Biological psychology ans statistics
Your lab report should contain the following parts
Title page
Introduction
Methods
Results
Discussion
References
Appendices (if applicable)
The font must be Times New Roman, size 12, and should adhere to double spacing for all sections.
The main body of your report (Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion) should not exceed four pages with page margins of 2.54cm (1in) top / bottom / left / right.
make sure to indent the first line of each paragraph and not to add any extra lines between paragraphs.
Submit all parts of your report in a single file named PSY2013_Resit_LabReport_URNXXXXXXX either as a word document or pdf.
Your lab report should include:
• Title – should summarise the empirical findings from your study
• Abstract – should give an overview of the report and explain theory the study is designed on.
provide a brief outline of the study design and summarise the main findings. End the abstract with major discussion points and/or conclusions.
• Introduction – should start with some general statements on why it is important to study your question.
Provide an overview of the relevant background information that helps you to either identify the gap in the literature or illustrates a current debate around the topic.
Make sure that the rationale for your study and your research question logically follow from this overview of your background reading.
Briefly introduce the general design of your study so that your specific hypothesis / research predictions are easy to understand.
• Methods – Experimental methods are described in a concise paragraph or through an original representation that describes the flow and proper sequence of important aspects of the experimental protocol.
The methods section clearly and concisely answers the question, “what did you do?”. Photographs and/or drawings may be used to illustrate relevant aspects of the experimental methods. Here think about what is important for a reader to replicate your study.
• Results – Start with information on your data – mean and standard deviation or median and interquartile range; skew and kurtosis.
Then explore your data for outliers followed by checking the assumptions for parametric analyses.
Describe differences that appear to be present – remember you can only interpret these if they are statistically significant.
Check these differences for statistical significance using the appropriate test (parametric or non-parametric test depending on your data). Write in sentences!
• Discussion / Conclusion – Start by repeating aims of the study and summarising the main findings ( bear in mind that a reader can get a rough idea of your study reading the discussion only). Then relate these results to your hypothesis / aim and to previous studies.
If your results agree with hypotheses and with previous studies discuss the implications for the theory or scientific debate. If they disagree the you should discuss why this may be the case (e.g., difference in study design, power issues etc.).
Discuss the implications of these differences for the theory (e.g., the theory is applicable only under specific circumstances) or the scientific debate.
Discuss potential limitations of your study and suggest modifications and extensions for your study, when appropriate. End with a conclusion – what are implications of your results?
• References – References are cited within the body of the text and a complete bibliography is presented that is correctly formatted according to APA style. Only use scientific resources.
• Appendices – presents figures / charts / tables with descriptions or captions. add any other information that may be relevant e.g., information about stimuli etc.
Additional tips:
• Be brief and simple. Do not include too much prior research in your introduction. Select a few papers of high relevance and introduce them properly.
• When discussing the limitations of your study think in terms of methodological differences to previous studies that potentially could explain the differences in results.
• Define abbreviations at their first use.
• Include units of measurement (e.g., age is given in years).
1. You will be marked on the quality of your arguments in the introduction and discussion, the appropriateness of the chosen analysis and the correctness of the results presentation. You will NOT be marked on the significance of the results.
2. Figures and Tables should be referenced in the text and have appropriate legends and/or titles.
3. Include units of measurement where relevant.
4. Refer back to the tutorials and , don’t save them to last minute.
Available on SurreyLearn: ‘Psychology – Undergraduate Support’ in the folder ‘Useful Forms & Guides’, then ‘Assessment and Feedback’.
For late submissions a penalty will be applied depending on the submission time:
• Between 4:01 pm on Tuesday and 4:00 pm on Wednesday,
the penalty is -10% (percentage points = marks)
• Between 4:01 pm on Wednesday and 4:00 pm on Thursday,
the penalty is -20%
• After 4:01 pm on Thursday, the coursework will be given a zero (fail) and will not be marked.
You will receive feedback within three weeks of your submission on SurreyLearn.
You can receive additional feedback during Student Engagement and Feedback Hours
