Method Section (Page 2 of 3) in pdf

The Method Section

page 2

Materials

In this section, you should provide a description of any equipment or physical settings that were

important aspects of your study. If you are conducting a study that involves precise measurement, you

will want to be very specific about the equipment you used. For example, if you are measuring how

quickly a participant responds to a stimulus on a computer screen, you would need to describe the

software you are using, important characteristics of the monitor (size, refresh rate, contrast, etc.), and

distance of participants from the monitor. Do not bother describing the size of the room you used or its

general layout unless these are important to the study.

Questionnaires. One of the most common elements of the Materials subsection is a

questionnaire. If you used a questionnaire in your study, you will want to describe:

1. The source of the questionnaire (if it was originally created by someone else, you should cite the

original source and include it in your References section)

What construct the questionnaire is designed to measure: “…designed to measure the degree to

which people believe in government conspiracies.” Note: your questionnaire is not designed to test

your hypothesis, it is designed to measure a variable. For example, your questionnaire cannot

directly measure “whether men and women differ in their attitudes toward gun control.” That’s what

your study might be designed to test, but the questionnaire in that study would only measure

attitudes toward gun control.

3. The number of items in your questionnaire

4. One to three sample items. If you are creating a new questionnaire, place the full set of items in an

Appendix and refer the reader to the Appendix: “(see Appendix for complete list of questionnaire

items).”. An Appendix would appear after the References section but before any Figures or Tables.

5. Any reliability estimates (e.g., Cronbach’s alpha, test-retest reliability) that might be available from

previous research. Occasionally, researchers will put the reliability that they obtain in the present

study into the Method section rather than the Results section.

Procedure

In the procedure section, the researcher provides a step-by-step description of the participants’

experience. Do not describe any data analysis or other actions taken by the researcher that do not

directly involve the participants themselves. Some common elements in the Procedure section include:

Instructions to participants. What were they told the study was about? “Participants were told that

the study was designed to explore the first impressions people form when they see a picture of

someone.”

Informed consent. Did the researcher obtain informed consent? Was any deception used? Were

participants informed about the confidentiality of any sensitive information?

Assignment to conditions. How was this done? Were participants randomly assigned? Did you use

matching? Did participants assign themselves to levels of the independent variable?

Experimental manipulations. How were participants treated differently across conditions? Be careful

not to duplicate information you have already presented in the Materials section. For example, if

you’ve already described a high-fear video and a low-fear video, do not describe them again here.

Instead, assume that the reader will remember the labels you introduced in the Materials section and

simply state that participants watched either the high-fear or the low-fear video.

Duration. How long did the procedure take? “Participants generally completed the questionnaire

within 10 minutes.”

Debriefing. Were participants debriefed? Were they given a written debriefing or did the researcher

conduct an oral debriefing?

by Bill Altermatt, last updated 10/12/2008

Method Section Page 2

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