Nigel Holt and Rob Lewis - Crown House Publishing.

More documents

Recommendations

Info

38 | A2 PSYCHOLOGY: THE STUDENT’S TEXTBOOKIn their research, Beaman and Holt looked at howsounds with an echo (reverberation) influencedmemory differently than places without an echo.2. AbstractThe abstract is a short summary of the researchpaper placed at the very start. A good abstractshould provide a little background, some detailsof the method, a statement of results and a shortconclusion. All this in fewer than 150 words. Theabstract comes first, straight after the title, but youshould always write it last. The reason is that itincludes a very brief summary of the informationyou have included in every section of your reportand so it’s much easier to write when you havefinished the rest of the research report!Here’s an abstract that, unfortunately, is actuallybetter than some we have seen over the years! Wereally hope you agree that it is not terribly good.We did some research that was looking atwhether people were more rubbish at rememberingstuff when they had music comingthrough headphones. We gave them things toremember and they remembered them. Weworked out some maths and decided whethertheir remembering was better when theycouldn’t hear anything. It was. There wereabout 10 people we tested. At the end of itwe decided that it was useful to know this, forinstance, that’s why we think it should be quietin libraries mostly. Right at the end we thoughtabout some other research and we think wewill now investigate whether listening to oldfashionedmusic like your dad listens to willmake memory worse than listening to stuff youhave on your own iPod.There is very little detail in the abstract. Thebackground to the research is not clear at all. Wedo not know what the task itself was, what thehypothesis was, what the variables were or howthey were operationalised. We do not have a clearunderstanding of the statistical tests carried outor what exactly was found, and the suggestions atthe end for further research are vague to say theleast! Not very good at all. Now look at the versionbelow.The research detailed here is an investigationinto whether memory for digits presented inseries is influenced more by the presentation ofmusic during the task than when participantsproceeded in silence. Previous research hassuggested that any kind of sound interfereswith recall of numbers presented in series, suggestingthe hypothesis that memory would beworse when listening to music. An opportunitysample of 10 participants took part in anindependent samples design and provided datathat supported the hypothesis (p≤0.05). Howthe sound influences memory is discussed,with reference to the working memory model.Concluding comments included possibilitiesfor further research.This abstract is much better. Here we have somebackground, some detail of our design, the resultand even something of our discussion and conclusion– all in fewer that 150 words. Finally, hereis the real abstract from the Beaman and Holtresearch. It’s quite complicated, but it does giveyou an idea of the kind of information and detailyou find in professionally produced work.Two experiments examine the effect on animmediate recall test of simulating a reverberantauditory environment in which auditory distractersin the form of speech are played to theparticipants (the ‘irrelevant sound effect’). Anecho-intensive environment simulated by theaddition of reverberation to the speech reducedthe extent of ‘changes in state’ in the irrelevantspeech stream by smoothing the profile of thewaveform. In both experiments, the reverberantauditory environment produced significantlysmaller irrelevant sound distraction effects thanan echo-free environment. Results are interpretedin terms of changing-state hypothesis,which states that acoustic content of irrelevantsound, rather than phonology or semantics,determines the extent of the irrelevant soundeffect (ISE).3. The IntroductionThe introduction is a really important part ofthe write up. It’s here that you get the chance todescribe the background to your research andhow you really came up with your idea in the firstplace. This is where you place your work alongsideother research in the same field. All introductorysections differ slightly in length, depending onwhat it is that we need to cover and how muchbackground research there has been in the area.Introductions, however long, should neverthelessfollow the golden rule.Start WideEnd NarrowExtract from A2 Psychology: The Student’s Textbook © Nigel Holt and Rob Lewis ISBN: 9781845901004 www.crownhouse.co.uk
