How to write the Method
Section?
Give an Overview of the study (description of participants, setting,
and variables assessed)
Describe the experiment from the participant’s vantage point.
Provide summaries or excerpts of what was actually said to the
participants, including any rationale or “cover story” that was given.
How to write the Method
Section?
Describe the relevant aspects of the room:
Show sample items from questionnaires,
Labels on attitude scales,
Copies of stimulus materials or pictures of apparatus.
If you administered a standard personality test or attitude scale,
describe its general properties unless it is very familiar.
EXAMPLE
“Participants then filled out the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability
Scale, a true-false inventory that measures the degree to which
persons describe themselves in socially desirable terms (e.g. ‘I have
never lied’).”
How to write the Method
Section
Name all groups, variables, and operations with easily recognized
and remembered labels.
Do not use abbreviations or
empty labels.
The AMT5% Group The Success Group and the
Treatment 3 Failure Group
The father-watching condition
and the mother-watching
condition
The teacher sample and the
student sample
Label groups or treatments
in operational rather than
theoretical terms.
High dissonance group and $20 group and $1 group
low dissonance group
How to write the Method
Section?
The method and results section share the responsibility for
presenting certain kinds of data that support the reliability and
validity of your substantive findings, and you must judge where this
information fits most smoothly into the narrative and when the
reader can most easily assimilate it.
EXAMPLE
If you constructed a NEW PERSONALITY SCALE, you need to tell us
about its internal homogeneity and other psychometric properties.
If you employed OBSERVERS, tell us about interjudge agreement.
If you mailed survey questionnaires, give us the return rate and
discuss the possibility that non-respondents differed from
respondents.
EXAMPLE
If you discarded certain participants, tell us why and how many, and
discuss the possibility that limits or qualifies the conclusions you can
draw. In particular, assure us that they were not all concentrated in
the same experimental condition.
Participants discarded during data analysis should be discussed in
the results section.
How to write the Method
Section?
Discuss participant dropout problems and other
difficulties encountered in executing the study
only if they might affect the validity or the
interpretation of your results.
How to write the Method
Section?
Manipulations and procedures that yielded no useful
information should be mentioned if they were
administered before you collected your main data;
their presence could have affected your findings.
Usually, it will be sufficient to say that they yielded
no information and will not be discussed further.
How to write the Method
Section?
After presenting the methods you used in your
study, discuss any ethical issues they might
raise.
If the research design required you to keep
participants uninformed or even misinformed about
the procedures, answer the following questions:
1. How did you tell them about this afterwards?
2. How did you obtain their prior consent?
3. Were they free to withdraw at any time?
4. Were they subjected to any embarrassment or
discomfort?
5. What steps were followed to protect their anonymity?
6. Were you observing people who were unaware of that
fact?
How to write the Method
Section?
End the method section with a brief summary of
the procedure and its overall purpose.