Apa research psychology

Now that you’ve learned how to find research articles in the first Lab, let’s practice reading research articles. It is very different from reading a novel or magazine article! Whereas with those writings, you generally begin at the first word and read every word to the end of the piece, you don’t typically do that with an empirical article. Read this to learn more about the reading process: How to Read Empirical Articles.
It is very important that you know what information belongs in each section of an empirical article for two reasons:
You will more quickly and efficiently read articles because you know where to find the information you’re most interested in.
You will write your own “mini-reports” for this class, following the same format: Title, Abstract, Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion, References. If you know what information belongs in each section, then it’ll be easier to write up these reports.
Here is a short guide to the Parts of a Research Article to refer to for this assignment, and a PowerPoint, Parts of a Research Article.pdf.
Now, wouldn’t it be great if all empirical articles were perfectly written with these guidelines? Of course it can’t be that easy! You will see some variation among research articles that will make reading them a little more tricky. For example:
Some articles will clearly state the hypotheses: “We hypothesized that the treatment group would have higher scores than the placebo group.” However, other authors might not use the word “hypothesize,” so you have to do a little detective work. Look for phrases like, “we expected,” “our goal was to,” or “we examined.” Authors might not suggest a specific outcome, and so instead of stating a hypothesis they are stating their goals of the study.
Headings might be different. Instead of “Discussion,” some authors will label that section a “Conclusion.” There may be different subheadings – perhaps they have multiple sub-sections within the introduction section, or they have unique sub-sections within their method section to describe their unique methodologies.
The more practice you get reading these articles, the more efficient you will become in reading them – and we all want to use our time efficiently!
For your lab, you will view the article Mindset Interventions – Paunesku 2015 and then complete the worksheet Lab #2 – How to Read a Journal Article.
When you are finished, you may upload your document or photo of the worksheet to this page by clicking the button at the top right of the page.

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