Abstract related

1.            Max. of 150, no minimum (but if it’s less than around 110 words, you’re probably missing something)

Tables related

1. You need to include a table of means and SDs (under Results) even if you are repeating yourself a little – too many people forget to include such things in later year units so I’m asking everyone to include one here so you get used to the idea of doing it.
2. Demographics table can go in EITHER Participants or Results section (but preferably the Participant section)
3. Rule of thumb is it to not repeat in a Table anything you’ve put in text, so consider providing some of the demo data as text and the rest in a Table. So along the lines of: The final sample comprised 3,521 males (46%) and 4,123 females (54%). See Table 1 below for full demographic details. [And then put age, gender etc in the Table]. OR The final sample comprised 3,521 males (age range, 21-56 years, mean= XX, SD = XX) and 4,123 females (age range, 20-59 years, mean= XX, SD = XX). See Table 1 below for further demographic details. If, however, you do end up repeating, don’t worry!
4. Use 2 decimal places for “most” things in Tables…only 1 for integer scales (so data that involves whole numbers only that can’t meaningfully be divided further – e.g. number of people in a class or the number of children someone has [the average Aust. family may have

2.2 children on average, but 0.2 of a child isn’t meaningful as a stand-alone…you can’t physically have 0.2 of a child!]. You can also go up to 3 for p values etc IF it, again, makes a meaningful difference – and especially where the p value is less than .001 where you must write it as“p < .001.” The big thing to keep in mind and this is straight from the APA guide: Keep in mind that these are general guidelines and that the most important consideration when deciding the number of decimal places to use in reporting results is the following: Round as much as possible while considering prospective use and statistical precision.

• Numerical values should be centred in the column (within Tables) and may also be aligned with the decimal if desired.
• With the spacing in a Table, the body may be single spaced, 1.5 spaced or double spaced.
• Use the same font type throughout (including in tables) but note that several different fonts are AOK…so a sans serif (e.g. 11 point Calibri or Ariel) or a serif font such as 12 point Times New Roman. One of the things to really note there is to be consistent throughout with the font and size you use – including the Ref List at the end.
• Q: When doing the demographic list how do I round the percentages? It requires two decimals, but if it for examples says 31.976% do I just show the first two like this 31.97%?

A: As APA 7 doesn’t appear to cover the rounding and adding up to 100 (or if it does, I can’t find it!), executive call – round to 2 and don’t worry if it doesn’t add up to 100 (I’ll make markers aware of this)

• If text appears on the same page as a table…add a double spaced blank line between the text and the table so that the separation…is easier to see”. NOTE: Try not to split tables across pages…you can add extra spaces to the page if needed (although don’t overkill that!).

Referencing related

1. The ‘gold” standard is to find the original source, read and cite that…but that can be challenging for many papers, so secondary citations are acceptable (if used sparingly!).
2. References can be any date (esp. for seminal studies) but post-2000 is preferred.
3. Any references can be used providing they’re relevant (they don’t have to be from the provided starter readings – they were just a starting point)
4. No max on number of refs…use as many as you need/don’t need
5. Q: I’d like to reference a study in people with what’s now called major neurocognitive disorder, but was previously (and still colloquially) known as dementia, so that’s what the study calls it. Can I just write major neurocognitive disorder, or should I put dementia in parentheses or something? Also, if I did that, would I need to reference DSM-5 or similar?

A: I’d stick with using whatever term the paper used but make a brief comment on the DSM change…e.g. Bill and Bob (1988) conducted a study using dementia (now known as major neurocognitive disorder; APA, YEAR) patients. Then continue to use dementia for that study.

• Better to over-reference than under-reference…if in doubt, whack a reference on it!
• Some papers, esp. older ones won’t have a DOI…in which case just leave it blank (as in don’t worry about it)…I’ll be sure that the markers know there’s no DOI for this one (Corsi Block Tapping Task, 1972)…OR, and this is probably more “correct”, include the URL, so the paper name etc then [If, however, you ever want to check for a DOI, this site is pretty cool: https://www.crossref.org/guestquery/].
• Peer reviewed journal articles, meta-analyses and systematic reviews are the “gold standard”, but that doesn’t mean you can’t use quality information from quality sources that aren’t necessarily peer reviewed (and sometimes, if there’s not very much lit in an area, you have no choice)          not ideal but sometimes there’s nothing else you can do!
• If all else fails, it is OK to reference some info as Bernie, Deb or the DB as a personal communication for this 🙂 See: https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar- guidelines/citations/personal-communications
• With computer software, you don’t need to reference “common” software in APA7 so SPSS

