writing a psychology research report: references
Previous posts:
> The abstract
> The introduction
> The method
> The results
> The discussion
The APA referencing guide is the gold standard for referencing within psychology. Unfortunately, said guide is massive, and no student has the time for that. However, while referencing can be a bit of a pain it's incredibly important to get it right. Luckily there are lots of resources online to help you:
1. Purdue Owl's referencing guide
2. The University of Southern Queensland's referencing guide
3. The University of Western Sydney's guide
4. APA 6th edition overview
5. Refworks - see if your university is subscribed to this service in order to get it for free.
There are also a number of apps that can help you, particularly if you want to easily find out the reference for a book. I used EasyBib (just discovered that they also have a website!), which I found really handy.
I only have a couple of extra tips for this section of your report. To make your life a million times easier, just keep track of all of your references as you're going along. If you type them into a separate word document in APA format then all you have to do at the end is copy them across into your report. Check, double check, triple check that you have a proper reference for every single study you've referred to in your report. I've been known to accidentally miss a reference or two in the past and lost easy marks because of it. My last tip is to also check your punctuation - if you miss a comma here and there then it's not the end of the world, but if your references are littered with little mistakes it won't reflect well with your marker.
So that's my report writing series over with! (And it only took me a year!)
I'm sure that I'll keep coming back to these posts every now and then to update them, so if you have any ideas for improvement please feel free to leave some feedback.
I hope you've found the series helpful!
> The abstract
> The introduction
> The method
> The results
> The discussion
The APA referencing guide is the gold standard for referencing within psychology. Unfortunately, said guide is massive, and no student has the time for that. However, while referencing can be a bit of a pain it's incredibly important to get it right. Luckily there are lots of resources online to help you:
1. Purdue Owl's referencing guide
2. The University of Southern Queensland's referencing guide
3. The University of Western Sydney's guide
4. APA 6th edition overview
5. Refworks - see if your university is subscribed to this service in order to get it for free.
There are also a number of apps that can help you, particularly if you want to easily find out the reference for a book. I used EasyBib (just discovered that they also have a website!), which I found really handy.
I only have a couple of extra tips for this section of your report. To make your life a million times easier, just keep track of all of your references as you're going along. If you type them into a separate word document in APA format then all you have to do at the end is copy them across into your report. Check, double check, triple check that you have a proper reference for every single study you've referred to in your report. I've been known to accidentally miss a reference or two in the past and lost easy marks because of it. My last tip is to also check your punctuation - if you miss a comma here and there then it's not the end of the world, but if your references are littered with little mistakes it won't reflect well with your marker.
* * *
So that's my report writing series over with! (And it only took me a year!)
I'm sure that I'll keep coming back to these posts every now and then to update them, so if you have any ideas for improvement please feel free to leave some feedback.
I hope you've found the series helpful!
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