analysis is being performed on
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some subset of the data collected. For example, “To examine effects of the
interstimulus interval, recall of the first seven words of each list were
analyzed”. This statement tells the reader that this test is not including
recall of all of the words presented, just the first seven from each list.
Next, before describing the data, briefly restate the hypothesis being
tested. This statement will have been done in detail in the introduction,
but briefly restating it will remind the reader of what you expected to
happen before you tell them the results.
After this section, you should state the results. Mention all relevant
results, including those that go counter to your hypothesis. In mentioning
the results, provide both descriptive (means and things that tell about the
actual data) and inferential (statistical tests done to examine differences
between groups such as ANOVAs. These are called inferential tests
because we are inferring a relationship between the groups, not stating the
relationship as fact.) statistics. Also very important is to state the direction
of the effect. That is, if there is a difference between the groups you
examined, tell which group was better, stronger, faster, or whatever. This
example of reporting results comes out of the APA manual - “As
predicted, the first-grade girls reported a significantly greater liking for
school (M=4.63) than did the first-grade boys (M=1.38), t(22)=2.62, p<.01.”
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Notice that in one sentence they have reported the descriptive statistics
(means), the inferential statistics (t-score with significance level), the
direction of the effect (girls > boys), and that the results supported the
hypothesis (as predicted). Do not report raw data or individual scores.
If the descriptive data can be better explained by putting them in a
table, then they should be put in a table. There is not a specific rule for
determining this question, but in general things like 3X2 designs (two
independent variables, one having three levels and one having two,
making a total of six cells) can be interpreted much more easily if they are
presented in a table. In the body of the paper you should refer the reader
to the table, and mention what results may be of particular interest (as
shown in Table 1, ...). The actual table goes after
____________________
Insert Table 1 about here
____________________
the references, not in the results section, but this note tells the editors
about where to put it when the formatting of the journal is done. Do not
put inferential statistics in a table; report them in the body of the results
section. Also, do not interpret the results in the results section. In other
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words, tell what the results were, but do not tell what you think they
mean or why you think they came out as they did.
Discussion
The discussion section is where you hypothesize about the meaning
of the results. It should be opened with a clear statement of support or
non-support of the hypothesis. Results should also be related to previous
research and theories discussed in the introduction section. You should
attempt to interpret the results and draw inferences based on them. In an
attempt to do this interpretation, theoretical consequences should be
emphasized. In other words, what do you think the results mean and how
do they add to the knowledge of the topic as a whole? Has this study
helped to resolve the original problem?
Negative results should be mentioned also. You may attempt to
explain them with a sound theoretical idea, but do not merely explain
them away as a fluke, etc. If negative or unexpected results spawn a new
theoretical idea or research direction or study, suggest this idea as a
possibility for future research. You may suggest a future study which you
think will help to clarify the issue further or examine your question from a
different angle.
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The important thing to keep in mind is that it will be uninteresting
merely to rehash the results. You should give serious thought to the
implications of the results before you write this section. Ideas offered
should be soundly based, but speculation is acceptable if it is reasonably
associated to the results. You have a fair amount of flexibility in this
section, so put some effort into it.
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References
Wolfe, M., Gerwek, K., & Nevins, S. (1992). Procrastination: Effects
of "blowing it off" on college grade point averages. Journal of Educational
Psychology, 15, 321-334.
References appear in alphabetical order by first author. The format
is just like the sample. The title is not underlined, and the first word after
a colon ( : ) is capitalized. The title of the journal is underlined, as is the
volume number of the journal.
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Table 1
Mean Number of Words Recalled as a Function of Interstimulus Interval
and Retention Interval
Interstimulus Interval
3 Seconds
0 Seconds
11
9 Seconds
14
M
12.5
Retention
Interval
30 Seconds
M
9
10
13
11
13.5
* This is a sample Table. Notice that the title explains what the numbers
represent (number of words recalled), as well as what the variables are.
* Keep in mind this paper does not cover all parts of the APA Manual. It
is designed as an aid in writing APA papers, not as a substitute for the
manual.
* It is OK to include StatVIew tables with an explanatory title even though
they do not conform to APA style.
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Figure 1
Mean Imprinting Test Scores Plotted as a Function of Age (in hours) and
Rearing Condition (Isolation or Social).
Cell Mean for Test Score
14
12
10
8
ISO
6
SOC
4
2
0
4
8
Age (in hours)
16
32