Methods Section

As the Literature Review/Paper Introduction answers the “why” of your research study, the Methods section answers the “how” for your study. To be able to do so effectively, the Methods section must answer: who, what, where, and how.

Purpose of a Methods Section in a research paper:

Provides a background for the data
Explains how the data was collected and the study was conducted
Allows other researchers to replicate the study

APA Formatting of the Methods Section:

Written in past-tense (you’ve already conducted the study)
Titled with “Method.” centered (no bold, underline, or italics)
Three subsections (each labeled, left-aligned, and italicized and bold):
Participants
Materials
Procedure

Methods Section Formatting Example

Methods

Participants

Blah, blah, blah…

Materials

Blah, blah, blah…

Procedure

Blah, blah, blah…

Subsections:

Participants
Information to include:
The number of participants in the study (N = ?)
Remember, you may have a different number of participants than your classmates if you had to remove data because of non-respondents
Basic demographics
General characteristics (PSYCH 4 psychology students at San Joaquin Delta College in Stockton, CA)
Age, gender, ethnicity breakdowns
Include mean and standard deviation (for age)
Percentages for each group (gender and ethnicity)
Only include what is relevant to your study (for example, including information about income is not important if it is not relevant to the study)
Specific demographics where relevant
There is no need to analyze the data, I have already analyzed the data and provided data tables with all relevant information in the PSYCH 4 Student Data file (it can be found on the Demographic Tables sheet) (Links to an external site.).
Materials
All materials utilized in the study (for us, that’s a survey hosted by Google Forms)
Click here if you need a refresher on the survey and its questions (Links to an external site.).
For a survey, you must provide details about the measures (first broad and then specific):
Short description of the survey (survey built by the class, with subsections that are listed in the PSYCH 4 Student Data file in the Questions/Types/Measurements section).
Number of items (questions): 110
Response formats (Likert-type scales, forced-choice, semantic differential, and open-ended)
Highlight that all these formats were used, but also speak specifically about the two questions that you extracted from the data file for your own purposes. What type of measurements were they? Explain the format of the questions and the questions themselves in detail.
Procedure
How was the data collected?
In your own words…
You will talk about how a survey was built as a class and students in PSYCH 4 at San Joaquin Delta College were used as participants.
You will want to make specific mention of the fact that we used convenience sampling.
You will also want to talk about how participants were compensated for their participation in the study (you all received points in the course).
You will also want to discuss how the survey was conducted (online, using Google Forms), and how participants had one week to complete the survey.
It is also in the procedure where you talk about informed consent and the protection of participants’ data. (Completion of the survey provided informed consent and all data was anonymous.)
Remember, the procedure is to be written so that if someone wanted to replicate the study, they could.

While this is in a journal format, read this interesting scholarly article about the power of cognition in your body’s neurological responses to food. Pay close attention to the Methods section (Links to an external site.).

Assignment Expectations

In this assignment, you will write your Methods section following APA formatting. There will be no references required for the Methods section and it is expected that your methods section will be 1-2 pages.

Font options (name & size): Calibri 12, Arial 11, Lucida Sans Unicode 10, Times New Roman 12, or Georgia 11
Double-spaced, 1” margins
Everything must be written in paragraph form, traditional of academic writing, no bullet-points
Citation format: APA
All formatting should follow APA formatting guidelines
Submission format: .docx, doc, .pdf, .rtf ONLY (It is your responsibility to check your submissions and make sure they are in the appropriate format that I can access. I cannot access google docs links or PAGES. You need to save the file in one of these formats.)