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The Method Section

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Method Section

The Method section comes after the title page, abstract, and introduction, but we discuss it before

all of those because it is the only section you have enough information to write about before you collect

your data. The Method section is the section in which you describe the details of how your study was

conducted. You haven’t conducted your study yet, but go ahead and write in the past tense because that

is the tense you will eventually need (e.g., “Participants completed a questionnaire..”).

How Much Detail?

You should provide sufficient detail so that your study could be replicated in all its essential

characteristics. However, you should omit aspects of the study that are unlikely to be important to the

outcome: exact room temperature, color of the room, or details about the furniture can be omitted

(assuming they are not independent variables). In addition, you should not repeat information that was

presented in another section. If you describe the questionnaire in the Materials subsection, do not also

describe it in the Procedure subsection.

General Advice on Style

Labels. Come up with labels for your independent and dependent variables and the levels of the

independent variable that are easy to use and understand. DO NOT refer to the two levels of your

independent variable as “Group A” and “Group B” or “Group 1” and “Group 2.” Nobody will ever

remember which one is which. Instead, call them “the $1 condition” and “the $20 condition” or the “low

anxiety group” and the “high anxiety group.”

Numbers. APA style requires that numbers that appear at the beginning of a sentence be spelled

out: “Fifty percent of the participants…” rather than “50% of the participants.” In addition, all numbers

less than 10 should also be spelled out: “…nine…”

The Method section has three main subsections: Participants, Materials, and Procedure. Each

subsection has its own heading, the formatting of which is described in the APA Publication Manual on

pages 113-115 and demonstrated on page 308.

Participants

1. How many?

2. How were they selected (e.g., from introductory psychology courses, acquaintances of the

experimenter, etc.)? If you got participants from different sources, describe the percentage

obtained from each.

3. Essential demographics information: percentage female (or male), age range and average age,

and the percentage of participants belonging to various ethnic groups (include at least “Caucasian,”

“African American,” “Latino/a,” “East Asian,” “Indian,” “Native American,” and “other”). Note: names

of ethnic groups are proper nouns and should be capitalized. The proper form for using a label to

describe a group of people is to use the label that is generally approved by that group.

4. If you did not use data from some of the participants, you must explain the rule you used to exclude

the data: error rates above ___%, participant expressed suspicion, etc. You will not know these

until you conduct your study. If no data was excluded, you do not have to mention anything.

Note: An error commonly made by beginning researchers is to state that participants were

obtained “randomly.” Do not use the term “random” lightly: it implies that every member of the population

had an equal probability of inclusion in your study. Unless you went to great pains to obtain a truly

random sample, do not use the word “random.” You could say that you obtained a “convenience

sample,” or you could simply not mention the sampling procedure you used and the reader will assume

that it was a convenience sample.

by Bill Altermatt, last updated 10/12/2008

Method Section

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