by Andy Field
Avoid emotive or potentially offensive references to other people’s work. Rather than write a phrase like ‘Tardive’s work is rubbish’ or ‘Tardive is an arrant fool’, it’s better to say something like ‘There are several problems with Tardive’s work’ or ‘However, Tardive failed to consider the following points’.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, all mentions of other people’s work should be acknowledged by suitable references. (Specific details on how to provide references are given in Chapter 15). Failure to do this is plagiarism, a serious offence. Make sure you write things in your own words, rather than copying the original authors too closely. If you find you cannot express a point in your own way, it may be because you don’t fully understand it enough to be able to paraphrase it – in which case adhering too closely to the original wording will betray your lack of comprehension to any reader who is familiar with the text concerned (e.g. your tutor). Once in a while (given the sub-Shakespearian writing abilities of most academics) it may be that an author makes a point in such a neat and elegant way that you feel you can’t improve upon it. If so, you can use a direct quotation from the original text, but surround it by inverted commas and give the reference (surname and date of publication) accompanied by the page numbers in the original text. Use direct quotations very sparingly, as they quickly become irritating to the reader. Good reports (and essays, for that matter) do not consist of a collection of quotations linked by a few sentences of your own.
10.3 Writing Style
Write in a Formal but Clear Style
Most journal articles are written in a ‘passive’ and ‘impersonal’ style. Instead of writing in the first person (‘I attached the electrodes to our participants’ earlobes and administered 240 volts’), you should write in the third person (‘electrodes were attached to the participant’s earlobes, and 240 volts were administered’). It’s just a convention really, that makes psychological writing look impressive and ‘scientific’. However, nearly everyone uses it, so you should too. (There are some exceptions. The journal ‘Perception’ is a notable example: it often has articles written in the first-person singular. Also this convention may die out soon, given that the Fifth Edition of APA Publication Manual now suggests using T or ‘we’ instead of ‘the experimenter(s)’.) This formal style takes a bit of getting used to (and your word-processor’s grammar-checker will constantly berate you for writing sentences in the passive tense). However, it’s not an excuse for producing writing that’s not clear and readable.
Strive for simply-constructed, short sentences. Use short Anglo-Saxon words wherever possible, and avoid words like ‘utilize’ (what’s wrong with ‘use’?) and ‘posit’ (possibly the ugliest word in the English language). Write ‘X depends on Y’ rather than ‘X is dependent on Y’. ‘It is to be expected that participants will utilize the manipulandum in an endeavour to effect door opening’ is better expressed as ‘It is predicted that participants will open the door with the stick’ – it’s the same information, but presented in a much simpler and straightforward manner.
Personally, I’d suggest that you go and read some George Orwell if you want to learn how to write well. (Sadly, many students appear only to have existed on a diet of Charles Dickens, judging by the inordinate length of their sentences). Avoid jargon, redundancy (for example the ‘both’ is superfluous in ‘they were both alike’) and mala-propisms – make sure words mean what you think they do. There are lots of examples of good and bad practice in the APA Publication Manual, which even a good writer like wot I is can benefit from having a look at. Another book well worth looking at is Larry Trask’s (see the references at the end of this chapter), which identifies many words and phrases that you should avoid (unless you want to sound like a pretentious fool, of course).
Read through what you have written, and see how many superfluous phrases you can ditch without doing any violence to the meaning of the text, and to what extent you can simplify and clarify what you have written. For every 100 superfluous words you eliminate, treat yourself to an extra bar of chocolate/pint of beer/snort of cocaine (delete as appropriate) after you have submitted the report.
Avoid Biased Language in Your Writing
Bias can take many forms, and the APA encourages you to read through your report to see if you have unintentionally included any terms which are potentially offensive, patronizing or stigmatizing to the individuals being referred to. So, avoid sexist, racist and ageist terms. Rather than using ‘he’, use ‘he or she’ or ‘they’ to refer to ‘Mankind’ – whoops, sorry, ‘Peoplekind’. Use ‘gender’ to refer to men and women as social groups, and ‘sex’ to refer to the biological distinction between them. Generally, refer to groups of people by the labels that they prefer. Avoid labelling groups – talk about ‘gay men’ or ‘gay people’ rather than ‘the gay’, and refer to ‘people with disabilities’ rather than ‘the disabled’. The APA doesn’t like ‘homosexual’ because of its past association with negative stereotypes: ‘gay (men)’ and ‘lesbian’ are considered preferable. (One issue you probably won’t have to worry about is whether to use ‘American Indian’ or ‘Native American’; but if you do, you might be interested to know that the latter includes Hawaiians and Samoans, so it’s a bit less precise than ‘American Indian’).
The APA suggests using the term ‘people diagnosed with schizophrenia’ rather than ‘schizophrenics’. ‘Depressives’ are ‘people who are depressed’. ‘Amnesics’ are ‘amnesic people’, and they are no longer ‘amnesic patients’ either. Someone is no longer a ‘mentally ill person’, but a ‘person with a mental illness’. The ‘elderly’ are now ‘older people’ (and ‘geriatric’ is definitely out!) The idea in all these examples is to emphasize the fact that a person is not just their disability. Avoid terms like ‘normal’, as they tempt the reader to consider others as ‘abnormal’.
