Coursework Description
The RP2 Research Project (or RP2 Research Proposal) will follow a structured format that is provided for you. The report should take the form of a research paper, formatted using APA style. Tables and Figures should be placed at an appropriate place within the main text of the report, and not at the end of the report.
The report is made up of the below sections. The headings and subheadings must be included for all projects, we also give suggestions for subheadings, noted in the text and marked in italics.
Title page
The title page should include your student ID number (NOT your name), the full title of the research project report, the module title and code, the wordcount, and a statement of contribution.
Statement of Contribution
This must clearly state which work (e.g. hypothesis formation, recruitment, data collection and analyses, interpretation of the results etc.) was conducted by the student, and whether it was done independently or jointly with the supervisor(s) and/or fellow researchers.
Abstract
Structured if you project is quantitative. If your project is qualitative, you may drop any of the headings that are not relevant. Structured abstracts should include the following headings: Background, Aims, Method, Results, Conclusion. The research question should be clearly defined and supported by the methodology. The abstract serves an important purpose in summarizing the hypotheses, design, and findings of the study.
Introduction
A strong introduction engages the reader in the issue under investigation and provides a context for the study at hand. In introducing the research concern, the writer should provide a clear rationale for why the problem deserves new research, placing the study in the context of current knowledge and of prior theoretical and empirical work on the topic. Responsible scholarship stipulates that the writer properly credits the work of others. Where it is impractical to exhaustively describe all prior research, the most current and relevant studies should be cited.
Research question
You should end your introduction with a clear statement of the overarching research question.
Depending on the research design, this section may also include research aims, hypotheses, or propositions, which can be numbered if there are more than one.
Method
Describe what you did as clearly as possible. Provide sufficient detail for replication.
This section will vary depending on your study. Possible subsections include (but are not limited to):
Design
An overview
Participants
Include details of sampling, recruitment, inclusion/exclusion criteria, sample size, and dropouts (those excluded after data collection and why). Participant characteristics should be presented in the results section (see below).
Materials or measures
What you used during testing. Subheadings in this section often include ‘Questionnaires’ and/or ‘Tasks’ (information on questionnaires or scales should include the name of the instrument, main characteristics, response type, example items for questionnaires, how the score was constructed (e.g. mean or sum score), possible range of scores, and if available, reliability results in the literature.
Procedure
What happened during the study. Include details of randomisation/matching, consent, how data were collected, what participants had to do and any debriefing. In the case of qualitative data, describe the procedure adopted for the anonymization of data during transcription, coding, and analysis.
Data cleaning
For quantitative projects, you should check your dataset for errors, outliers, and other mistakes (e.g. human error). You should summarise what data cleaning, if any, was undertaken and how much (%) data was lost as a result.
Data collection
For qualitative projects, you should describe how data were collected and transcribed, and the type of analysis framework that was used.
Results
This is often the most difficult section to present clearly. Your module teaching and supervisor’s advice will be invaluable to help with this section.
You should NOT include ‘raw’ un-summarised data (if relevant, this data can be included in an appendix) or anything that could give away the identity of a participant (especially in qualitative work).
You should consider the following sections and structure your results according to what is relevant to your project.
Participant Characteristics
Almost every results section starts with a description of the final sample. How many people were involved, and are there data that describe them (age, gender, etc). You would normally include a ‘Participant Characteristics’ table showing these data, unless there is very little information on participants (in which case you can just describe it in the text). If you have two or more groups of participants, you may want to test whether the groups differ significantly in any of these characteristics, and you could show this by adding an extra column in your Table that gives the t statistic and associated p values. If groups do differ, you might want to take account of these differences statistically in your main analyses (e.g. by entering them as covariates).
Summary of the main data
Usually this will be in table form and often shows means and standard deviations / confidence intervals of your main outcome or dependent measure, organised into rows and columns according to the conditions and groups of your experiment. It may include correlations and reliability values, for example if questionnaires/scales were used. Qualitative data analysis may include information on the saturation point(s) and inter-rater reliability, as well as any additional cross-validation efforts.
Inferential Analyses
This is where you report the main analyses you conducted. It would normally comprise a text description of the statistical analysis you conducted on the data shown in your summary table (described above). The analyses you do should directly address (test) the main hypotheses of your project, as stated in the introduction. You should state why you are conducting each analysis – which hypothesis is it addressing? You may use each hypothesis as a subheading. Analyses that address slightly different questions, even if they are related, are not relevant. The most common problem with results sections is the reporting of analyses which do not adequately test the hypothesis/-es stated at the outset.
