12 Preparing and Presenting Written Sections of Your

12 Preparing and Presenting Written Sections of Your Dissertation to Your Advisor and Committee

In this chapter we expand on our earlier recommendations about the order of your dissertation sections (see Box 12.1) and describe in greater detail the contents of those sections. For all sections of your dissertation, remember to obsessively follow the writing recommendations presented in previous chapters to strive for PPP—precision, parsimony, and power.

All sections of your thesis and dissertation proposals and final drafts are interdependent and form a logical and linear description of your planned or completed research. As we suggested in Chapter 9, sections such as the Introduction and Methods are often best written and submitted to your advisor sequentially. Recall that a linear sequence is important because each section depends on the material presented in the previous sections and guides the material presented in the subsequent section. In that earlier chapter we noted how the Specific Goals or Hypotheses of your research depend on the literature you have reviewed and the conceptual and methodological background you presented in your Introduction. In a similar manner, your Methods section flows directly from your Introduction section and the Specific Goals or Hypotheses of your research. A change in one section could require changes in sub-sequent sections. To understand why this is the case, consider the dif-ficulties with trying to evaluate your research methods without knowing the specific goals of the research, or with trying to evaluate your specific goals without a clear understanding of the current state of the literature on the topic.

Before adopting this sequential strategy for writing, do what we have repeatedly recommended—consult your advisor: “I was planning to submit sections of my dissertation (proposal, final draft) to you for review in this order. What do you think?” Or, perhaps an open-ended query is even better: “How would you like me to submit sections of my dissertation for your erudite and positively constructive feedback?”

You must also closely examine your university’s guidelines for the preparation of your dissertation. Your university or program will likely have specific requirements for the layout of sections, line spacing, size and type of font, table and figure preparation, and placement of appendices.

Box 12.1 Typical Sections of a Thesis or Dissertation

1. Title Page, Abstract, Table of Contents (on separate pages; Acknowledgments can be added later to your final dissertation).

2. Introduction/Literature Review, including References (these will be placed after your methods in the case of your proposal and after your Discussion in the case of your final dissertation). Be sure that your citations and references are errorless and follow the most current APA style guidelines. Also, be sure to check that all citations in your text appear in your References section and that all references are actually cited in the text.

3. Specific Goals, Hypotheses, or Objectives (on a separate page or sometimes included at the end of the Introduction).

4. Methods

a. Participants and Recruitment (recruitment strategies, group assignments, type of participant or subject sampling, participant inclusion/exclusion decision making; for the final document include information on participation and dropouts).

b. Measurement Strategy and Measures (refer to copies of all instruments in an appendix) with supporting psychometric data and methods of assessment.

c. Procedures (a detailed description of the exact procedures of data collection, accentuated with a flow chart if they are complicated).

d. Data Management (e.g., coding, missing data, data entry, handling outliers, ensuring backup and security of data).

e. Planned or Completed Statistical Analysis.

5. Results (for your final dissertation), including all basic/ demographic data first organized by specific goals/hypotheses/ objectives and then exploratory goals of the dissertation.

6. Discussion (for your final dissertation), including summary of important findings, integration of your findings with prior research, inferences from your findings, limitations to internal and external validity, recommendations for future research. Sometimes a Potential Problems and Proposed Solutions are included in the Discussion or in a separate section.

7. References (for your final dissertation; after Methods for your proposal; include them with the Introduction if you submitted it separately to your advisor for review).

8. Some dissertations will include pilot studies, which can be included in various sections, at the discretion of the advisor.

9. Appendices (e.g., copies of assessment instruments, interview protocols, informed consent forms, instructions to participants/

156 Preparing and Presenting Written Sections

Often, there are special clerical staff who closely examine submitted theses and dissertations submitted and will return those that violate any of the university’s guidelines, thereby interrupting your post-dissertation cele-brations.