“probably” doesn’t need to be referenced, but as always, better to over rather than under if in doubt…so for SPSS one might be along the lines of: SPSSVXX (IBM Corporation, 2018)………………………………………………………………………………………………………. or

(to avoid needing to whack it in the ref list, you could get away with: Data were analysed with IBM SPSS Statistics (Version 25). For Jamovi (which isn’t quite as common………………………………………………………………………………………….. yet), you

might consider something like: Data were analysed using Jamovi V1.6 (The jamovi project, 2021)    then add the following to your ref list: The jamovi project (2021). jamovi (Version

1.6) [Computer Software].

General APA related

1. Use either Burton or O’Shea as a guide for report writing
2. No preference for passive v active writing for 206 – whichever works best (without being overly verbose) – NOTE: that I tend to drift towards passive voice…and it’s not something I mark down (so, I’ll make sure markers know that passive voice is OK…you may still get a comment on it, but you won’t lose marks for it…and let’s face it, even active voice, if written poorly, is still written poorly).
3. Word count covers everything from the first word of the Abstract to the last word BEFORE the ref list (so the ref list itself does not count)…words in Tables DO count.
4. Both student and professional format are acceptable – just be consistent throughout as to what you use.
5. Running Head (as in those words themselves) on the title page are OK…you won’t get marked down if you do use them, you won’t get marked up if you don’t.
6. I personally loathe the use of first person pronouns…it’s acceptable (meaning you can use it), but to me it conveys an air of subjectivity when you’re aiming for objectivity.
7. Acronyms:
   1. If a citation includes an abbreviation, include the citation after the abbreviation, separated with a semicolon. Do not use nested or back to back parentheses. Example: Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II; Beck et al., 1996)
   1. Generally, even if you’ve stated an acronym in your Intro you’d also write it in full (again) in the Methods section when you describe it under Materials. So, for example, you might write in your Intro something like: Bill and Ben (1973) developed the Flowerpot Living Index (FLI)        then just refer to it as the FLI afterwards. But in your Materials section you’d also

write something like: The Flowerpot Living Index (FLI; Bill & Ben, 1973) is a 2,000 item scale assessing the livability of different flower pot types. [Even though you’ve defined FLI previously]. If, however, you didn’t refer to the FLI in your Intro, you’d just do as per the Methods section, then use FLI thereafter.

• Can we use CBT and PVT abbreviations, making sure we use the full term first? Yes, but maybe make it CBBT rather than CBT (simply because CBT is normally associated with cognitive behavioural therapy).
• Visuo-spatial v visuospatial…the latter is likely correct, but you can use either…just as long as you’re consistent throughout.

Methods Section

1. With a Methods section (including the Participants section), you need to include everything another person would need to replicate your study.
2. Materials is where you’d briefly describe the Corsi (or PVT) task…and something very brief on demographics  so maybe something like (and no, it’s not necessarily in correct APA7

style!):

Materials

Participants were asked demographic questions including x, y and z. They were also asked to complete the Corsi Block Tapping task (REF) using Inquisit (REF) software. This task involves…

Then, under your Procedure, maybe something a little like:

Participants clicked on a provided URL to access the experiment. After downloading the required software, they completed demographic questions before then completing the Corsi Block tapping task. In total, this took approximately 10 minutes.

• No need for HREC approval for this – it was a class exercise…so you might say something like: As data gathering was part of an in-class exercise, HREC approval was not required; however, as participation was not mandatory, participants were considered to have provided implied informed consent by choosing to participate”
• For the children under 2 variable, a case control design was adopted where the 27 participants with children were matched on age and gender with 27 participants who did not report children under 2…you’ll need to mention this approach – either under Method or Results but preferably the latter.
• PVT procedure – The task itself ran for 2 minutes…prior to this was an habituation period of 30 seconds (so the practice RTs)…exactly how many practice RTs each person got was slightly dependent on how many random intervals there were, but generally around 4                                                                                                                      so

you’d be fine to say 4.

