Structure of a Quantitative Research Report
Structure of a Quantitative Research Report
Make sure you use this alongside the marking criteria, not instead of them!
Your work should be in the passive voice/third person. For instance, the alternative hypothesis is, and not my alternative hypothesis is.
Please take the time to improve your marks by careful proof reading and spell checking.
Word Count = 2,000 (+/- 10%)
If you are under this word count you have probably missed something important, and you will be marked down for missing something important.
Please dont get hung up on the word count guides for each section. They are there as a very rough indication of what your report might look like because I realise that many students find them helpful. The word count over all matters far, far more than the word count of each individual section. Having said that if your introduction and discussion are both shorter than your results section then youve definitely gone wrong.
Dont forget page breaks in between each section.
Title
Make it so that a key-word search on an electronic database will find this article
Make it short
Indicate the type of article: Review? Experiment? Survey?
Remember that your title page must also include your student ID number, and also your word count.
Abstract (100-150 words this is quite strict for the abstract, but the word count guidelines for other sections are not so important they are just there as a guide. This is not included in your word count)
Although this is the first section this is the last thing you write. The purpose of this is so that a researcher can quickly determine whether the study is of interest to them. It should include a succinct summary of the aim of the study, what procedures were used, what was found and how the findings were interpreted.
Introduction (around 500 - 600 words)
This section tells the reader why you are doing this research.
Briefly review relevant literature in the area before going on to more detailed discussion of studies that are of direct relevance to your research. Provide a rationale for the hypotheses you will give (why do you think the alternate will happen based on the literature you have reviewed?)
State your aim.
State your matching hypotheses at the end of the introduction in simple projects you may have one alternative hypothesis, and one matching null hypothesis. Sometimes you might have two of each, or even more.
Method (around 400 - 500 words)
This section should provide sufficient detail to allow the reader to replicate the study. Include (and do use these subheadings):
Design: A general outline of the design of the study. What are your variables?
Participants: How many? How were they sampled and what is your target population (almost always an opportunity sample it wont be random)? Mean age, and either the min/max ages or the range. How many male/female? Anything else relevant?
Materials: What did you use? Make sure the level of detail matches up to the marking criteria. If you need to put anything in the appendices, refer to it clearly here.
Procedure: What did the participants have to do? In what order? Make sure you include details of the ethical procedures here.
Results (around 200 words)
Start with a very brief reminder of what you did what your variables are.
Then give the descriptive statistics, in a table which is formatted according to APA guidelines.
Comment on the descriptive statistics, dont just repeat them.
Next state what test youre using and why.
Now give the results of this test.
Present and comment on an appropriate figure (a graph/plot/chart). Exact location of the figure within this section is not too important, its OK to put it before the test.
Discussion (around 600 - 700 words)
Which hypothesis (null or alternate) did you accept based on your inferential test?
How does this relate back to the literature you discussed in your introduction?
How does this relate back to applications in the real world?
How would you do the study differently (please do not say you would have more participants, this makes us cry think of something more specific to the study youve just presented).
What other ideas for future research do you have, based specifically on your results from this current study?
References (not included in word count)
It is essential that you cite all sources correctly in the text, and provide the full reference in the list at the end of the text.
Please use APA style referencing.
Appendices (not included in word count)
Any materials you used in the study should be added here, labelled with letters or roman numerals.
Dont include raw data or SPSS output.
Information sheet.
Thank you for considering taking part in this study. This study will ask you to complete a selection of tests designed to assess differing cognitive abilities. The study is expected to take around 15-20 minutes to complete.
All participant data will only be identifiable by a participant code, produced based on your choice of either the name of a pet, meaningful location (that isnt your birthplace or current location) or favourite band, which is then combined with your year of birth. For example, Bertie1984 (pet name combined with year of birth), Chelmsford1984 (location combined with year of birth) or TheWho1984 (favourite band combined with year of birth). You are not obliged to take part in this study. You have the right to withdraw during the study or after taking part if you wish to do so. The latter can be done by getting in touch with the Principal Researcher via the email address provided. There will be an exit this survey now button on every page for those who wish to withdraw earlier. No adverse psychological harm is expected from taking part in this research study, however if you feel you may be vulnerable and this study could raise topics that you are not comfortable discussing or handling then please do not take part. We would also request that you only take part in this study if you are over the age of 18.