Qualitative Analyses – you need to describe how the data were organised and analysed using a similar structure. Identify key themes/points for discussion, which may be used as subheadings. Themes may be pre-set by your research questions and/or some may emerge through the process of analysis. Tables would usually be used to summarise themes and provide one or two example quotations relating to each theme.
Tables and figures: Use tables and figures (i.e. charts, graphs and pictures) to display the most important results from your main analyses. These should be numbered consecutively and cited at the appropriate place in the text. Tables and figures are particularly valuable for conveying large amounts of information and for showing relationships among data. A good figure will make a specific point (e.g. people in one condition of your experiment performed differently from people in the other condition) and/or summarise the take home message (the thing you think is the single most important finding) of your project. Tables and figures should portray the information with sufficient clarity to stand alone without the text (if you show the figure to someone can they understand what it means without reading anything about it?). You may include a maximum of five tables and figures, which should be included at an appropriate point in the results section. You may choose to place extra tables and figures in appendices.
Discussion
In this section you should:
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Provide a statement of support or non-support for all hypotheses – the purpose is to answer the research question and validate your claims in one short, clear paragraph.
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For each hypothesis:
‒ Consider explanations of each finding: discuss similarities and differences between reported results and work of others.
‒ Provide a critical interpretation of the results, taking into account, for example-
sources of potential bias and threats to internal and statistical validity
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imprecision of measurement protocols
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overall number of tests or overlap among tests
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adequacy of sample sizes and sampling validity
‒ Give careful consideration of findings that fail to support the research question / hypothesisStrengths and limitations
In this section you should:
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Assess the overall quality and limits of your study. Discuss, for example, generalizability (external validity) of the findings, taking into account:
‒ the target population (sampling validity)
‒ other contextual issues (setting, measurement, time, ecological validity) -
What were the problems anticipated/encountered/overcome? How could your study have been improved?
Implications
In this section you should reflect on the conceptual, methodological, and translational relevance of the results, as well as implications for future research and practice.
Conclusion
You should end the report with a brief summary of the final conclusions. This should be more general than the results summary at the start of the discussion. It should draw together the threads of the research to arrive at an overall conclusion for your work. It should relate very clearly to your title. You should also briefly summarise the way forward for future similar work and/or implications of the findings. This is an important part of the dissertation so avoid a bland summary or simply listing recommendations.
If you find you are writing something in the discussion that does not fit into one of the above sections then you should probably remove it, as it is unlikely to be relevant for the discussion.
References
There is no limit to references, although 20-40 references are recommended. References and in-text citations should follow APA formatting https://onlinelibrary.london.ac.uk/support/referencing/referencing-styles-apa
Appendices
Examples of things that could go in the appendix include material which is too bulky for the main body of the dissertation or which, though relevant, might be too distracting.
The appendices MUST include:
• A link to your OSF component, which must include:
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– a component which includes the data analysis plan
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– a component including your data
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– a component including all the ethics documentations, specifically your ethics
application form, participant information, consent forms and participant debrief
You may also want to include:
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Raw, un-summarised data (qualitative projects)
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Extra tables of data (qualitative projects)
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Questionnaires/other research instruments
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Examples of stimuli or materials used
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Extracts from interview transcripts to illustrate identification of codes, categories, themes
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Anything else which needs to be included but is too long for the main report
The word limit is 5,000 words for the entire main body of the report (including all headings and sub-headings, but not including the Title, Abstract, the contents of Tables and Figures and their associated titles and captions, the References section, and any Appendices).
You may include up to FIVE tables and figures in total, in any combination (e.g. you may choose to present one table and four figures OR three tables and two figures).
Additionally, there is a maximum of 20 words for the title, 250 words for the Abstract, and 2,000 words for any Appendices.
Students who are carrying out qualitative or mixed-methods (i.e. combined qualitative and quantitative) projects may also use up to an additional 1,000 words to allow you to include data excerpts in your Results section. These 1,000 words are not included in the word count for the main body of the report. Note that the additional 1,000 words for excerpts are for use only if required; you may well be able to adequately communicate qualitative or mixed- methods studies, including data excerpts, within 5,000 words (+/- 10%).