21 Presenting Research

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Hey everybody, in this video we'll go over the basics on how to write an APA style manuscript.

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This will be a short crash course and there will be a lot of things that I don't touch on,

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but nevertheless we'll cover the main basics here.

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So the APA created a set of guidelines for writing and psychology and other related fields.

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There are actually a ton of guidelines and the APA's publication manual is almost 300 pages long.

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So what we're going to do here is just go over the main parts of the manuscript.

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We have the title page and abstract introduction, methods, results, discussion,

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section and a references section.

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We'll go through a bit by bit and I have screenshots of example pages up here.

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But I also have an APA style manuscript and a template available to download on Canvas

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because if you haven't already, you will inevitably have to write a paper and APA format.

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So I apologize in advance that these papers screenshots are hard to see, but go ahead and download the word docs you can follow along.

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I'm going to throw a lot of technical details at you, but as long as you stick to the example manuscript that sent you all, you should be fine.

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First off, everything should be in Times New Roman 12. font and everything should be double spaced throughout the entire paper.

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Your paper will have a header on it, but the title page is header is a little different.

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At the top, it'll say running head with a capital R followed by a colon.

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Then you will put a short title as your running head, all in caps.

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Then write a line will be the page number.

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Then you have your article title on the first line.

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The next line down. You place all of the author names separated by commas.

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Then on the third line down, you put your university. So university of Missouri, for instance.

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There's also one optional piece of information you can put on the title page, which is the author note.

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This details the address and contact information for the corresponding author, the paper.

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But a lot of times, and especially for class papers, you won't need this part.

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Next, we have the abstract, which starts on a new page.

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Notice that starting with the abstract, and through the rest of the paper, the header changes.

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It no longer says running head here, and it just lists the short title and all caps and the page number.

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At the top of the page, lists abstract, centered, and then below that, you list out your abstract.

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This is a short paragraph that summarizes your entire paper.

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It's important that your abstract should be no longer than 150 words.

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So you gotta keep it short. And underneath that, you list anywhere from two to five keywords that relate to your paper.

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On a new page, then you start your introduction.

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Instead of writing the word introduction, you place your article title and then start in on your introduction section on the next line.

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This is where you articulate and summarize previous literature related to your topic.

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You use this area to build up the theory and move into your specific experiment.

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This is essentially the manifestation of the literature review you would perform at the very first step.

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Next, we have the method section. This does not start on a new page, but it goes directly after the introduction with the word method in bold.

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Method sections are generally split up into several subsections, and these subsections tend to vary depending on the type of paper you're writing.

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This screenshot here says data collection as its first sub header, but you can pretty much ignore that.

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Typically, you'll have two or three subsections. The first will say participants, and this is where you have a short paragraph describing who your sample is, how many people and so on.

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The next subsection, and these are all left-aligned and bolded, what's the materials, and there you would describe what you actually use in your experiment like the stimuli.

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Then the last subsection would say design and procedure, and here you would detail what your experimental design was, and what the subjects would actually do from the time they walked in until the time they leave.

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And then after your methods, you have your result section. This again follows directly after the methods on not on a new page.

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The word results is centered and bold, and here's where you actually report what happened in your study.

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You run all of your statistical tests, and you report those test statistics here.

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There are particular guidelines in formatting those statistics, but we'll cover that in another video.

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For now, just know that this is where you place those results.

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The last main part of the paper is the discussion section.

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Discussion is centered and bold, and directly follows the result section.

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Here's where you summarize what your study was, what you did, and what you found.

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Here you place your experimental findings in a broader context, and pretty much related to the field at large.

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The discussion section is also where you place some of the limitations of your study, and also options and possibilities for future research.

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After the discussion comes, the references section.

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This will start on a new page, and the word references is not bolded.

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References are listed in alphabetical order, and they're still double spaced, and they're left aligned on the first line, and then they're indented on the rest of the lines of each reference.