• I’d suggest sticking the sample size info under Participants.. along the lines of: As part of a

larger study, XX participants were recruited. Due to only XX participants reporting children under 2, a case control design was adopted, based on age and gender, leaving a final sample of XX for analysis.

DVs

1.            Any of the DVs can be used (e.g. mean RT, median RT etc), but just make sure whichever one you use makes “sense” within the context of your report (e.g. you wouldn’t use false starts if you were talking about RTs). You do NOT have to compute a DV. [Also, you can use either Block span, Total correct or total score – I don’t mind which one].

Results/Stats

1. Even if you mangle your stats beyond all recognition, as long as you report everything correctly and you interpret whatever you get correctly (even if you get something weird!), you can still do really well. See also slide from L2 on “What to include in a results section”
2. Don’t get stressed out by choosing 1 or 2 tailed…but please specify which one and report. There’s often great debate over whether to use 1-tailed or 2-tailed                                                                                                      personally, I use 2-tailed

most (if not all) of the time.. and 2-tailed is fine for 206 even with a directional hypothesis.

[Note, when I say “directional” in a hypothesis I mean is it a positive or negative correlation

or which group will be sig. higher than the other…rather than whether you’re doing 1 or 2 tailed].

• I cleaned the data for some comparisons (e.g. age split) and deleted cases if the missing data was relevant to that variable…so you don’t delete if they’re missing an answer to something not related to your topic. And even if you haven’t deleted someone who maybe should’ve been, don’t fret – as long as you mention that in your Discussion, no problems…cleaning data is not on the marking rubric and you won’t be penalised. I’ve also said that I don’t want any assumption violations (if present) corrected…just a statement that assumptions were checked (either by me or you), if an assumption was violated (and normality is more often than not), but that you were advised by the course instructor to not correct the violation.
• Q: Allan, Bennet and Heritage mentions that t-test is robust against small to moderate violations of normality, provided the sample is reasonably large (40+). Given we only have 27 in each group for PVT with/out children under 2yrs, how do I explain the usage of t-test in our assignment? are we just assuming that it is robust enough for the purpose of the current study/assignment?

A: Since your sample has 27 in each group, that is 54, so that’s a reasonable sample size.

• The assumption of normality was violated for all variables, however, and all other assumptions are OK. Just state this in the results section but not correct the violation.
• Consider including alpha (as in sig. alpha). For example: Analyses were conducted using SPSS VXX (IBM Corporation, YEAR) with an alpha value (or sig value) of .05.
• For the sample size, there’s some debate over where it “should” go – some say Participants, some say under Results (usually under a heading of Data Cleaning or Data Analysis). While I’d prefer the info under Participants, you won’t be penalised for shoving it under Results (as I said, there’s some debate over the 100% correct place to put it!). You’d say something like: As part of a larger project, XXXX participants were recruited. Due to there only being XX participants reporting children under 2, a case control design was adopted, matching on both age and gender. This left a total sample size of XX for analysis. [Note that example is FAR from perfect but might give you a bit of an idea]
• Q: Is it OK to mention power in the discussion if I see that it’s appropriate in the context of my findings?

A: Entirely up to you – but not an essential part of this report for 206 unless it’s integral for your Discussion (e.g. one of the limitations of the current study was the small sample size which may have resulted in a loss of power…or something like that). Power becomes more important at 4th year level where you’ll need to do a power analysis.

• No need for a correlation matrix – esp. as there are only 2 variables…trying to keep this section as simple as possible (where I can) 🙂

Discussion

1. Could age/psyc student status be a limitation? Well, depends how you write it really…but the use of university (or college) students does tend to limit whether you can generalise results to the general population.
2. You only need 1 x DV for your analyses…you could add more if you REALLY want to, but I’d be balancing words very carefully…as in just make sure you’re not using words on unnecessary aspects that might be better used in your Intro or Discussion. If you want to talk about other metrics in your Discussion, you probably should include it in your Results…although you might be better off using it as a limitation…for example, “One of the limitations of the current study was that it only used mean RT. As shown in other studies (e.g. XXX & XXX, YEAR) other metrics may be more sensitive to XXX. Consequently, future research should look at all metrics rather than just the one”. If you include it that way, you won’t need to include it under Results (although might be worth mentioning very briefly, where you describe the measure, that a number of metrics are generated but that only XXX will be used for the purposes of the current study).

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