Title Page

The Title Page (an example is shown in Box 12.2) might include the names of committee members, a formal statement such as “A dissertation sub-mitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of a Doctor of Philosophy or Master of Arts/Science at …” sometimes key words, acknowledgments (included in the final version, usually following the Title Page), and contact information. Another reminder—check the requirements for a title page by your institution because they may require a standard format for the title page as well as other aspects of the document. Usually, everything in a dissertation is double spaced, including the title page.

research assistants, training manuals, web designs, specifics of equipment, timelines, and flow charts; the Appendices will follow the References in your final dissertation).

Box 12.2 Possible Format for a Dissertation Title Page

Title of Dissertation

Formal description consistent with your university’s guidelines (e.g., A dissertation submitted to the graduate division of the University of … in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy in

Psychology Date

Your name and degree (e.g., BA, MA, or MS) Dissertation Committee:

(each person with their degree listed, with chairperson listed first with “Chairperson” or “Chair” indicated)

Optional: Key Words

Preparing and Presenting Written Sections 157

Key Words

Key words (actually, key words and phrases) are sometimes part of dis-sertations and are always part of journal articles. As with the abstract, key words serve to summarize and give readers an introduction to the major focus, concepts, and sometimes methods in your dissertation. After fin-ishing your dissertation, you want to attract potential readers and they often select articles on the basis of key words when using search engines and indexing services. Make this section brief and choose carefully key words that are most likely to generate interest in your dissertation. Most journals have a maximum limit of key words; many APA journals have a limit of five key words or phrases.

Which Key Words? Consider your audience when choosing key words. Which key words are likely to generate attention from your target audi-ence? Which key words appear in articles similar to your dissertation? Esoteric words and phrases are unlikely to be selected by users of search engines, so yours should be precisely phrased and commonly used. Can you include key words that also appear in your title and abstract? Some journals advise against this, but remember that some users of PsycNET, for example, select titles, abstract, or key words when searching for relevant articles (of course, it is possible to select all three for a search).

Abstract

The abstract has several purposes. The main purpose is to give readers a concise overview of the focus, background, methods, results, and conclu-sions of your study. For your committee, the abstract primes them for the information to be presented in your full dissertation. It is a summary of major aspects of your study and is the only major section that appears before the Table of Contents. It is one of the most important parts of your dis-sertation and must be constructed carefully.

Words and phrases in the abstract also enable those searching for articles on your topic (e.g., PsycNET, PUBMED, Dissertation Abstracts International) to locate your article, so be sure to include critical key words and important phrases. When published, an informative and well-written abstract increases the chance that a reader will want to view the entire document. Although your full dissertation and published articles are often not freely available, most publishers allow the general public to view abstracts, hoping to attract viewers to the full document.

The Abstract should parsimoniously introduce the topic; summarize the purpose, underlying concepts, and background research; present the specific goals or hypotheses and methods; and, for the final version, include a sum-mary of important results and their implications. Abstracts for dissertation proposals are considered “descriptive,” whereas abstracts for your final dis-sertation are often considered “informative.” There are thousands of examples


of informative abstracts in APA psychology journals. Do a web search for publications on your topic and examine how these abstracts are constructed.

It is important that the abstract be precisely written, cover the most im-portant aspects of your dissertation, and be readable by your target audience. Similar to our advocacy of striving for PPP in your writing, the APA Publication Manual suggests that the abstract be accurate, self-contained, concise, specific, nonevaluative, coherent, and readable. Achieving these goals can be difficult, given all the material that must be covered in one paragraph with a limited number of words allowed. To achieve the purposes of an abstract, it will be necessary to repeatedly review and refine it.

The exact format and information to be presented in an abstract will vary, depending on whether the dissertation is an empirical group study, a single-case design, a meta-analysis, or a theoretical or review article. These differing formats are described in the APA Publication Manual. The format of your abstract will also depend on the style requirements at your uni-versity. Should your abstract have subheadings (e.g., Introduction, Methods, Results, Conclusion)? Check with your advisor and university guidelines. Some journals use subheadings and others do not.

Although it is the first major section in your dissertation, it should be the last to be written. It cannot be accurately constructed until you have finished your literature review, defined your specific goals or hypotheses, selected your methods, and, in the case of your final dissertation, completed your analyses and discussion. Box 12.3 provides tips for writing your abstract.

