The Different Parts of the Method Section of a Paper

I upload the details of this work and sample paper of lab report as PDF.

This is your first lab assignment. You will need to write a Method section for a paper. You'll submit it as a PDF to your section instructor, who will be introduced to you soon (if not already). All correspondence regarding it will be with your lab instructor. It is due as per the Method lab in the syllabus. Late submission penalties are also detailed in the syllabus. Overview In the course you'll eventually write an entire research paper. But, as we build up to that, you'll also get lower stakes opportunities to write the various sections of a paper. This lab focuses on the Method section. This section is the one section that contains entirely indelible facts regarding a study. When you're reading papers the Introduction, Discussion, and Results sections are all subject to descriptions of theories that can wax and wane in popularity or data derived from what is merely a sample of what you really want to discuss. But the Method section is true when it is created and for all time. And while the Results section should contain facts about the sample used, it is impossible to interpret without the Method section. The primary purpose of a Method section is to convey how an experiment was done with sufficient detail that someone else could do that experiment. Occasionally, it may not be possible to do this, for example the study could be a case study of a particular individual who died. That individual may have been important to the study and there may be no comparable person to test and therefore the study cannot be replicated. Nevertheless, the Method section should describe what happened in sufficient detail that as close an approximation as possible can be made. Often times you'll read papers where the Method section is too sparse for someone to figure out what happened. Consider an example experiment where an arrow indicates a likely target will appear at a location 80% of the time. In the Method section of the paper there may not be any mention of instructions to the participant. Did the participant know of the manipulation? Were they instructed to utilize it? Missing details like that could make it very difficult to replicate the finding. Alternatively, in the same study the researcher may have detailed the exact model of keyboard used for button press responses. While this can be important in some cases, it is very likely that a description of the keyboard is more useful (extended, QWERTY, DVORAK, etc.). In conclusion, you want sufficient information for a replication but not so much that you include irrelevant information such as, "the room was dimly lit with white walls and a grey ceiling and a poster of Spock on the door behind the participant." That may be what happened but some of it is unlikely to be relevant for a replication. And to that end, it is best to try to imagine what you would want to know if you were to try to replicate what happened. Structure of a Method section There are typically several parts to a Method section, some optional, and some mandatory. There is actually a lot of flexibility in how the Method section can be organized under various writing guidelines but we'll focus on the most typical in psychology and neuroscience. The first section is called "participants" (humans) or "subjects" (animals). In this section it is important that you describe the sample. With animal subjects this usually involves just the ages, sex, sample size, and species. It could also include genotype information, weights, etc. With humans this is sometimes much more complex and may include information in addition to the typical age, sex, and sample size. As you read papers you'll see all kinds of different descriptions of participants, sometimes with large tables of information. One thing that is important to include is how the sample was obtained. Perhaps they were University students doing it for course credit, or animals purchased from a specific lab. Be as detailed as you reasonably can be about your sample. It is nearly impossible to know in advance what will become important information and the information you acquire needs to be balanced with ethics. For example, in a high risk drug trial your sample needs to be very carefully described whereas for a study on adult short term memory you might just need easily observed information. Finally, it is always important to keep in mind that the purpose of the section is to describe the sample. You don't have to justify what you put into the description other than it is factual about the subjects or participants that were involved in the study. Also, at this point, you might note exclusions or anything odd that happened with the participants. The next section is usually apparatus or materials. Here you describe all of the materials used from the small (e.g. participants were given pen and paper) to the large (e.g. the experiment took place in a large, 6m x 6m, well lit room). If the study is very simple this section can be combined with the following section on procedure. However, sometimes the materials can be very technical and complicated to describe and therefore make it very difficult to combine with the procedure section. Often times you attempt to write a good procedure and materials section combined and if that proved impossible, separate them out. Copying and pasting your first attempt at a combined section, and then removing what's unnecessary from each separate materials and procedure section is usually a pretty easy editing job. Note that pictures, drawings, and appendices of materials may be wise. The materials section is followed by the procedure. The procedure is the meat and potatoes of Method section, the actual description of what happened—your sample interacting with your materials. If the prior sections are well described this can help quite a bit because you can use shorthand referring to the already described experimental and control groups, or computer program. The content of this varies tremendously with the particular study. Always consider when a table or figure may be helpful in conveying your procedure. One could use a flow chart, time line, or sequence of drawings of what appeared on a screen in a figure to assist in conveying what happened. And sometimes specific details need to be in an appendix, such as maybe when you have a list of words that were memorized, the actual words could be in an appendix. Further to that, sometimes modern papers will have links to OSF archives that contain all of the actual materials in addition to the description. And don't forget to include all instructions to participants. Often a design section is also included. This is usually very brief for student papers, sometimes only a sentence or two. Consider a clinical trial where you have a placebo and treatment group. Then the design is simply a two level between participants design with treatment and control groups. For this lab you won't need a design section. Formatting and Tips Use meaningful labels for your independent and dependent variables and the levels of the independent variable that are easy to use and understand. Don't use "Group A" and "Group B" use "placebo" and "drug". APA style requires that numbers that appear at the beginning of a sentence be spelled out: “Eighty participants...” rather than “80 participants.” In addition, all numbers less than 10 should also be spelled out. See Purdue OWL APA 7 or the provided sample paper for general formatting. Do NOT use the Purdue OWL sample paper. Your Experiment Use the information below to format a formal Method section. What follows is enough information for you to properly describe the study with a little imagination on your part. If something seems missing you should be able to come up with something reasonable. For some things there is no one right answer. Pay careful attention to the details provided and missing. The study you will be writing up was run on the internet in a class like the one you are in as part of the class requirement. It used Microsoft Forms to present portraits of people and have them rate the attractiveness of those pictures on a scale from 1 to 10. Half of the 74 pictures were male and this was part of the experimental manipulation. Below is detailed information on your participants. When someone started the study they were initially met with the following screen. "Thank you for taking the time to participate in this study. After you select to start below, images will appear one at a time with a rating scale. Your task will be to rate the attractiveness of the images. There is no time limit on any image but you may not return to an image once you have rated the attractiveness. The highest values, on the right, are for extreme attractiveness and left is for unattractive. There will be 74 images and it has typically taken participants approximately 6 minutes to complete the study." P2000 students from another year participated in this study with the following counts when grouped by self reported birth sex (Female, Male, or Intersex) and age. sex age 18 19 20 21 22 23 28 36 49 F 4 26 83 41 9 3 1 1 1 M 1 3 17 7 2 0 0 1 0 I 000020000