DATA ANALYSIS AND REPORTING INVESTIGATIONS | 39Think of your introduction as a funneling system.You should start with all of your backgroundinformation and details of research that has alreadybeen done. You really need to provide a good generaloverview in the introduction. As you proceed,you should begin to focus your ideas on yourresearch. Towards the end of the introduction, talkabout the aims of your research, ending finallywith your hypothesis. Take a look at some excerptsfrom Beaman and Holt (2007).The use of virtual environments (VE) in psychologyis now well-established. Studies of spatialnavigation (Ruddle, Payne, & Jones, 1998),spatial memory (Ruddle, Payne, & Jones,1999)… and neuropsychological rehabilitation(Wann, Rushton, Smyth, & Jones, 1997)have all benefited from these VE techniques…… However, virtual auditory environments aremuch less common than virtual visual environments.When virtual auditory environmentshave been created, however, they have proveduseful to the study of the ‘sense of place’associated with particular buildings and historicsites… The purpose of the current study is toapply similar techniques to the study of auditorydistraction by so-called ‘irrelevant sound’known to disrupt working memory.The introduction begins very generally, andquickly proceeds to a statement of the broadaims of the research. The authors have really toldthe reader what to expect, the background andthe general ideas behind their study. Later in theintroduction Beaman and Holt begin to be morespecific.In a reverberant environment the direct signalis overlayed (sic) with multiple reflections,the intensity of each reflection and the delayimposed upon it being a function of the intensityof the original signal and the nature (e.g.the size, surfaces and contents) of the room…It follows that larger spaces with more reverberationmay intrinsically be less distracting environments(in acoustic terms) than small roomswith low levels of reverberation. This predictionfollows from the changing-state hypothesis ofJones and colleagues…we propose to take adifferent approach and ask whether extremevalues of reverberation, which we expect torepresent a powerful manipulation, will affectthe results obtained for a much smaller samplesize. The advantage of this approach is that itmakes positive, rather than null, predictionsand provides a direct test of the changing-statehypothesis.Here, the introduction is really setting the scene,explaining that certain hypotheses and theoriesdescribed in other research will be investigated.The authors finish by explaining that predictionswill be made to test a hypothesis. We can see thatthe introduction covers a great deal of ground.We’ve only included a few excerpts here: muchmore is described in the original article. We cansee from the sections we have reproduced that theintroduction begins very generally, then focuses,using the ‘start wide, end narrow’ rule, funnelingthe information down from a general discussion toa much more focused one.4. The MethodWhen writing a method section, you need to askyourself one simple question: ‘Would someoneelse be able to do exactly what I did from readingmy method?’If the answer to this is ‘No’, then your methodis not good enough. A good method has just theright amount of information for someone who hasnever watched you work before, and who maynever have carried out research in the area, tocarry out a ‘replication’ of your study. Replicationis a very important aspect of scientific research.If a study can be replicated then we can be morecertain that the findings are to be trusted. Replicationadds to the reliability of the research, withunreplicable research being regarded as unreliable.A good method provides other researchers withthe information they need to repeat your workclosely enough that they can hope to replicateyour findings. A method might include a numberof sections. Not all methods include all of thesesections, but we’ll include them here for reference.Design: A statement of the design used may beincluded. Here you might indicate the differentconditions in your research and if appropriateyou might say whether a repeated measures orindependent samples design was used, or eveninclude the independent and dependent varietiesIV and DV.Four conditions were presented, each with 15trials, giving a total number of 60 experimentaltrials per participant. Presentation order foreach candidate was chosen randomly from the24 possible condition orders… The four conditionswere … three levels of reverberation …and a ‘no sound’ control condition.Participants: In this section you would givedetails of your sample, including how many menExtract from A2 Psychology: The Student’s Textbook © Nigel Holt and Rob Lewis ISBN: 9781845901004 www.crownhouse.co.uk
Page 1 and 2: Sample chapter:Psychological Resear
Page 3: the application of scientific mETHO
Page 6 and 7: 6 | A2 PSYCHOLOGY: THE STUDENT’S
Page 8: 8 | A2 PSYCHOLOGY: THE STUDENT’S
Page 11 and 12: DESIGNING PSYCHOLOGICAL INVESTIGATI
Page 19 and 20: DATA ANALYSIS AND REPORTING INVESTI
Page 37: DATA ANALYSIS AND REPORTING INVESTI
Page 41: DATA ANALYSIS AND REPORTING INVESTI

Nigel Holt and Rob Lewis - Crown House Publishing.

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?