Table of Contents

The Table of Contents (TOC, sometimes titled “Contents”) usually comes after the abstract and should be sufficiently specific to help readers locate the pages associated with major topics. It often includes a “List of Tables, Figures, and Appendices” in the same format. The typical format for a table of contents is shown in Box 12.4 but can vary across universities and dis-sertation advisors. All dissertation TOCs include major section titles (Introduction, Methods) and it is helpful to readers to indicate in the TOC all major subheadings (e.g., Subjects/Participants, Measures), and some-times lower-level subheadings. Because universities and advisors differ in the degree to which the table of contents lists subheadings within major sections, as always it is best to check.

Often, you will change the titles of sections and subsections as you write and edit your dissertation. Box 12.5 shows how to automatically create a table of contents in Word that will be updated automatically as you modify the section titles. The sample process for developing a TOC described in Box 12.5 works for the 2020 version of Word (v. 16.34) but varies somewhat across other versions of Word. You can use the Help function of Word (search “insert a table of contents”) which will guide you step-by-step through the process.


Introduction/Literature Review

Some programs, universities, and dissertation advisors recommend a short (e.g., eight pages) introduction, similar to the introductions of manuscripts submitted to many journals; others recommend a more extensive literature review, closer in length to a review article in Psychological Bulletin. One of us ( JH) recently reviewed the dissertations published in his clinical psychology program over the past 15 years: the mean length of the introduction was about 31 pages, but the range was from 6 pages to 75 pages. Of course, by

Box 12.3 Tips for Writing an Abstract

1. Follow the guidelines for writing presented in Chapter 6. 2. Avoid noninformative phrases such as “The implications of the

results are discussed.” 3. Define all abbreviations. 4. Spell out names of assessment instruments and any acronyms. 5. Don’t repeat the title. 6. Include only the most important findings. 7. Do not quote from the document. 8. Be brief yet comprehensive. 9. Make the first sentence powerful.

10. Use direct, active sentence structures rather than indirect, passive sentence structures.

11. Avoid first-person (I, we) pronouns. 12. Write objectively and don’t evaluate your findings. Avoid

adjectives and adverbs such as “surprisingly,” “consistent with predictions,” “important,” and “strong.”

13. Abide by word-count guidelines at your institution. Universities (and most journals) usually have a maximum word count for an abstract and will count your words and return it to you if you violate those guidelines.

14. Structure the abstract to correspond to the sections of your dissertation: introduction, specific goals, methods, results, discussion.

15. Ensure that the abstract is accurate. Several studies have found that some abstracts report information that does not appear in the body of the paper or inaccurately report the findings (see Wikipedia-Abstracts for an overview of this topic).

16. Write for your audience. Your first audience will be your dissertation committee. Your audience may change if you later decide to publish all or parts of your dissertation.


now you know to check with your advisor and university guidelines for dissertations. In this section, we remind you again (see Chapters 5 and 6) about how to write well and organize your literature review. We also re-iterate strategies for reporting the methods and results of studies in your literature review.

Hints for Writing Well. Recall from Chapter 6 the recommendations for writing the Introduction:

a. Strive for parsimony and power in your writing. b. Emphasize articles that are relevant to your dissertation and

deemphasize those that are not. c. Do not simply report results of empirical studies but critique the methods

used in articles that you cite and tie the critiques to your dissertation. d. Write in a sequential, logical, linear, nontangential, well-organized,

and parsimonious manner.

Box 12.4 Typical Format for a Table of Contents

Table of Contents Key Words (sometimes omitted) ....................................................1 Acknowledgments (sometimes omitted) .........................................2 Abstract (sometimes omitted) .........................................................3 Table of Contents (sometimes omitted)..........................................4 Introduction ...................................................................................5

(subheading)...............................................................................6 Specific Goals, Hypotheses, or Objectives ....................................16 Methods .......................................................................................17

(subheading).............................................................................18 (subheading) ........................................................................19

Results .........................................................................................25 (subheading).............................................................................26 (subheading).............................................................................28

Discussion ....................................................................................35 (Subheading) ............................................................................36

References....................................................................................45 List of Tables and Figures

Table 1.........................................................................................50 Figure 1........................................................................................53

Appendices Appendix 1 ..................................................................................56


e. Include subheadings and provide summary paragraphs at the end of each major section.

