Writing the Results Section UCLan Papers writing Boot
Writing the Results Section UCLan Papers writing Boot Camp, July 2012 Dr Mahmood Shah mhshah@uclan. ac. uk
General Intent o The purpose of a results section is to present and illustrate your findings. o Make this section a completely objective report of the results, and save all interpretation for the discussion.
Style in Writing the Results Section o As always, use past tense when you refer to your results, and put everything in a logical order. o In text, refer to each figure as "figure 1, " "figure 2, " etc. ; number your tables as well o Place figures and tables, properly numbered, in order at the end of the report (clearly distinguish them from any other material such as raw data, standard curves, etc. ) o If you prefer, you may place your figures and tables appropriately within the text of your results section.
General APA Guidelines on Writing the Results Section o o Your main priority in the Results section is to report on the tests of your hypothesis and tell your reader whether or not you obtained evidence in support of your research hypotheses, or failed to do so Tie your writing closely to the hypotheses. Restate the hypothesis under discussion near the beginning of the paragraph and identify the type of test used to assess it. Discuss all the hypotheses in the order in which you presented them If there is a great deal of material, for example multiple dependent variables for which you want to report means, use a table instead of text. Text is for the statistic used to test the hypothesis, the df, the p level, power, effect size, etc or for a report of means if there are only a few variables Don’t report raw scores even in a table, although you may refer the reader to where they can find it if they are interested and there are no human subjects issues involved in making it available
Guidelines from APA (2) o o o Generally tables are preferred to figures, and no figures are preferred to figures that are home-made looking or not camera ready Most publishers are not interested in reproducing photographs and will complain about it unless they are required for understanding (for example, they constitute the levels of one of the factors in an ANOVA design) Be sure to refer to all tables and figures in the text; don’t just stick them in without warning The usual convention is to leave space for a table and fill that space with a note to the publisher that says [Table 1 about here] in the spot where you want it to go. Then you put the tables in order at the end of the document after the references and appendices Whenever possible include the items used in your surveys or questionnaires in an appendix which you mention in the text of the Results section
Where to Look for Guidance in the APA Manual o For the best guidance on writing the results section, consult the APA style manual, pp. 20 -27, and the section on tables and figures, pp. 147 -204, which includes many examples for different types of analyses o On pages 140 -144 there are tables about how to refer to statistical symbols and abbreviations in the text n Generally speaking, when preparing your paper for publication you italicize these: o N, M, df, p, SS, SE t, F, a, and b, R, R 2, H when referring to a hypothesis n And you leave these in regular type: o MANOVA, β, µ, or other Greek symbols, and superscripts and subscripts that don’t refer to variables such as when you’re squaring or indicating that X is the first variable, second variable, etc
What Doesn’t Go in the Results Section o Remember that the Results section is not the place to speculate about why you got the results you did (you will do that in the Discussion), nor is it the place to say why you studied what you did (you should have done that in the Literature Review/Rationale) or to say how you did things (you should have done that in the Method section) o Just tell the reader what you found o Do not present the same data more than once o Try to avoid saying things like, “even though the results were not significant, men did X more than women”. If it wasn’t a significant result, best to not report or interpret it (although some papers are full of results that “just missed significance”)
Some Studies with Results Sections Reporting Common Statistical Tests and Procedures o Study which reports the results of chisquare tests of hypotheses o Study which reports the results of factor analysis, logistic regression, and multiple regression analysis o Study which reports the results of ANOVA tests of main and interaction effects in an experiment o Study which reports the results of ANOVA tests in a non-experimental design
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