The Use of Abbreviations
The APA suggests that you use abbreviations only if they are in common use (e.g. for example!) or if using them saves a lot of space. If you do use abbreviations, make sure they are meaningful. For example, using ‘Group A’ and ‘Group B’ to refer to groups of participants presented with words or pictures is a lot less helpful to the reader than talking about the ‘Word group’ and the ‘Picture group’. Introduce the abbreviation the first time it is used by placing it in brackets after the term that it will replace, and thereafter use only the abbreviation. (‘We measured each participant’s reaction time (RT) to the stimuli’). Abbreviations in a figure must be explained in its caption or legend; abbreviations in a table must be explained in the table’s title or in a note to the table. (This should be done in every one of the tables and figures, not just the first one, even if it’s the same abbreviation being used each time). Don’t use the abbreviations ‘S’ and ‘E’ for ‘subject’ and ‘experimenter’ (you may well see these used in journal articles dating back to the 1950s and ’60s). ‘For example’ and ‘and so forth’ should be used in text that is outside of brackets (and ‘e.g.’ and ‘etc.’ in text that’s inside them).
The APA Publication Manual gives a list of abbreviations: ones that you are quite likely to use include ‘cm’, ‘Ib’, ‘kg’, ‘IQ’, ‘s’ (for ‘second’) and ‘ms’ (for ‘millisecond’, a thousandth of a second and a commonly used unit of measurement for reaction times). Note that you use ‘cm’ even when you’re referring to several centimetres: thus you would write ‘it was 5 cm long’, and not ‘it was 5 cms long’. (The same goes for other abbreviations). All units should be metric.
How to Write Numbers
Now, you might think this was pretty straightforward: after all, they are arranged in a row at the top of your keyboard! However, there’s more to it than that. For numbers of 10 and above, use figures rather than words. However, if a number less than 10 is part of a comparison in which there is also a bigger number, write them all as figures: for example, write ‘3 out of 30 participants’ rather than ‘three out of 30 participants�
�. Similarly, if numbers precede a unit of measurement, use figures rather than words – as in ‘a 5-mg dose’. Also use numbers for percentages, time, dates, ages, sample sizes and the like. All numbers in the abstract of a report should be presented in figures.
Use words for numbers below 10, especially if they don’t represent precise measurements: thus you would write ‘only one participant died this time’, ‘we had to ask them three times before they agreed to enter the piranha tank’, and ‘they completed eight questionnaires before escaping’. Also, use words for any number that begins a sentence or a heading, as in ‘Ninety-eight percent of our sample turned grey overnight’, Finally, use words for common fractions such as ‘fully three-quarters of participants vowed never to return to our laboratory’.
10.4 Give Yourself Enough Time
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Many students don’t allow themselves enough time to write a good report. Through fear or complacency, they leave writing-up until a day or so before the final deadline for submission, and then end up sprinting to the submission point with only hours or minutes to spare. The result is a rushed lab-report that shows it. So many students lose marks unnecessarily, through simple mistakes that could easily have been corrected if only they had taken a bit more time and care over the final version of the report.
You should expect to go through several drafts of the report. Few people can write a report that’s perfect first time. Even academics will do several drafts of a report before submitting it to a journal. These days, with word-processors, producing successive drafts is a whole lot easier than it used to be. Write a first draft, and then leave it for a couple of days so that you become a little distanced from it. This should enable you to notice mistakes that you overlooked when you were immersed in writing it. Try to look at your writing critically and dispassionately, from the viewpoint of our hypothetical ‘intelligent non-specialist psychologist’. Aim to produce a second draft that is both clearer and more succinct than the first. Give this to any friend who is both obliging and a competent writer themselves, and ask them for their honest opinion. Writing good, clear reports isn’t easy – it takes work, but most students can write better reports than they actually do.
Producing the first report is always a bit of a step into the unknown, especially if you have never written a report before. However, if you follow all of the advice above, you should get a reasonably good mark. It’s a hackneyed phrase, but practice makes perfect, in labreport writing as in all skills.
10.5 Summary
The purpose of a psychology lab-report is to communicate research findings in a clear and systematic way. Reports therefore have a standardized format that is modelled on that of the scientific journal article, and your report should follow this closely.
Keep in mind that, up to any given point in the report, your reader knows only what you have told them so far.
All claims and assertions need to be supported by references to previous work.
Use the formal ‘passive’ past tense throughout the report, but aim for writing that is as clear and as simple as possible. Avoid jargon and circumlocution.
Be prepared to write multiple drafts – good reports do not just happen, they take work!
10.6 Practical Tasks
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Rewrite this atrociously badly-written piece of text in a clearer and simpler style, using no more than 50 words.