Of course, as with all aspects of your dissertation, it is best to have your introduction read, edited, and constructively critiqued by one or more peers.

Reporting the Results of Previously Published Articles. When reporting on research studies, we strongly recommend that you include the effect sizes (there are scores of different effect size measures, depending on the type of statistics that are used) of important studies (and, ideally, their confidence intervals) in addition to significance levels. This recommendation is con-sistent with many research guidelines and it is becoming increasingly required that these statistics are reported in journal articles. As you know from your statistics courses, significance levels are affected by sample size, so the strength of effect is an important consideration in interpreting a study’s results.

Remember also to provide specific results from important studies rather than simply your evaluation of the results. For example, rather than noting that a “strong” correlation was obtained between two variables, report the cor-relation coefficient and let the reader decide if that level of correlation is “strong.” In other places, data on means or between-group differences, in

Box 12.5 How to Create and Automatically Update a Table of Contents (TOC) in Word (2020, version 16.34)

1. Open your dissertation in Word. 2. Select a heading you want included in the TOC (you must select

one heading at a time and assign a style to it.) 3. Select Home at the top left of your document and then go to

Styles. 4. Choose the Heading level you want for that heading (e.g., 1, 2, 3).

The “Headings” list is about half way across the page in blue. 5. Click where you want the TOC inserted. Remember, it should

be on a separate page. 6. Click References at the top of the document. 7. Select Table of Contents from the list. The TOC will be

automatically created, based on the Heading Styles you have selected.

8. If you make changes in your TOC, select Update Table in References and they will be automatically changed in your TOC.


addition to indices of statistical significance, can help a reader understand the magnitude of differences or the strength of effects.

People often evaluate the strength of effects on the basis of traditional standards such as Cohen’s, but these standards are qualitative judgments and there is no empirical basis for assuming that an effect size of 0.4 (e.g., d, r, eta), for example, is a medium, moderate, weak, or strong effect. It really depends on the research context, as even a small effect size can represent a strong effect if the effect in question is highly valued (e.g., a small reduction in the number of heart attacks, at the population level, due to lifestyle changes).

Reporting Psychometric Evidence. Remember from Chapter 10 that psy-chometric evidence pertains to measures (or “scores”), not to the instru-ments themselves and can vary across assessment contexts, dimensions of evidence, and populations. Some instruments provide multiple measures that can differ in reliability or validity evidence. The measures that are used in empirical studies can strongly affect their findings and the confidence that can be placed in those findings.

Keep in mind the conditional and dynamic nature of psychometric evidence when discussing previously published results on the psychometric evaluation of a measure. Judgments about the psychometric characteristics of an instrument (more specifically, of the measures obtained from an instrument) are always conditional and should be reported precisely. By “conditional” we mean that the psychometric evidence for a measure can vary, depending on the sample composition (e.g., eth-nicity, sex, socioeconomic level, age), the measures used to gather the evidence, the type of validity evidence (e.g., content, discriminant), and other aspects of the psychometric evaluation such as the context of the research study.

Remember also that psychometric characteristics are dynamic and are not a stable trait of a measure—past evidence supporting the validity of a measure does not necessarily mean that the instrument will provide valid measures in your study. When providing supporting evidence for your measures in your literature review or Methods section, use the past tense and, when feasible, describe the characteristics of the psychometric study, especially sample composition and measures used to collect va-lidity evidence. (see the extended discussion of this topic in Haynes et al., 2019).

For example, a nonspecific statement such as “In a study by Abbott and Chaplin (2019), x was found to be significantly correlated with y,” should be replaced by more specific and informative statements such as “In a study by Abbott and Chaplin (2019) on the evidence for convergent validity of x, x and y were found to be significantly correlated (r = 0.42), in a sample of 212 mostly White middle-class adolescents” or, “in samples of adolescents, correlations between x and y have ranged between r = 0.29 and r = 0.51 (Abbott & Chaplin, 2019; Keaton, 2008; Lloyd & Costello, 2004).”

