Methods and Design Section of a Literature Review Apa

How to Write an APA Methods Section | With Examples

Published on February v, 2021 by Pritha Bhandari. Revised on February 17, 2022.

The methods department of an APA style paper is where you report in particular how you performed your study. Research papers in the social and natural sciences frequently follow APA style. This article focuses on reporting quantitative research methods.

In your APA methods section, you should report enough information to empathise and replicate your study, including detailed information on the sample, measures, and procedures used.

Structuring an APA methods department

The main heading of "Methods" should exist centered, boldfaced, and capitalized. Subheadings within this section are left-aligned, boldfaced, and in championship case. You lot can also add lower level headings within these subsections, as long as they follow APA heading styles.

To construction your methods section, you tin utilize the subheadings of "Participants," "Materials," and "Procedures." These headings are non mandatory—aim to organize your methods department using subheadings that make sense for your specific study.

Heading	What to include
Participants	Participant or subject characteristics Sampling procedures Sample size and power
Materials	Primary and secondary measures Quality of measurements
Procedure	Data collection methods Research design (e.1000., experimental, correlational, or descriptive) Data processing and diagnostics (east.yard., outlier removal) Information analysis strategy (due east.g., comparison or regression tests)

Note that not all of these topics will necessarily be relevant for your study. For instance, if you didn't need to consider outlier removal or ways of assigning participants to different weather, you don't take to report these steps.

The APA as well provides specific reporting guidelines for different types of enquiry blueprint. These tell yous exactly what you demand to written report for longitudinal designs, replication studies, experimental designs, and then on. If your study uses a combination design, consult APA guidelines for mixed methods studies.

Detailed descriptions of procedures that don't fit into your main text tin be placed in supplemental materials (for instance, the exact instructions and tasks given to participants, the total analytical strategy including software code, or additional figures and tables).

Participants

Begin the methods section by reporting sample characteristics, sampling procedures, and the sample size.

Participant or field of study characteristics

When discussing people who participate in enquiry, descriptive terms like "participants," "subjects" and "respondents" can be used. For non-human animal inquiry, "subjects" is more appropriate.

Specify all relevant demographic characteristics of your participants. This may include their age, sex, ethnic or racial group, gender identity, teaching level, and socioeconomic status. Depending on your study topic, other characteristics like educational or immigration condition or linguistic communication preference may as well be relevant.

Be certain to written report these characteristics equally precisely as possible. This helps the reader understand how far your results may exist generalized to other people.

The APA guidelines emphasize writing about participants using bias-free language, then it'due south necessary to apply inclusive and appropriate terms.

Example: Reporting participant characteristics

The participants included 134 cisgender men betwixt xviii and 25 years one-time from a public university in New York. All participants were right-handed, fluent in English, and beginning-generation higher students.

Sampling procedures

Outline how the participants were selected and all inclusion and exclusion criteria applied. Appropriately identify the sampling process used. For case, y'all should only label a sample as random if you had access to every member of the relevant population.

Of all the people invited to participate in your study, annotation the percent that actually did (if you lot take this data). Additionally, report whether participants were self-selected, either by themselves or by their institutions (due east.g., schools may submit educatee information for research purposes).

Place any compensation (east.m., course credits or money) that was provided to participants, and mention any institutional review board approvals and upstanding standards followed.

Example: Reporting sampling procedures

Ideals blessing was obtained before nosotros began recruiting participants. Current commencement-generation higher students were invited to participate. The study was advertised through general emails sent to university-wide mailing lists, social media posts, and flyers across campus. Participants were cocky-selected and compensated $10 for their time in the hour-long written report.

Sample size and ability

Item the sample size (per status) and statistical power that y'all hoped to attain, likewise equally any analyses you performed to decide these numbers.

It's important to testify that your study had enough statistical power to find effects if in that location were whatsoever to be found.

Additionally, state whether your terminal sample differed from the intended sample. Your interpretations of the study outcomes should exist based only on your final sample rather than your intended sample.

Example: Reporting sample size and power

For our study to have 80% power to discover an effect of 10%, with a significance level of .05, thirty participants were required in each of the two weather. The final sample satisfied these requirements.

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Materials

Write upwards the tools and techniques that you used to measure out relevant variables. Be as thorough every bit possible for a complete moving picture of your techniques.

Main and secondary measures

Define the master and secondary result measures that will help you reply your main and secondary research questions.

Specify all instruments used in gathering these measurements and the construct that they measure. These instruments may include hardware, software, or tests, scales, and inventories.

• To cite hardware, indicate the model number and manufacturer.
• To cite mutual software (due east.g., Qualtrics), state the full name along with the version number or the website URL.
• To cite tests, scales or inventories, reference its manual or the article information technology was published in. It'due south too helpful to state the number of items and provide one or two example items.

Brand sure to report the settings of (e.g., screen resolution) any specialized appliance used.

