writing a psychology research report: the abstract

I'm not sure if all psychology degrees are taught like this, but throughout mine we've always been really involved in research projects and report writing - basically mimicking the work of an actual psychologist. Naturally we're expected to write these to a high, practically publishable standard, but we haven't always been given a lot of help about how to do that. I thought I'd start a mini-series outlining each section of the report and what to include as hopefully it'll be useful for anyone starting/doing a degree in psychology - or if not, at least it'll be useful for me to have everything in one place!

The sections I'll be going through:

• The abstract
• Introduction
• Method
• Results
• Discussion
• References

Enjoy!

The abstract is placed at the beginning of the report, but written last (just easier, at that point you'll already have everything written and a better understanding of what everything means). It should summarise the main points of the article and allow the reader to discern the bare essentials of what the report is about without having to read the whole thing. When you're scanning for background research, you'll be able to spot good abstracts as you should easily be able to tell if the article will be relevant to you from that little paragraph alone.

Key points to include:

• The first sentence should outline the main topics being studied, e.g. "This study explored the relationships between Jewish religiosity and ambivalent sexist attitudes toward men and women." *
• Briefly outline the hypothesis and its relation to previous research, e.g. "Drawing on ambivalent sexism theory and Judaism's views of gender relations, it was hypothesised that religiosity would be positively related to benevolent sexism and benevolent attitudes toward men."
• Describe the design, participants, and if any important apparatus was used such as a questionnaire, e.g. "The hypotheses were tested in a convenience sample of 854 Israeli Jews (471 women, 355 men) who completed measures of ambivalent sexism, ambivalence toward men and religiosity."
• Describe the main findings, e.g. "Controlling for the effects of age, education and martial status, religiosity predicted more benevolent sexist attitudes for both men and women. The findings also revealed negative associations between Jewish religiosity and hostile attitudes, mainly among men. That is, more religious men were less likely to express hostile attitudes toward men and women."
• Finally, outline the main conclusions, i.e. what your findings mean (you could also include brief implications for future research), e.g. 'These findings attest to the complex relationships between religiosity and sexist attitudes, and underscore the importance of investigating the impact of diverse religious traditions on gender attitudes."

* All examples from Gaunt, R. (2012). "Blessed is He who has not made me a woman": Ambivalent sexism and Jewish religiosity. Sex Roles, 67(9-10), 477-487.

Other tips:

• Abstracts are typically 150-200 words long
• Statistics are sometimes shown with the findings but not often - check with your lecturer for their preferences
• Brief participant details are usually given in brackets if it's relevant, e.g. gender (20 males, 20 females), age range (18-45, mean = 31.5)

Next: the introduction