Summary statements of psychometric evidence for a measure are warranted only when the measure has been repeatedly subjected to independent psychometric evaluations (e.g., some MMPI scale scores or the Beck Depression Inventory, with some populations). If at all possible, it is best to refer to the results of meta-analytic evaluations when


making such summary statements. These are often called reliability general-ization studies, validity generalization studies, or meta-analytic evaluations of an instrument (e.g., Barker & Hunsley, 2014; Therrien & Hunsley, 2013). Global statements such as “The Pain Scale has been found to be a reliable and valid measure” are unwarranted because they do not reflect the possible differences in psychometric evidence for a measure across dimensions of individual dif-ference (such as sex, age, sexual orientation, economic status, race, and eth-nicity) and the conditions of the assessment. Further, they do not describe which of the various dimensions of reliability and validity were examined.

As defined in the Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing (American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education, 2014), validity refers to the degree to which a measure accurately reflects the construct being measured and the social consequences of any judgments or decisions based on the measure. There are multiple dimensions of validity evidence that contribute to this concept of validity and they are often in-correctly cited, even by experienced researchers. Box 12.6 provides brief definitions of a few psychometric terms, abbreviated from Scientific Foundations of Clinical Assessment (Haynes et al., 2019).

Specific Goals, Hypotheses, or Objectives

Writing suggestions were discussed in the Specific Goals and Hypotheses section of Chapter 7 (pages 93–96). Rather than simply repeat the information here, we encourage you to return to these pages for guidance.

Methods

To succinctly summarize: every detail of your methods should be described. You should provide readers with specific details about your recruitment strate-gies, informed consent forms and strategies for obtaining informed consent, the type and content of any contact with participants, the scripts used in phone interviews, detailed descriptions of instrumentation, copies of as-sessment instruments, instructions to participants, websites used for the collection of data, flow charts for the procedures, manipulations to which participants will be or were exposed, methods of handling problems during the research, any debriefing you provided to participants, and a statement about IRB approval of your study. This is especially important at the pro-posal stage in order to reduce the chance of errors in your methods that would impair the conduct of your study or the interpretation of your results.

Recall that in considering the optimal degree of specification of your methods, adhere to the principle of “replicability.” Another researcher should be able to read your Methods section and be able to exactly replicate your study. Because of space limitations, this level of specificity will not be


allowed when submitting your research for publication but your contact information will be available on the article for those who want more in-formation and many journals allow for “Supplementary Material” to be available on their website.

Sometimes, small details (e.g., minute-by-minute description of an intervention session, precise electrode placement and attachment methods, laboratory preparation procedures, detailed equipment de-scriptions, animal feeding schedules, specific interview queries) can be

Box 12.6 Brief Definitions of Dimensions of Validity

Validity, concurrent: The degree to which multiple measures of the same construct obtained on the same assessment occasion are correlated.

Validity, construct: The evidence and rationales supporting the trustworthiness of a measure interpretation in terms of explanatory concepts that account for both the obtained data and relations with other variables; inferred broadly on the basis of data from multiple dimensions of reliability and validity.

Validity, content: The degree to which the elements of an assessment instrument are relevant to and representative of the targeted construct for a particular assessment purpose.

Validity, convergent: The degree to which a measure is coherently related to other measures of the same construct as well as to other measures to which it is expected, on theoretical grounds, to be related.

Validity, criterion-referenced (criterion-related validity; cri-terion validity): The degree to which a measure correlates with measures from previously validated instruments that measure the same phenomena of interest or with non-test criteria of practical value.

Validity, discriminant (divergent): (a) The degree to which a measure is not unduly related to measures of other constructs, (b) The degree to which a measure is distinct from measures of dissimilar constructs.

Validity, discriminative: The degree to which a measures can differentiate individuals in groups, formed from independent criteria, known to vary on the measured construct.

Validity, incremental: The degree to which a measure explains or predicts some phenomena of interest, relative to another measure.