‘Notwithstanding the egregiously fallacious conclusions drawn by the internationally-famous Professor A.R. Dogwitt of the Animal Research Laboratory at Analgland University (as published in the December 1995 edition of the esteemed journal ‘The International Journal of Canid and Mustelid Behavioural Research’) a propos the efficacy of the ‘Snuffyaworms’ dog-worming tablets purveyed by the drug company Messrs. Mouseanthill in improving the performance of our canine relatives in laboratory T-maze situations by attenuating the distractive effects of anal itching, the research of Dr. Iva Lotta Slobber and her colleagues at the Behavioural Research Institute of Wolferhampton State University does corroborate Professor Dogwitt’s principal conclusion – namely that the said pills, when utilized, do indeed confer some measurable advantages in maze-learning performance in this particular species of infra-human animal. However, Dr. Slobber and her team of co-workers are somewhat more tentative in the conclusions that they draw from their research than is Professor Dogwitt, it must be said. The aforesaid Dr. Slobber, in a paper entitled ‘Stop the scratching and start the learning’, published in the ‘Journal of Pointless Research’ in November 2000, posits that canine attentional mechanisms are sorely limited in terms of the diversity of environmental stimuli that can be attended to at any given moment in time; more specifically, their principal claim – which I think is a valid one – amounts to saying that the dog has the facility for attending to only one thing at a time.’
Answer:
Dogwitt (1995) concluded that ‘Snuffyaworms’ dog-worming tablets improved dogs’ maze-learning performance by reducing the distraction produced by anal itching. Slobber et al.’s (2000) findings were similar, though more tentative: they suggested that a dog’s attention can be directed only to one thing at a time.
10.7 Further Reading
American Psychological Association (2001). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edition). Washington, DC: APA Books.
Degelman, D. & Harris, M. L. (2000). APA style essentials. Retrieved February 8th, 2002, from Vanguard University, Department of Psychology web site: http://www.vanguard.edu/faculty/ddegelman/index.cfm?doc_id=796. A succinct guide to APA format, if you can’t get hold of the APA Manual itself.
Trask, R. L. (2001). Mind the Gaffe: The Penguin Guide to Common Errors in English. London: Penguin. One man’s heroic attempt to save the English language from its (mis)-users. Well worth reading.
11 Answering the Question ‘Why?’ The Introduction Section
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The purpose of the Introduction to your lab-report is to provide a rationale or justification for your particular experiment. Why did you bother to do this study? What’s the background behind it, in terms of previous research on this topic?
Introductions generally have three parts, which increase in specificity as you go through the Introduction. First, you explain to the reader what the problems and issues are in this particular area of research; this provides a general context for the study. Then you outline your own experiment, and explain how it will progress our scientific understanding in this field. Finally, you summarize the possible outcomes of your experiment, and (usually) make some specific predictions about which of these outcomes is most likely to occur and why. The first part is generally the longest, and the final part the shortest.
11.1Providing a Rationale
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Describing the background to your study will be the largest part of the Introduction. Almost all research is based on previous research findings or theoretical ideas, and you need to give the reader some idea of what the issues are in your chosen area, what’s been found out already, and what remains to be discovered or clarified. Essentially, what you are trying to do in this section is to persuade the reader that there is a ‘gap’ in our knowledge of this particular area of psychology, and that your experiment is worth doing because it will help to fill that gap.
Someone once said that all literature involves one of only three basic plots. In the same way, there are four basic reasons why a study is performed.
To Test a Theory
If a theory is any good, it makes specific predictions about what will happen under particular circumstances. In this way, it is potentially open to disproof. (Any theory that isn’t, is not truly scientific: see Chapter 1). Consequently, sometimes an experiment may be set up to test a theory’s predictions, to see how well they hold up in practice. For example, suppose Professor Tardive has a theory that schizophrenia is due to high blood pressure. A specific prediction follows from this, that blood-letting will be an effective treat
ment for schizophrenia. I could test this by taking, at random, two groups of people diagnosed with schizophrenia, draining blood from one group but not the other, and then measuring how schizophrenic they were afterwards.
To Replicate (i.e. Confirm) an Existing Finding
Sometimes an experiment is done to replicate previous findings, either by using the same method as the people who originally demonstrated it, or more often, by using a slightly different method (so that one can be sure that the previous results were not simply due to the particular techniques that had been used). Scientists are (or should be!) fairly sceptical individuals, who often like to confirm the existence of some psychological phenomenon by demonstrating it for themselves, in their own laboratory, rather than taking someone else’s word for it.
To Extend the Findings of Previous Research
This is closely related to the previous category; when researchers attempt to replicate a finding, they often include additional manipulations so that their own research does not merely ‘copy’ the previous work, but adds to our knowledge of the phenomenon in question. Often one wants to see how generalizable a phenomenon is: by finding out under what conditions it does and does not occur, we may find out a lot about it. For example, suppose it has been established that blood-letting helps people diagnosed with schizophrenia. Various questions then arise. For example, does it aid men and women equally? Does it help people diagnosed with schizophrenia early in life as much as those in whom schizophrenia develops later in life? How much blood needs to be let? Is it the blood-letting itself that is important, or some other aspect of the procedure, such as the stress of undergoing blood-letting?