Participant data will be stored using a computer and the survey hosting platform Qualtrics. Access to the data via the Qualtrics survey hosting platform will only be available to the Principal Researcher. This access will be for the purpose of extracting and analysing the data collected during the study. Students on the MSc Psychology Conversion course at the University of West London will only have access to a file in which the participant codes are removed for the purposes of a research training exercise. Access to computer files containing participant codes and data will be available by password only. Data will be stored for up to five years after the end of the project.
This project has been approved by the University of West London Ethics committee. If you have any further questions about the project please get in contact with the Principal Researcher.
Researcher leading the project:
Principal Researcher: Dr Jamie Churchyard, Department of Psychology, School of Human and Social Sciences, University of West London. Email:Jamie.Churchyard@uwl.ac.uk
Please click Next to progress to the consent form.
Providing informed consent:
Please provide a participant code based on your choice of either the name of a pet, meaningful location (that isnt your birthplace or current location) or favourite band, which is then combined with your year of birth. For example, Bertie1984 (pet name combined with year of birth), Chelmsford1984 (location combined with year of birth), or TheWho1984 (favourite band combined with year of birth).
Participant code:
Please make a note of this participant code for any future correspondence with the Principal Researcher regarding the data you have provided.
To provide informed consent please indicate that you understand the following by ticking the appropriate boxes. By ticking all of these boxes and clicking the blue arrow in the bottom right hand corner of the screen, you are consenting to participate in this research study:
I have read the information provided and I am happy to participate. I understand that by completing this questionnaire I am consenting to be part of the research study and for my data to be used as described.
I understand that I am not obliged to take part in this study, and I have the right to refuse to answer any or all of the questions I am asked and may withdraw at any time.
I am over 18 years of age.
Could you please identify your gender (open text response):
Could you please note your age (in years):
In this task you will be presented with three terms, you must then provide a fourth term that relates to all three of the terms presented.
For example if man/glue/starwas presented you would respond "super" because this relates to the three terms listed (super-star, super-glue, superman).
You will have a 15 second time limit for each set of three terms. Once you have typed in your answer in the textbox provided please click outside of the textbox to ensure the answer submits.
Press next when you are ready to begin.
The thirty items used for the Remote Associates task are provided in the appendix of Bowden and Jung-Beeman (2003), the first thirty items listed. These are also provided below:
Please take a break now and click next when you are ready to continue.
In the next task aword (an object) will be displayed on screen.
Youmust think ofas many novel, but physically possible, uses for the object within a set time limit (three minutes). The question will move on to next object automatically when the time limit is up. You will be asked to perform this task for three different objects.
Press 'next' when you are ready to begin.
Cup or Pencil Or Chair
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Debrief sheet
The literature suggests that there is consistent evidence for slight differences in performance on a selection of different cognitive performance tests, with male participants performing better on certain tasks than female participants (e.g., short term memory, reaction time, sustained attention, Rovio et al., 2016) with the opposite happening on certain other cognitive performance tasks (e.g., visual and event based memory, Rovio et al., 2016; emotion recognition, Thompson & Voyer, 2014). However the evidence for gender differences in tests focused on manual cognitive processes (e.g., creating and bringing together related and different concepts), display a greater degree of mixed results (Baer & Kaufman, 2008). This study aimed to see whether there are any gender differences could be observed on a range of measure assessing manual cognitive processes.
This project was approved by the University of West London Ethics committee. If you have any further questions about the project please get in contact with the Principal Researcher (including about the findings of the study).