Validity, predictive (predictive efficacy): The degree to which a measure can predict another measure, usually taken at a later time.


presented in appendices, and it is usually okay to refer to these appendices in your Methods section. (For example, you could include the statement, “For a more detailed description of electrode placement, see Appendix G.”).

Sometimes, as you progress with your research, the methods you finally implement will differ from the methods approved at your initial proposal meeting. Perhaps the sample size was reduced, recruitment procedures were changed to encourage more volunteers, data were aggregated differently, or equipment was changed. In these cases, modify the Methods section for your final dissertation document to reflect these changes. Remember that major changes in your methods must be approved by your advisor, com-mittee, and institutional review board when they affect your interactions with participants. Finally, don’t forget to change the verb tense in de-scribing your methods, from the future tense in the proposal to the past tense in the final dissertation.

As we noted earlier, we presume at this stage of your graduate training that you are well-versed in methods of psychological research. In Chapter 10 we discussed some basic principles of research methods and designs but did not cover the many aspects of research design that have been covered in your graduate courses. Additional resources on research design can be found in Single-Case and Time-Series Research Designs and Analyses and Qualitative Research Strategies at the end of Chapter 10. Your advisor can also point you to books and articles that are especially pertinent to your study.

Participants. As we noted in Chapter 10, the primary goal of the Participants section is to strengthen inferences about the internal validity and generalizability of the results. In writing your Participants section, describe the characteristics of the participants that make them appropriate for the goals of your study and for the inferences that you want to derive. Clearly describe the inclusion and exclusion criteria that will be (or were) implemented. Box 12.7 provides a list of the issues to which you need to attend.

Measures, Measurement Strategies, and Instruments

Consistent with our emphasis in previous sections of this book, it is im-portant to present the psychometric evidence to support each measure used in your dissertation. The goal for presenting these data is to increase confidence in the validity of the findings from your dissertation. You want the readers to know that you are using the most appropriately validated measures of the targeted constructs for the population you are studying. Given the thou-sands of articles on the psychometric characteristics of measures, excellent sources that summarize this research are books by Geisinger (2013) and Hunsley and Mash (2018). Also consider review articles that are sometimes published in Clinical Psychology Review, Psychological Assessment, and Psychological Bulletin.


Your “Measurement” subsection should include a summary of relevant research on the psychometric evidence for all measures used in your dissertation, organized by their targeted construct. (In some cases, some of this information would have been presented in the Literature Review and can be briefly summarized here.) For example, you could describe several instruments and the measures derived from those instruments under subheadings such as “Dyadic Conflict,” “Expressed Emotion,” or “Aggressive Behavior.” When presenting psy-chometric evidence for your measures, recall the importance of accurately depicting its conditional nature. Although not possible in your proposal, the final version should include the actual reliability estimates you obtained from measures with your sample(s).

Recall that the most useful psychometric evidence for a measure will vary across measurement methods and its purpose in your dissertation. For example, between-observer kappa-based agreement evidence is useful for evalu-ating the reliability of observation data; convergent and discriminant validity evidence is useful when a measure targets a particular construct that could overlap with other constructs; the results of factor analytic studies are useful when you intend to use several scale scores from an instrument; temporal consistency indices are useful when the measure targets a construct that should be invariable over time; predictive efficacy and between-rater agreement evidence is useful if your research involves

Box 12.7 Include the Following Information About Participants in Your Dissertation

• Recruitment strategies (e.g., methods, location, by whom) • Inclusion and exclusion criteria and how they were measured • Number of participants:

For the proposal, the number needed given expected effect sizes For the final document, the number that you contacted or screened and

the number who eventually participated For the final document, the number that began the research, the

number that completed (e.g., finished vs. dropped out during a treatment outcome study), and important comparative data for the two groups (e.g., sex, age, severity, diagnosis, location)

• The timeline for recruitment • Important characteristics of the final sample (e.g., age, gender,

ethnicity, severity, scores on major instruments), especially characteristics that might be associated with your outcome measures

• Differences between the intended and obtained characteristics of the final sample


diagnosis or classification of participants. Given the diversity of psy-chometric evidence, it is never appropriate to provide general, non-specific statements such as “The Global Index of Psychological Adjustment has been found to be valid ….” You should report psy-chometric evidence that is specific to your application of the measure and conducted with samples similar to yours.

