Guide to writing a perfect lab report PDF

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Guide to writing a perfect lab report -

this is just a general guide to writing a quantitative lab report, and on key things that you should not forget. always check your marking criteria as an additional guide, and the examples that are present on Blackboard.

Abstract: - Include small sentences on; o Introduction (what your aim of the study was) o Method (what you did to collect data) o Results (what you found overall) o Conclusion (a general conclusion from results) Introduction: - Background research and theory o Explain all the background information on the research/study you are conducting o What are some of the theories present? o This is a good time to talk about whether you are replicating a study o Remember when talking about a research or the study you are replicating, you have to BRIEFLY describe the study. - Aim o What was your aim of your study? -

How and why present study follow from previous study/theory? o Explain what things you are amending in your study that is different from previous studies. o Or many mention what additional things you are doing that have not been done by previous studies.

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Brief intro to method o Remember this Is brief, so just mention how you are going to collect data.

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Hypothesis o What are your hypothesis for your study? o Remember that you should never mention your null hypothesis.

Method: - Participants & Ethics o Key information need for your sample:  Sample size  Population, i.e. were they all students?  What was the gender ratio?  What was the age range? and also mention the mean and standard deviation of your sample.

o Recruitment (how were your participants recruited? Opportunity samples etc..) o Ethics (what your study approved by the university committee??) -

Design o What was the design of your study? (within or independent participant design etc.) o What was your independent and dependent variables? o Did you control for any extraneous variables? And how did you control this?

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Apparatus o Give a description of your stimuli used (was a questionnaire etc.. used?)  So a description of the tasks and measures. o If you have a questionnaire remember to say what were the questions and how where participants scored from the questionnaire. o How was the data transformed for analyses? o This is also a good place to reference your recording sheet. And put your recording sheet in your appendix.

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Procedure o what did the participants have to do exactly? o Were they tested individually or in a group? o How many trials? o What were the instructions given? o Where was the experiment taken place?

Results: - Data description o Report means and SD. o This is the general pattern observed from your data analysis - Statistics o Say what tests were used and give a description how the data met the assumption or did not. (put normality check in appendix and reference it) o Report the results from the test you conducted in APA style and reference the SPSS output (put SPSS in appendix). - Remember: o Report numbers to 2 d.p unless stated in lectures o Never sya something is not insignificant o Don’t put SPSS out in this section, SPSS output only goes in appendix. o Title for table is above the table. o Title for a figure is below the figure. -

This section is different for different lap report that you will do, but this will be explained to you well.

Discussion:

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Report the main findings (don’t mention any type of tests) Comments and explanation o Link your results back to your hypothesis, what was hypothesis right? o Compare your results with background studies you mention in the introduction o Interpretation of your results, if your results were found to be similar from a study you haven’t mention in your introduction then mention it here! Even if the study is not in the reading list. It shows understanding and knowledge. Problems & improvements of the experiment o What were some of the limitation of your study and how could this be overcome? o If your results didn’t match a study that you replicated, why was that? What could you have done differently? Further experiments o Give suggestions for future research and outline how the methods and design would be (you can say it would be the same or not with small adjustments). Conclusion o Give a concise summary of your findings

Reference list: - Don’t forget to give full reference of studies mentioned in APA styles, this is the easiest mark to gain. Appendix: - Make sure your label your appendix well and reference it well in your results section, so the marker knows where to look....