Providing an overview of the study
Criteria Marks ABSTRACT: Providing an overview of the study ‐ its aims, method, results, and implications 4
a. Gives a complete, but succinct summary of the aims/study rationale, sample, methods, results, and key implications/conclusions of the study. 4
INTRODUCTION: Explaining the importance of the study and how it addresses a problem or gap in the literature 15
a. Identifies the general relevance of the area of study. 3
b. Provides a purposeful and critical integrative overview of relevant existing knowledge on the topic (including definitions). 6
c. Identifies the specific rationale and aims for this study within this topic and their contribution to addressing a problem. 3
d. Provides hypotheses (or, where appropriate, research questions) that follow from a reasoned argument stemming from reviewed literature. 3
METHOD: A detailed description of what was done to answer the research question 4
a. Provides a detailed description of the sample and the sampling methods in the “Participants” subsection. 1
b. Provides a detailed description of the materials and procedure such that an independent reader could replicate the study as conducted. 3
RESULTS: A detailed description of how the data were prepared and analysed, and what was found 4
a. Presents relevant descriptive statistics to contextualise research questions/hypotheses. 2
b. Reports and describes the results of these analyses (but does not interpret them). 2
DISCUSSION: Interpretation and synthesis of the results in relation to (i) the hypotheses, (ii) the research question/aims, and (iii) the broader literature
15
a. Summarises the aims of the study and the results in comparison to the hypotheses (or research questions). 2
b. Provides an explanation/interpretation of the results that contextualises them within the world (implications) and the broader literature. 7
c. Identifies, explains, and discusses 1‐2 limitations which compromise the study. 3
d. Provides directions for future research that stem directly from the results of the current study. 2
e. Summarises the contribution to the literature with respect to the aims of the study. 1
SCIENTIFIC WRITING STYLE 8 a. Evidence (in the form of references, results, or reasoning) is provided for all assertions of fact. Concepts drawn from other sources are
paraphrased and cited correctly according to specified style (APA 6). 4
b. Argument is structured in a manner that is logical and integrated. 1.5
c. Spelling, grammar, and scientific writing style is correct. 1
d. The document is formatted as per specified style (APA 6), including creating a title for the report and a full reference list. 1.5
RUBRIC EXPLANATION
ABSTRACT: Provides an overview of the study‐ its aims, method, results, and implications
a. Gives a complete, but succinct summary of the aims / study rationale, sample, methods, results, and key implications / conclusions of the study.
Your abstract, like your title, is a quick way for other researchers to understand what you did. You need to be concise and provide no more than a sentence on each point. Basically, a reader should be able to look at only your abstract and know what the objective of your study was, how you tried to answer your question, what you found, and what that might mean.
INTRODUCTION: Explains the importance of the study and how it addresses a problem or gap in the literature
The Introduction is where you sell to your reader what your topic is, why it’s important, what the research question is, and what is expected. This should all be founded on good use of past research to support your points and some logical argument on your part.
a. Identifies the general relevance of the area of study
You need to start by telling your reader why it’s worth studying your general topic. This needs to be more than “it’s interesting” or “because it’s the topic of the assignment”, you should be able to show some form of benefit that might come from investigating your overall topic.
b. Provides a purposeful and critical integrative overview of relevant existing knowledge on the topic (including definitions).
You should use previous literature to tell a story about what we know about the topic and why you are conducting this study. Critically, you should have a point that you’re trying to make (why this study should be conducted) and you should use the papers you’re citing to back up this argument. It should not become a collection of abstracts for the papers you cite. You need to focus on and discuss their findings more and their methods less (unless that’s important to the story you are telling).
c. Identifies the specific rationale and aims for this study within this topic and their contribution to addressing a problem.
It’s important that you explicitly state what problem you are solving by doing this study, what you aim to find out, and how this might help resolve that problem. How will your study build on the body of research already available on the topic?
d. Provides hypotheses (or, where appropriate, research questions) that follow from a reasoned argument stemming from reviewed literature.
Finally, you should make testable predictions. These predictions should be based on the literature you’ve discussed throughout your introduction and should be consistent with the way that you’re testing those hypotheses (use “difference” language if you have a between groups design, or “correlation” language for correlational studies). Like criteria c, you need to make sure you explain why you’re making these predictions as well as stating them, not just one or the other.
METHOD: A detailed description of what was done to answer the research question
It’s important that your readers can clearly understand how you came to your findings, so they can be sure your conclusions are sound and not based on any anomalies of your research design. It should be clear enough from your methods section that your reader could perfectly duplicate your study if they wanted to test that your results aren’t a fluke (i.e. they are replicable).
a. Provides a detailed description of the sample and the sampling methods.
Part of that replicability is making sure we know who you studied, as the psychological characteristics of some groups are different from one another. This should identify to your reader where your sample came from, how they came to participate, and some background characteristics including, but not necessarily limited to, age and gender. You should include other factors as they become relevant to your study outcomes, e.g. relationship status in relationship research, or perhaps socio economic status in educational research.
b. Provides a detailed description of the materials and procedure such that an independent reader could replicate the study as it was conducted.