Researcher leading the project:
Principal Researcher: Dr Jamie Churchyard, Department of Psychology, School of Human and Social Sciences, University of West London. Email:Jamie.Churchyard@uwl.ac.uk
If taking part in this study has raised any mental health concerns, do consider seeking advice from the following sources:
For University of West London studentsconsider visiting the Counselling Service. Their website provides an overview of their services and contact information.
Website:http://www.uwl.ac.uk/counselling-service/about-counselling-service
Other sources for members of the general public:
MIND
Leading mental health charity in England and Wales. The MindInfoLine offers thousands of callers confidential help on a range of mental health issues. The MindInfoLine number, as well as a range of other contact information is provided via the MIND website (URL below).
URL: https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/helplines
Samaritans
National organisation offering support to those in distress who feel suicidal or despairing and need someone to talk to. The Samaritans number, as well as a range of other contact information is provided via the Samaritans website (URL below).
URL: https://www.samaritans.org/how-we-can-help-you/contact-us
Method
Design
The study was a quasi-experiment, between participants. Having gender with its two conditions male and female as an independent variable and convergent thinking and divergent thinking as two dependant variables.
Participants
The participants in this study were 23 members of the general population, obtained via opportunity sampling, 13 females, 10 males, with an age range between 20 and 63 years (Mage = 33.6; S.D. = 14.58), no incentive was made available for the participants.
Materials
Two tasks were used in this study
The first was the Remote Associates Task (Mednick, 1962) (Appendix D), this was designed to assess convergent thinking; this task had 30 items extracted from the list produced by Bowden and Jung-Beeman (2003), e.g., swiss/cake/sweet with the word that brings them together being cheese, a minimum score of 0 and a max of 30 could be obtained, a high score would signify that the participant had high creative potential.
The second was the Alternative Uses Task (Guilford, 1967) (Appendix E), this was designed to assess divergent thinking. This task had stated three objects for which many new but useful uses had to be listed, e.g., a cup a possible novel use being flower pot. Listing a high number of uses would imply a high level of creativity. A mean of the final number of uses across the three items was calculated as the final score for this task.
Procedure
Ethical approval of the project was given by UWL Ethics Committee. Participants were issued with two online tasks. Participants were presented with an information sheet (Appendix A) explaining what the study will do, that data is anonymous, they can withdraw at any time and they arent obligated to continue, if they continued they were presented with an informed consent page (Appendix B) where they had to choose a usercode, sign the consent, and to fill in demographics with a forced response for gender; followed by the tasks.
Participants were prompted with a text box (Appendix C) explaining what they have to do before each task and each condition. First, they were presented with the RAT, 30 items were displayed, and they could type in the answer relating to the item in an empty text box, 15 seconds were allocated for each item. After completing this task they were presented with the AUT, which consisted of 3 items for which they could find between 0 and 45 novel possible uses for each item, 3 minutes were allocated for each item. After completing the tasks, they were debriefed (Appendix F) and given sources where they can seek advice if any mental issues arise following the survey.
Results
This experimental research study aimed to examine whether there were any differences between genders in convergent thinking and divergent thinking scores.
The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was used, this confirmed that the data was normally distributed having D (23) = .16, p > .05 for RAT and D (23) = .15, p > .05 for AUT.
Table 1. Descriptive statistics split by gender
Male Female
N Mean Std. Deviation N Mean Std. Deviation
RAT_Score 10 13.50 5.22 13 13.00 6.77
AUT_Score 10 5.20 3.04 13 4.79 3.33
In the RAT males (M = 13.50) appear to perform better than females (M = 13.00) and in the AUT task males (M = 5.20) appear to outperform females (M = 4.79) as well.
An independent t-test was carried out in order to examine whether there are differences between genders in convergent thinking and divergent thinking.
Figure 1. Mean differences of RAT score split by gender
Levenes test indicated equal variances for both tasks, having, F = 3.30, p > .05 for RAT and F = .43, p > .05 for AUT. Although as seen in Figure 1 some differences in the means were present, no significant differences were found between genders in the convergent thinking task, t (21) = 1.05, p > .05 and no significant differences were found between genders in the divergent thinking task, t (21) = .30, p > .05.
