Thomas Farmer's Paper Guidelines

Outline

• Title Page
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Method
• Results
• Discussion
• General Formatting Guidelines

Introduction

Think "Inverted Pyramid":

The inverted glass pyramid in the Louvre

That is: Start very broad (general), become increasingly more specific.

A Broad Beginning

• Start with a very general statement that engenders your research topic.
• If you were conducting a study on sexual harassment, and might start with something like:

  Sexual harassment in the workplace is a problem that has received considerable attention over the past two decades (Anderson, 1983; Stubb, 1997), and seems to persist, even in light of many intervention programs aimed at curtailing the epidemic (Griselda, 2000).

• Word of advice: You need to cite your statements here, unless they are extremely general, like

  "Smoking is bad for you."

Literature Review

• Review research relevant to your specific goals.
• For each reviewed study, include:
  • a bit of info about the variables they were interested in
  • a bit about their methods
  • a bit about their findings
  • rarely longer than a paragraph, unless you are trying to replicate their study, etc.
• Logical progression through the articles, with specific focus
• Avoid Plagiarizing. Also, direct quotes in research articles are extremely rare: Summarize this info in your own words.
• Keep your "argument" / motivation for research in mind.

Specific to Your Study

• After Lit. Review, it is common to talk about the specific goals of your study.

  "The purpose of this present study..."

• Common to give a brief presentation of the methods you employ.
• Followed by Specific predictions...
  (Which are almost always derived in relation to your lit review)
• Which is why the "logical progression" in the Lit. review is so important.

Method (not Methods)

• Divide into Participants, Materials/Apparatus, and Procedure.
• Subsections are not "A Must" - However, they do help you to organize this diverse set of information quite well.
• Participants: how many, how the were recruited, demographic info (age, gender, etc), anything else we might need to know (specific to your study)
• Materials / Apparatus
  • Describe your stimuli (level of specifics depends on the area).
  • Describe the equipment used:
    computer (what type, monitor, etc).
• Procedure
  • Explain how the study was conducted from the moment the experimenter meets the participant until the moment the participant leaves.
  • Give step-by-step account.
  • Explain how participants were assigned to groups/ conditions.
  • Summarize instruction briefly unless they are complicated or unusual in some way.
  • Use common sense in determining level-of-detail.

REMEMBER: The purpose of this section is so that other researchers can replicate your study. This section should be clear and concise, yet it should also leave no doubt to a reader of your paper how the study was conducted.

Results

• Generally:
  • First, explain things like scoring and data manipulation (transformations, etc).
  • Quantitative presentation (introduce the figure)
  • Qualitative presentation (explain key trends in the Figure)
  • Statement of statistical reliability
• Only present the results here.... DO NOT Interpret! Save Interpretation for the discussion.

Discussion

Think "Regular Pyramid":

That is: Start with specifics about results of study, and end with general (broad) points / suggestions for future research.

Discussion

• Highlight key findings / key trends, etc.
• Then, Interpret your results, but really within the context of information provided in the Lit. Review.
• Identify problems, state how they might be fixed in future studies.
• Suggestions for future research
  Note: Increasing sample size is obvious, be more thoughtful here when identifying problems and suggesting future research.