NO QUOTES.  USE OF ANY QUOTES WILL AUTOMATICALLY
LEAD TO A REDUCTION IN GRADE ASSIGNED.

WRITE SIMPLY AND CLEARLY

A reasonably intelligent junior high school student should be able to understand
the main ideas in your introduction and discussion.

Flowery and convoluted language and sentence structure is
BAD.

Use simple sentences that make your point clearly and
precisely.

Your language, wording, and sentence structure should be as
simple as possible.
 

Compare the following:

John Q. Public and Mary Doe Smith conducted a study in
1978 on whether or not there was consistency between
professed beliefs and expressed behaviors.  John Q. Public
and Mary Doe Smith found that people's behaviors do not
always correspond to their beliefs.

This has taken 42 words and one date.  It has 30 words
too many.
 

People's behaviors do not always correspond to their beliefs
(Public & Smith, 1978).

This has taken 11 words, one "&," and one date.  It says
the same thing.

The fact that

In terms of
 

WARNING SIGNS OF A POSSIBLY CONVOLUTED SENTENCE

1. It is long or has many phrases separated by commas.

2. The subject appears more than once.

3. Use of many nonspecific pronouns (they, them, it)

BAD
Although they supported democracy in the abstract, when they were asked to apply those
same principles in concrete instances, many of them did not support it.

GOOD
Although nearly all respondents supported democracy in the abstract, many did not support
the application of those same principles in concrete instances.

STRUCTURE OF THE INTRODUCTION

in order:

1. Broad introduction to YOUR topic

2. Arguments justifying your hypotheses

3. Statement or summary of your hypotheses
 
 

HOWEVER, I AM NOW GOING TO SUGGEST THAT
YOU WRITE IT IN REVERSE ORDER.

[writing the introduction]

ORDER IN WHICH IT APPEARS:
(what you hand in!)

1. Broad intro
2. Hypothesis justification
3. Summary of hypotheses
 
 

WHEN you write it:
(how to do it well!)

first: summary of hypotheses
second: Justification for hypotheses
third: Broad Introduction

1. You MUST write an introduction to the study that you
performed.

2. DO NOT write an introduction to the research articles that
you have read.
 

3. The purpose of the Intro is to set up your hypotheses.

So you draw on your references to help you make arguments
for your hypotheses or at least for why the questions you are
addressing are important and interesting.

You DO NOT need to review every minute detail of the
articles that you read.  Only review the article to the extent
that it DIRECTLY relates to the issues addressed in your
study.
 

NO BOOK REPORTS!
I have not asked you to write a "book report" regarding each of
the articles you read.

What is a "book report"?
     A detailed description of the article.
 

     Provide relevant (not tangential) background.
     Provide the theoretical, logical, and empirical basis for your hypotheses.
     Explain why a particular hypothesis might be plausible.

    This is referred to as  'justifying' your hypotheses
 

THEREFORE:

Try writing the intro backward!

     The last paragraph or two of the intro should summarize
     your hypotheses.

     So, write this last paragraph (or two) first.
 
 

     SUMMARIZING your hypotheses PRESUMES that,
     earlier in the intro, you have:

                         JUSTIFIED YOUR HYPOTHESES

So, now that you have clearly written your hypotheses, you need to write
stuff that helps explain and justify them to the reader.  So, after writing
out the study's hypotheses, write the section of the intro leading up
to your hypotheses.

At this point, you have most of the intro written.  You have the main
hypos at the end, and you have set them up with ample
explanation, description, and justification.  Now all you need to do
is add a paragraph or two at the very beginning
that provides a big picture.  What are the broad, even broadest
issues that your research will touch on?  Use that as an introduction
to the types of ideas you will use to justify your hypos.
 

The Method Section

Participants
How many people participated?
How did you obtain them?
What are their demographic characteristics (sex, race/ethnicity, age,
etc.)?
Did anyone drop out after completing part of the study?

Procedures
How did you collect your data?  This should read almost like a cook-book,
so that people reading your paper could, if they so chose, replicate
your study's procedures nearly exactly.

Thus, this needs to be described very slowly and carefully.

Questionnaires
Describe your questionnaire.

Do NOT refer to question numbers.  At all.  It is forbidden.
Do NOT refer to question numbers in the method, or
anywhere else in any main part of the paper.

Question numbers in the Appendices are OK.

Questionnaires must be clearly described in the method.  However,
you can write a parenthetical statement directing the reader to the
full questionnaire in the appendix.

E.G.:
"Seven questions assessed subjects' evaluations of the
applicants (see Appendix I for the full questionnaire)"
[followed by a description of each question].

Rewriting each question in the Method is not necessary.
 
 
 

A. Be clear and specific.  Refer to specific results:

Correct I
Results showed that there was a clear consensus of support for
abstract democratic principles.  82.7% to 97.3% of those
surveyed gave democratic responses to the first five questions
(see Table 1).

Correct II
Results for the first five questions showed that over 80% of
our respondents supported abstract principles of democracy
(see Table 1).
 

Incorrect
Results showed that there was a consensus of support for
democracy in the abstract.

-- There is no referent to any specific result here
 
 

B.WARNING: DO NOT REFER TO QUESTION NUMBERS!

DO NOT CONFUSE "VARIABLE" WITH A QUESTIONNAIRE
NUMBER.