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We'll go over specifics on how these are formatted and just a little bit.

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After your references is where you put your tables and figures.

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Tables are listed before the figures, and each table gets its own page, and then directly underneath the table, you list a table note,

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and this is where you describe the contents of what your table is showing.

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And then you do the same thing for your figures. Each figure gets its own page, and there's a figure caption that goes underneath the figure, and that similarly describes what the figure is about, what is it showing.

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Okay, the last thing I want to talk about is some specifics about how to format references.

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So when you cite something in text, there are two different ways you can do this.

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First, you can put the citation at the end of the sentence.

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So it would say following the rating procedure participants received a memory test, and then in parentheses you would list the names of the authors, the last names, followed by a comma, and then the publication date,

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or you can put the citation at the beginning of the sentence.

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So you would say, naren, panorata, and Thompson, followed by only the publication day in parentheses, and then the rest of the sentence.

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You have multiple citations for the same sentence. You would just use the same format and separate them using a semicolon.

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If your citation has either one or two authors, the rule is you just always list all the authors each time you cite them.

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If it has anywhere between three and five authors, the rule is you list out all the authors, the first time you cite them.

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Then you shorten it to et all after that.

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So the first time would be naren, panorata, Thompson, 2008, and then after you cite them, the next time it would be shortened to naren, et all 2008.

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If the citation is at the end of the sentence and parentheses, it would be naren, et all, followed by both a period and a comma, and then the publication date.

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If it's from the beginning of the sentence, it's just et all followed by a period and then the date and parentheses.

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If the paper you're citing has six or more authors, you just go straight into using et all.

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One last note about citations in text, if you're using the same citation within the same paragraph, you only put the date on the first one,

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and then all subsequent citations within that same paragraph, you would just omit the publication date.

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Then in the next paragraph, you would go back to using the date and your citations.

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All right, and the last thing formatting references in your references section.

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The first bullet point is a typical journal article.

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Here you list the author, last name, comma, and then the first in middle initials with periods, followed by another comma, and then the next author.

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Before the last author, you place an ampersand before and then a final period after the last initials.

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Then the publication date is listed in parentheses.

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Next you place the article title.

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Only the first word is capitalized here, unless there's a colon in the title, and then the word immediately following that colon is capitalized and nothing else.

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Next you put the journal it was published in in italics, followed by the volume in issue number, where the volume number is italicized.

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Then you put the page numbers with a period, and then the last thing you put is the DOI, which is the digital object identifier.

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This is a specific number associated with each journal article.

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So the second one, if you need to cite a book, it's similar starting off with authors in the publication date.

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Then you place the name of the book in italics.

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Then you put the city and state, followed by a colon, and then the name of the publishing company.

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Then the third one, the last type we'll talk about, is when you need to cite a specific chapter with in a book.

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Here you put the author names in publication date, and then the name of the chapter.

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Then it's followed by the word in, and then list the names of the editors of the book, followed by EDS and parentheses.

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Then you put the title of the full book in italics, then the page numbers of the chapter, and then like before the city, state, and publisher information.

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Okay, thanks for sticking with me on some of the rules of APA style, and we'll see you next time.

10:27

Okay, thanks for sticking with me on some of the rules of APA style, and we'll see you next time.

10:35

Okay, thanks for sticking with me on some of the rules of APA style, and we'll see you next time.

10:38

Okay, thanks for sticking with me on some of the rules of APA style, and we'll see you next time.

10:41

Okay, thanks for sticking with me on some of the rules of APA style, and we'll see you next time.


Description

The resource covers the fundamentals of writing an APA style manuscript, including the main components that should be included. These are: title page and abstract, introduction, methods, results, discussion section, and references section. The content explains how to format these sections correctly, with a focus on times new roman 12 point font and double spacing throughout the paper. Additionally, it highlights the importance of using running heads and properly formatting author names. The resource also touches upon technical details such as header formats and page numbering requirements.