You also need to tell your readers exactly what you measured and how you measured it, as well as describing any manipulations you implemented (i.e. did you treat groups differently? Did you give participants a task to complete?). This should include a lot of gritty details; how many self‐report items did you use? What response format did you use (e.g. Yes‐no, Strongly Disagree (1)‐Strongly Agree (7))? How long did it take participants to complete the study? Did they do it in the lab or in their own time? Via pen and paper or online? If you used an existing measure, you should cite it.
By reading this section, you should have a clear understanding of what it would have been like to participate in the study.
RESULTS: A detailed description of how the data were prepared and analysed, and what was found
This is where you report the results of analyses that test your hypotheses. Importantly, you are just describing the numerical results of your study here, not talking about what this means for your research question.
a. Presents relevant descriptive statistics to contextualise research questions/hypotheses
You should present descriptive statistics (i.e. means and standard deviations or frequencies) of your study variables (not age and gender as they should appear in the participants section). This helps your reader understand your sample a little better and be better positioned to understand and critique your conclusions.
b. Reports and describes the results of these analyses (but does not interpret them).
Presents the relevant statistics in correct reporting style. For the reporting of numerical values this should include details of what statistic, the degrees of freedom, the test‐statistic, and the significance value at minimum to allow checking of your results. Avoid redundancy; if your numerical results are in tables they should be introduced in text before presentation and described afterwards, but the values should not appear again.
DISCUSSION: Interprets and synthesises the results in relation to (i) the hypotheses, (ii) the research question/aims, and (iii) the broader literature
The discussion is where you interpret and discuss your results, what they mean in practical terms, the limitations of interpretation, and how they affect the interpretation of other research.
a. Summarises the aims of the study and the results in comparison to the hypotheses (or research questions).
Discussions should always start by reorienting the reader to the aims of the study by simply restating them, as this sets up the argument of the discussion. Then you should address whether the findings were consistent with the hypotheses made in your introduction.
b. Provides an explanation/interpretation of the results that contextualises them within the world (implications) and the broader literature.
This is what is meant by discussion; take your numerical results and explain what they mean in real world terms. For example, if you found a significant difference between groups, what direction is it in and what are the implications of that difference for the individuals in each group? Does this align with the expectations of the prior literature? Why or why not? What might this mean for our understanding of the topic of study?
c. Identifies, explains and discusses any limitations which compromise the internal or external validity of the study.
It’s important that we acknowledge the reasons we might be unsure about our findings, either in the degree to which the findings can be explained by the explanation you have made (internal validity) or the degree to which these results might be replicated in other samples or contexts (external validity). In much the same way as in the introduction, this needs to be not only stated, but explained. Why do you believe a particular aspect of your study is limiting the conclusions drawn? In what way does it limit the conclusions? This should not suggest your study is worthless. Only cover one or two limitations, no more.
d. Provides directions for future research that stem directly from the results of the current study.
In much the same way that your study is influenced and predicated on the prior research, you should propose directions for new research that are dependent on your findings. Try to avoid proposing research ideas that are unrelated to your study (non sequiturs) or research projects that do not rely upon the results of your study. Ideally, your future directions should be ideas that it wouldn’t have occurred to your readers to investigate before seeing your findings.
e. Summarises the contribution to the literature with respect to the aims of the study
Provide a tidy little summary of how you have addressed your aims and what you have found.
SCIENTIFIC WRITING STYLE
While this isn’t exactly an objective of a lab report, these are important features of how you go about satisfying the other criteria. These relate to the clear expression of your argument, the adherence to writing guidelines, and the use of evidence.
a. Evidence (in the form of references, results or reasoning) is provided for all assertions of fact.
It is critical that every time you make an assertion of fact, that you have evidence either in the form of a reference (where you are using someone else’s data to support a point), your own data, or reasoning which extrapolates from either a reference or results. See study skills for guidance on referencing. (http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/study‐support/referencing).
While you need to use evidence from other sources and you may even use some of their reasoning, you need to make sure you attribute the source and you do not steal their expression. See study skills for guidance on paraphrasing (http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/study‐support/referencing/summarising‐paraphrasing‐ quoting)
It is vital to include a full reference list of all the articles/books etc. you have cited within your report so other researchers can potentially find and read these sources for themselves.
b. Argument is structured in a manner that is logical and integrated.
Your piece of work needs to be easy to follow and read like one piece of work, rather than a series of different pieces. This also applies to the construction of good paragraphs. See study skills for guidance on the similarities between reports and essays (http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/study‐support/academic‐ resources/report‐writing).
c. Spelling and grammar are correct.
d. The document is formatted as per specified style.
Journals and businesses often want a style guide to be adhered to. This is to preserve branding and consistency but also because they feel that certain features make communication clearer and more effective. For Psychology, the best place to start is APA 6th, for which the library has details on referencing (http://www.deakin.edu.au/students/study‐support/referencing/apa), however you will need to refer to a style guide for table formatting and other aspects (examples include the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). (2010), or A practical guide to writing: Psychology (Taines, 2015)). This includes creating a title for your lab report. Do not use the title in the assignment booklet. Researchers often use the title of a paper to decide how important it is to the questions they’re trying to answer; if it’s any way unclear they may not read your paper (and that’s the whole point). It’s best to generally stick to a description of your research question (e.g. “Why do people use Facebook?”), your topic (e.g. “Impact of diet on learning, memory and cognition”), or even better, your results (e.g. “There is no coherent evidence for a bilingual advantage in executive processing”).