DO NOT CONFUSE "VARIABLE" WITH THE NAME YOU GAVE
THAT VARIABLE IN SPSS.

Your variables have meaning.  Your research papers need to
convey their meaning, not the technical aspects of your research
that were necessary in order to perform analyses on the computer.
 

Incorrect 1
"On question 10, 35% of the respondents agreed."
 

Incorrect 2
"On Klan, 35% of the respondents agreed."

Correct
"35% of the respondents agreed that they would not allow a legally
elected Ku Klux Klansmen to take office."
 

B. Reporting statistics

Do not report the formulas for computing statistics.

Do not report how you computed the statistics, except in the appendices.

DO NOT just report p-levels.

Incorrect
" I performed a chi-square to determine whether African-American representation
in ads corresponded to their proportion of the American population.  This analysis
was not significant."

-- the above is incorrect because it does not report the statistic.

Correct
"10% of the characters in these ads were African-American.  This is
not significantly different than the proportion of African-Americans
in the U.S. (12%, x²(1)=1.03, p>.2)."

Note the format for reporting the statistic!  This is almost always
the appropriate format.  In parentheses following a conceptual, text
description of the result; the statistic itself, whether chi-square,
t-value for a t-test, r for a correlation coefficient, etc., degrees of
freedom in parentheses, the equal sign followed by the obtained
value for the statistic, underlined p, then followed by a greater than
sign if the result is nonsignficant or a less than sign if the result
is significant.
 

Bad I (F)
We performed a t-test on the computer.  The difference was
significant.

Bad II (D)
We compared subjects' evaluations of the applicants.  A t-test
showed that the difference was significant.

Bad III (C-)
We compared subjects' evaluations of the applicants.  The t-
test equaled 3.78, which was significantly greater than the
critical value of 2.24.

Mediocre (B-)
We performed a t-test that showed that subjects predicted that
the White applicants would have a higher college GPA than
the African-American applicants (p<.05).

Correct (A)
Table 2 presents the mean ratings of the White and African-
American applicants for all variables.  Subjects predicted that
the White applicants would have a higher GPA than the
African-American applicants (t(48)=3.78, p<.05).

The Discussion Section

1. Summarize your results

2. Discuss limitations and strengths of your study

     when presenting limitations, EXPLAIN WHY SUCH A
     LIMITATION MIGHT BE RELEVANT OR
     IMPORTANT!!!  THOUGHTFULLY CONSIDER THE
     LIKELIHOOD THAT THE LIMITATION YOU
     RAISED REALLY IS A PROBLEM!!!!

BAD (D)
Our study was limited because the sample size was small.
With a larger sample, the results would be more valid.

BAD (C-)
Study One was limited because it was restricted to our class.
Maybe results would be different in different classes, different
universities, or among people who are not college students.

Adequate (B)
The study based on our class had a very small sample size
(23).  However, essentially the same results were obtained in
the second study, which had a much larger sample size (121).
Neither study, however, obtained a random sample, so that we
do not know whether our results would be replicated among
Americans in general.

Strong (A)
     Although the first study was based on a very small
sample, essentially the same results were obtained in the
second study, with a considerably larger sample.  This argues
against the idea that the lack of support for specific examples
of democracy resulted from a small sample size.
     Neither sample, however, was selected at random.  Study
One was restricted to students in our Methods class who
showed up on the day that the questionnaire was handed out.
Even the larger second study obtained a haphazard sample
rather than a random sample.  People who did not happen to
be there at the time the students were there had no chance of
being selected.  Perhaps the people who were not there to be
sampled held systematically different beliefs regarding
democracy than those who were sampled.  If so, then our
results may not generalize to Americans at large.
     How likely is it that other Americans hold different
beliefs about democracy?  Not likely at all.  Four samples,
collected in very different ways, over a period of 40 years,
have all yielded essentially the same pattern.  Prothro & Grigg
(1960) found the same pattern in Northern and Southern
samples; we found the same pattern among college students
and among adults haphazardly sampled in middle New Jersey.
It seems extraordinarily unlikely that there actually is a group
of Americans among whom there exists greater consensus of
support for specific instances of democratic principles.

Implications
What are the implications of your study?
 

Do NOT write things without justifying them.  E.g.:

     "Our results show that there are likely to be problems for
     the govt."
 

Do NOT write things that are false.  E.g.:

     "Our results show that democracy in America is in
     trouble."
 

Contrast with:

     "As surprising as it may seem (it was certainly surprising
     to me), apparently, American democracy can function
     well in the complete absence of consensus regarding how
     to apply democratic principles.  Since 1960, there have
     been no revolutions, no serious fascist movements, and
     no dictatorships in the U.S.  In fact, since 1960, the U.S.
     has passed massive civil rights legislation that removed
     barriers to voting among African-Americans, the vote has
     been extended to 18 year olds, and basic freedoms, such
     as freedom of speech and religion have not eroded at all."
 

                        READ THE REQUIRED READINGS!

1. See page 221 of R&R.

     Volunteer subjects less authoritarian

     Implies, if anything, the people who refused to participate
     are even LESS democratic
 

2. Read Appendix A in Rosnow & Rosenthal

     Goes through how to write
 

3. Read and re-read and study and memorize the Bem paper
on "Writing the Empirical Journal Article."