Reporting
results section I
Psy 104/Spring
• The results section of a quantitative
research paper is where you summarize your
Results data and report the findings of any relevant
statistical analyses.
• The APA manual provides rigorous guidelines
for what to report in quantitative research
papers in the fields of psychology, education,
and other social sciences.
The results section should include:
•A summary of the research findings.
•Information about participant flow, recruitment, retention, and attrition. If some
participants started the study and later left or failed to complete the study, then this
should be described.
The results section should include:
•Information about any reasons why some data might have been excluded from the
study.
•Statistical information including samples sizes and statistical tests that were used. It
should report standard deviations, p-values, and other measures of interest.
The Results Should
Justify Your Claims
• Report data in order to sufficiently
justify your conclusions.
• Since you'll be talking about your
own interpretation of the results in
the discussion section, you need to
be sure that the information
reported in the results section
justifies your claims.
• Remember, you are summarizing the
results of your psychological study, not
reporting them in full detail.
• The results section should be a
relatively brief overview of your
findings, not a complete presentation
of every single number and calculation
Summarize Your
Results
Report All Relevant Results
• Your hypothesis may have expected more statistically significant results, or your
study didn't support your hypothesis, but that doesn't mean that the conclusions
you reach are not useful.
• Provide data about what you found in your results section, then save your
interpretation for what the results might mean in the discussion section.
• Always assume that your readers
Report Your have a solid understanding of
statistical concepts.
Statistical Findings • There's no need to explain what a
t-test is or how a one-way ANOVA
works.
• Your responsibility is to report
the results of your study, not to
teach your readers how to analyze
or interpret statistics.
Include Tables and Figures
• Your results section should include both text and illustrations. Presenting data in
this way makes it easier for readers to quickly look at your results.
• Structure your results section around tables or figures that summarize the results
of your statistical analysis.
•Don't draw cause-effect conclusions.
Avoid making any claims suggesting that
your result "proves" that something is
true.
•Present the data without editorializing it.
Save your comments and interpretations
for the discussion section of your paper.
•But don't include statistics without
narration. The results section should not
be a number dump. Instead, you should
What Not to sequentially narrate what these numbers
mean.
Include
•Don't include the raw data in the
results section. The results section
What Not to should be a concise presentation of
the results. If there is raw data that
would be useful, include it in
Include the appendix.
•Don't only rely on descriptive text.
Use tables and figures to present
these findings when appropriate.
•Don't present the same data twice in
your illustrative materials. If you
have already presented some data in
a table, don't present it again in a
figure. If you have presented data in a
figure, don't present it again in a
table.
What Not to
Include
•Don't feel like you have to include
everything. If there is data that is not
relevant to the research question, don't
include it in the results section.
•But don't leave out results because
they don't support your claims. Even if
your data did not support your
hypothesis, it is important to include it
in your findings if it's relevant.
•Use the past tense. The results
More Tips for section should be written in the past
tense.
Writing a Results •Be concise and objective. You will
have the opportunity to give your
own interpretations of the results in
Section the discussion section.
•Use APA format. As you are writing
your results section, keep a style
guide on hand. The Publication
Manual of the American Psychological
Association is the official source for
APA style.
More Tips for Writing a Results Section
•Visit your library. Read some journal articles that are on your topic. Pay attention to
how the authors present the results of their research.
•Get a second opinion. If possible, take your paper to your school's writing lab for
additional assistance.
Reporting Statistics in APA Style
(by Dr. Jeffrey Kahn, Illinois State University)
Mean and Standard Deviation are most clearly presented in parentheses:
The sample as a whole was relatively young (M = 19.22, SD = 3.45).
The average age of students was 19.22 years (SD = 3.45).
Percentages are also most clearly displayed in parentheses with no decimal places:
Nearly half (49%) of the sample was married.
Chi-Square statistics are reported with degrees of freedom and sample size in parentheses,
the Pearson chi-square value (rounded to two decimal places), and the significance level:
The percentage of participants that were married did not differ by gender, c2(1, N = 90) = 0.89, p > .05.
T Tests are reported like chi-squares, but only the degrees of freedom are in parentheses.
Following that, report the t statistic (rounded to two decimal places) and the significance
level.
There was a significant effect for gender, t(54) = 5.43, p < .001, with men
receiving higher scores than women.
ANOVAs (both one-way and two-way) are reported like the t test, but there are two
degrees-of-freedom numbers to report.
First report the between-groups degrees of freedom, then report the within-groups
degrees of freedom (separated by a comma).
After that report the F statistic (rounded off to two decimal places) and the
significance level.
There was a significant main effect for treatment, F(1, 145) = 5.43, p < .01,
and a significant interaction, F(2, 145) = 3.13, p < .05.
Correlations are reported with the degrees of freedom (which is N-2) in
parentheses and the significance level:
The two variables were strongly correlated, r(55) = .49, p < .01.
Regression results are often best presented in a table.
APA doesn't say much about how to report regression results in the text, but if you would like to report the
regression in the text of your Results section, you should at least present the standardized slope (beta) along
with the t-test and the corresponding significance level.
(Degrees of freedom for the t-test is N-k-1 where k equals the number of predictor variables.)
It is also customary to report the percentage of variance explained along with the corresponding F test.
Social support significantly predicted depression scores, b = -.34, t(225) = 6.53, p < .01. Social
support also explained a significant proportion of variance in depression scores, R2 = .12, F(1,
225) = 42.64, p < .01.
