Understanding and Applying Research Design

STATISTICAL PROCEDURES UNIT A: WRITING THE STATISTICAL RESEARCH SUMMARY

When you summarize the results of your research, remember that these summaries are designed to be written for a research audience. The settings might include a professional association at which you are highlighting your findings (as in a poster session), a brief blurb for a book, the findings section of a team research report, or a proposal to company representatives as part of a consulting project.

Create the summary keeping the following points in mind, and use established writing guidelines (e.g., Chicago, American Psychological Association, Modern Language Association). Include figures and tables only when they are necessary in explaining or describing the findings. Unnecessary visual summaries can be distracting and redundant.

The following guidelines are organized by the steps you need to take to complete the statistical analysis. After you have stated the hypotheses, address each of the following as ingredients for your decision whether to reject the null hypotheses and how the findings relate to the overall research problem.

1. State the general research question or theory, and then list the hypotheses and study variables.

2. Describe the purpose of the statistical test(s) you will use to address whether to reject the null hypothesis, accept the alternate hypotheses, and so on. The following are two examples of using different statistical procedures:

A one-sample t test was conducted on PWPVS scores ...