PSY2DEV Lab Report Template PDF

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1 PARENTS AND ADOLESCENTS

A Twelve to Fifteen Word Title Goes Here and Includes the Contention of Report and the key variables of interest (topics/constructs/ideas)

La Trobe University, Bundoora PSY2DEV, Developmental Psychology October 5th 2020

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Abstract The abstract is a concise summary of the whole lab report, which allows a reader to quickly understand what the study was about, how it was conducted, and what the results were. It should give a very brief statement of the broad topic under investigation, research aims, brief description of methods, statement of main finding/s, and implications of the results for the research literature, knowledge, or for the general population.

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A Twelve to Fifteen Word Title Goes Here and Includes the Contention of Essay/Report The introduction needs to provide the reader with the background research and relevant theory for the study. Your introduction should explain why you did this study (e.g. your rationale). This helps the reader understand what important questions remain unanswered in the literature, or why we need to know more about a certain topic or research question. Broadly speaking this can be thought of as “what we know from the research” and “what we don’t yet know from the research” i.e. the rationale for your study. Use the starting reference to begin reading about adolescents and their relationships with parents. You will then need to do your own literature review to look for other references that are relevant to your study to build a background for the research in your introduction. Start with the broad context of the topic under investigation (e.g. relationships with parents during adolescence and why they are important). Describe how these previous studies have led to the specific aims for the laboratory study. The final paragraph of the introduction should include clearly stated aims for the study. Method Participants This study involved four participants aged between 12 and 15 years. All participants were living with at least one parental figure or guardian, who were able to communicate in English. Participant A, age 15 lived with both mother and father. Participant B, age 14 lived with only mother. Participant C age 15, lived with only their father and participant D, age 13 lived with both parents during the time of the study.

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Materials One interview schedule was utilized during the study. The interview schedule included eight questions Procedure Describe the procedure of the study. Explain exactly what the participants did and in what order (i.e. how we collected the data). Results The Results section begins straight after the Method section without starting a new page, unless it naturally falls on one. You will be provided with fictional interview data. During tutorial 3 (week 6), you will learn how to start coding the interview data and learn more about thematic analysis. In your results section, you will present the main themes, and subthemes, from the interview data. There will be at least 2 themes, and at least 2 subthemes able to be identified from the data. You will need to include quotes from the interviews to illustrate your themes/subthemes. Consider the most effective way to communicate your results, for example, using figures, tables, and/or in-text quotes. Remember to ensure your tables and figures are consistent with APA 6th/7th ed. style. If you include a table or figure, clearly label everything so it makes sense. Make sure the text refers the reader to the table/figure for more detail but also makes a statement about the results. It would be helpful to look at other examples of qualitative research to see how to present your results, such as the suggested reference by Halberstadt et al., (2016).

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5 Discussion

The discussion starts with a statement about the overall results from your study. Then you should discuss each theme in turn, showing how the results fit with (or don’t fit with) what was expected in the current study and what previous literature has reported about that topic. Remember not to just re-state the results, here you need to discuss the results within the context of other research. If your results are not consistent with prior research, suggest why this might be the case. Remember it is ok if your results were not what you predicted based on previous studies and are different to previous research- that is interesting too, and you need to think about how to explain it. You may want to think about why they are the same/different (e.g. look at the measures they used, who were the participants, qualitative or quantitative methods, etc.) to help you with these explanations. This means you may need to introduce new research that you have not discussed in the introduction into your discussion section, and this is fine. You can introduce new references into a discussion section. Your discussion should consider strengths and limitations of the current study. Keep in mind that limitations should be focused on any methodological flaws in the study, or limitations to generalisability, rather than criticism of the study topic or aims. You should suggest how these limitations might be addressed if you were doing the study again, or how future studies may use your results as a starting point for other studies. Your lab report should conclude with 1-2 sentences on implications of the study for other researchers and the general population. For example, do your results give rise to any new and important areas that need to be researched? Is there anything from the study results that might be important to communicate to the general public, or particular groups of people (such as parents, teachers, clinicians)?

PARENTS AND ADOLESCENTS

6 References

American Psychological Association (2009). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (6th ed.). American Psychological Association. Author, A. A. (Year). Title of book. Publisher. Author, A. A., Author, B. B., & Author, C. C. (Year). Title of article. Title of Journal, Volume(Issue), pp - pp. https://doi.org/XXXXXX

To demonstrate that you have been critically reviewing the literature you will likely have at least five references for relevant past research. Make sure you appropriately cite and reference the research and literature that you use in your lab report in both the introduction and methods sections. It is important that you use APA style (6th/7th edition) for your citations and references, and this will be included in the marking rubric for your lab report. Please refer to the APA publication manual, Academic Writer website or referencing tool through the Library. Please ask your tutor if you have any questions about psychology lab report style/formatting. Take note of the "hanging indent" style for references. The easiest way to create hanging indents is to type your references without worrying about indentation and when you are finished, select all the references at once, right click, select ‘Paragraph’ and then select ‘Hanging’ from the dropdown menu under Special in the Indentation section. Click Ok....