For each instrument used, report measures of the following:

• Reliability: how consistently the method measures something, in terms of internal consistency or exam-retest reliability.
• Validity: how precisely the method measures something, in terms of construct or criterion validity.

Giving an example item or two for tests, questionnaires, and interviews is also helpful.

Example: Reporting materials

The Academic Anxiety Inventory (AAI; Pizzie & Kraemer, 2017) was used to measure academic anxiety in college students. The inventory consists of 50 Likert scale questions with subscales for math, science, and exam anxiety. The participants indicated their level of agreement with statements on a five-betoken scale ranging from "strongly disagree" to "strongly concur." An case item is "I feel anxious when studying for a final." Cronbach's alpha was high (above .85) for each subscale, indicating sufficient internal consistency.

A full general noesis test advisable for adults was created using materials from a previous study (encounter supplementary materials). The exam consisted of xx multiple choice questions with medium difficulty.

Draw whatsoever covariates—these are any additional variables that may explain or predict the outcomes.

Quality of measurements

Review all methods you used to clinch the quality of your measurements.

These may include:

• training researchers to collect data reliably,
• using multiple people to assess (e.g., observe or lawmaking) the data,
• translation and dorsum-translation of inquiry materials,
• using pilot studies to examination your materials on unrelated samples.

For information that'due south subjectively coded (for example, classifying open-ended responses), report interrater reliability scores. This tells the reader how similarly each response was rated past multiple raters.

Procedure

Study all of the procedures applied for administering the study, processing the data, and for planned data analyses.

Information collection methods and research design

Information drove methods refers to the general mode of the instruments: surveys, interviews, observations, focus groups, neuroimaging, cognitive tests, and and then on. Summarize exactly how you collected the necessary data.

Draw all procedures you practical in administering surveys, tests, concrete recordings, or imaging devices, with plenty item so that someone else can replicate your techniques. If your procedures are very complicated and require long descriptions (e.yard., in neuroimaging studies), place these details in supplementary materials.

To report enquiry pattern, note your overall framework for data collection and analysis. State whether you used an experimental, quasi-experimental, descriptive (observational), correlational, and/or longitudinal design. Also annotation whether a between-subjects or a within-subjects design was used.

For multi-group studies, report the following design and procedural details likewise:

• how participants were assigned to different weather condition (e.g., randomization),
• instructions given to the participants in each group,
• interventions for each group,
• the setting and length of each session(southward).

Draw whether whatsoever masking was used to hibernate the condition consignment (e.g., placebo or medication status) from participants or inquiry administrators. Using masking in a multi-group written report ensures internal validity past reducing bias. Explain how this masking was practical and whether its effectiveness was assessed.

Example: Reporting data collection methods and research design

All participants were told that the survey concerned students' general knowledge and would take a maximum of xxx minutes. After arriving at the laboratory individually, they were assured confidentiality, and they provided informed consent.

Participants were randomly assigned to a command or experimental condition. The survey was administered using Qualtrics (https://www.qualtrics.com). To begin, all participants were given the AAI and a demographics questionnaire to complete, followed past an unrelated filler task. In the control condition, participants completed a curt general knowledge test immediately later on the filler chore. In the experimental condition, participants were asked to visualize themselves taking the test for 3 minutes before they really did. For more details on the exact instructions and tasks given, run across supplementary materials.

In the betwixt-subjects experimental design, the contained variable was whether the visualization intervention was applied and the dependent variable was the difference in examination scores between atmospheric condition.

Data diagnostics

Outline all steps taken to scrutinize or procedure the data after drove.

This includes the following:

• Procedures for identifying and removing outliers
• Data transformations to normalize distributions
• Compensation strategies for overcoming missing values

To ensure loftier validity, you should provide enough detail for your reader to empathise how and why you processed or transformed your raw data in these specific ways.

Analytic strategies

The methods section is also where you describe your statistical assay procedures, simply non their outcomes. Their outcomes are reported in the results section.

These procedures should be stated for all principal, secondary, and exploratory hypotheses. While primary and secondary hypotheses are based on a theoretical framework or by studies, exploratory hypotheses are guided past the data you've just collected.

Case: Reporting analytical strategy

First, we assessed whether in that location were any baseline differences between the 2 groups in terms of demographics characteristics or AAI scores. Subsequently, to test our primary hypothesis that the visualization intervention improves test functioning, we performed an independent samples t examination on test scores.

Example of an APA methods section

This annotated example reports methods for a descriptive correlational survey on the human relationship between religiosity and trust in scientific discipline in the U.s.. Hover over each part for explanation of what is included.

Example of an APA methods section

Ofttimes asked questions about writing an APA methods section

What should I include in an APA methods section?

In your APA methods section, yous should report detailed data on the participants, materials, and procedures used.

• Depict all relevant participant or subject characteristics, the sampling procedures used and the sample size and power.
• Define all master and secondary measures and hash out the quality of measurements.
• Specify the information collection methods, the research design and data analysis strategy, including any steps taken to transform the data and statistical analyses.

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