Scientific Report

Scientific Reports: Psychology

Research can be identified as primary or secondary research; whether the researcher collects the data used for analysis or uses previously published findings determines this. The different types of research produce different types of scientific reports, such as:

Primary research is data collected from the researcher, e.g., when carrying out an experiment.

Fig. 1 - Results are usually presented on tables, charts and graphs to make results easier to interpret.

On the other hand, secondary research is carried out using previously published research.

Scientific Report: Importance

The reason why research should follow the APA recommendations for writing up psychological scientific research is that:

• It ensures the researcher adds enough information to replicate and peer-review the study.

• It makes it easier to read and find relevant information.

• It ensures the report is written to a good standard.

• It ensures any secondary research used acknowledges and credits the original author.

Scientfic Report: Writing

When conducting scientific report writing, several things must be kept in mind. A scientific report aims to help readers understand the study's procedure, findings and what this means for psychology. A scientific report should be clear and logical to make it easier to understand the research.

The American Psychological Association (APA) has created guidelines on how a scientific report should be written, including the scientific report structure and format.

APA suggests several headings for use in psychology reports. The scientific report structure and details included in the report will vary based on the researcher's experiment. However, a general framework is used as a template for research.

Scientific Report Structure

Psychology research should always start with an abstract. This section briefly summarises the whole study, typically 150-200 words. The crucial details the abstract should give include an overview of the hypothesis, sample, procedure, results, details regarding data analysis, and the conclusions drawn.

The purpose of the introduction is to justify why the research is carried out. This is usually done by writing a literature review of relevant information to the phenomena and showing that your study will fill a gap in research.

The information described in the literature review must show how the researcher it was used to formulate and derived the hypothesis investigated.

In this section, the investigated hypotheses should be reported.

Scientific Report Structure: Method

The method consists of multiple subsections to ensure the report covers enough details to replicate the research. It is important to replicate investigations to identify if it is reliable. The details included in the methodology are important for peer-reviewing the quality of the study.

The subsections written in the methods section of a scientific report are:

Design

• State the experimental design.

• State all of the (operationalised) variables investigated.

• If multiple conditions are investigated, e.g., people treated for one, two, and four weeks, researchers should report it.

• It is also important to note how researchers allocated participants into groups and whether they used counterbalancing methods.

• The research design used, e.g., correlational research.

Sample/ Participants

• The sampling method should be noted, e.g., opportunity.

• Researchers should state the number of participants and the number of males and females participating in the study.

• They should state the demographics of the participants used in the research, e.g., age (including the mean and standard deviation), ethnicity, nationality, and any other details relevant to the investigation.

Materials/Apparatus

• This section should state all the relevant equipment used in the study, i.e., equipment/materials used to measure the variables, e.g., questionnaires (researchers should include a copy of this in the appendix).

• Some research does not use this subsection if it does not use any specialised materials, e.g., researchers do not need to state if participants used pens or a stopwatch.

Procedure

• This section should describe what researchers did in the research in the order they conducted it.

• They should include details about standardised instruction, informed consent, and debriefing.

• This section should be concise but provide enough details so it is replicable.

Ethics

• This section states which ethical committee reviewed and granted the research.

• It should state any ethical issues that could have occurred in the research and how researchers dealt with them.

Scientific Report Conclusion and Results

The results section is where you state your findings. This section only states what you have found and does not discuss or explain it. You can present the data found through numerical values, tables, and figures. However, there are specific guidelines on reporting data per APA guidelines when reporting or adding these.

Researchers should not use the raw data collected. Instead, it should be analysed first. The results should start with descriptive data followed by inferential statistics (the type of statistical test used to identify whether a hypothesis should be accepted or rejected).

Researchers should report data regardless of whether it is significant or not. They should report the p-value to three decimal places but everything else to two.

After the results, the scientific report conclusion should be reported; this summarises what was found in the study.

Scientific Report: Discussion

This section should discuss and conclude with the research results. The first thing researchers should write about in the discussion is whether the findings support the proposed hypothesis.

You should add very little new research to the discussion section. If the hypothesis is not supported, the discussion should explain from research why this may be. Here, adding new research to present the findings is acceptable (perhaps another theory better explains it).

Critiquing this research, such as its strengths and weaknesses, how it contributed to the psychology field, and its next direction is essential. In the discussion, researchers should not add statistical values.

Scientific Report Example

An example of a scientific report includes any of those seen in studies, such as when a laboratory produces a primary scientific psychology report, or a meta-analysis which uses statistical means to combine and analyse data from similar studies.

References

The purpose of the reference section is to give credit to all the research used in writing the report. Researchers list this section in alphabetical order based on the author's last name – the references listed need to be reported per the APA format.

Researchers use background information, e.g. data or theories from previous publications, to form hypotheses, support, criticise findings and learn how research should progress.

The two most common secondary sources used in scientific reports are findings from published journals or books.

Let's look at some scientific report examples of how books and journals should be referenced following APA guidelines.