There is a long-standing concern about the extent to which students are sufficiently exposed to measurement issues in their undergraduate courses (e.g., Dahlman & Geisinger, 2015). So, if you believe you need to expand your knowledge of measurement issues, we encourage you to consult with experts in your graduate program (including, but not only, your advisor) and to delve into the literature on psychology measurement (such as sources we provided in the Resources in Chapter 10).

Data Management

The Data Management section informs the reader of your proposal and final dissertation about the origin and meaning of your measures. This section should include specific information about how you plan to acquire the data that will be used in your statistical analyses. You must explain how you obtain every piece of data and its meaning. How are means, individual values, scale and factor scores, ethnicity categories, latency measures, ag-gregated and composite measures, income level categories, area-under-the- curve measures, peak values, and change scores obtained? How are you going to derive each of the measures, including predictors, covariates, mediators, moderators, and ultimate and intermediate outcome measures, that are included in your analyses? For example, you may aggregate several measures into a composite measure, calculate means or medians, convert time-series observation measures to rates, use selected subscales from an instrument, transform your data using the logarithm function, or select maximum or minimum values. In order to interpret your results, the reader should know exactly how each measure is derived. In this section you should also explain how you handled, or will handle, outliers or missing values in your data set.

There are many strategies for reducing the likelihood of potential measurement problems and dealing with them if they occur, depending on the variables being measured, measures obtained, sample composition and size, and type of statistical analysis. Missing values can be particularly problematic. Most statistical analysis software programs, many chapters in statistics books, journal articles, and some entire books discuss the inferential problems, sources, and strategies such as imputation, interpolation, and partial imputation as strategies for dealing with missing values.

All strategies of handling missing data affect your results and confidence in your results, because it can be difficult to ascertain the degree to which


missing values bias your findings. Of course, the best strategy is prevention. In consultation with your advisor, design your methods to minimize the likelihood of data collection errors, missing items on a test, equipment malfunction, investigator/experimenter errors, no-shows by recruited participants, dropouts in a longitudinal study, and noncompliance with assessment protocols.

Statistical Analyses

We noted in Chapter 10 that statistical analysis is often a separate section in a proposal Methods section, right before your Results, but sometimes it is in-tegrated within the Results section in a final draft, depending on its com-plexity. Data analytic strategies are often presented before the results when unfamiliar or elaborate statistical analyses are used. In that case, an outline of the data analytic strategies that you used (or plan to use in the case of a dissertation proposal), and references for follow-up, can be helpful to readers.

Regardless of its position in your dissertation, carefully tie your analyses to the specific goals or hypotheses of your dissertation. A reader should have a clear idea of the analytic strategy you have employed, or will employ in the case of a prospectus, to address your goals and hypotheses. There is no general guidance that we can provide about what analyses you should conduct, as decisions around data-analytic strategies must be based on the nature of your research and the state of knowledge in your research area. Although departmental statistical consultants can provide valuable information on how to actually conduct specific analyses, as with most things, make sure to discuss with your advisor the type of analyses that best fit your research design and hypotheses.

Reporting statistics in your literature review and in your Results section, in APA style, can also be a challenge. Several websites summarize the ways in which different statistics (e.g., correlations, t-tests) should be reported. For well-organized examples of the formats for reporting various statistics, see

https://depts.washington.edu/psych/files/writing_center/stats.pdf from the University of Washington; http://my.ilstu.edu/~mshesso/apa_stats.htm from Illinois State University.

Results

This section is where your careful research comes to fruition—you uncover important previously undiscovered effects or functional relations that will redefine your field of study and slide you into guest spots on late-night talk shows … or not, and your results merely help you obtain your doctorate.

The most challenging aspects of your results section are organization and clarity. First, apply the writing tips from the previous chapters and keep striving for PPP—precision, parsimony, and power. To present your results in an organized manner, refer to your Goals or Hypotheses section and


https://depts.washington.edu

http://my.ilstu.edu

present your findings in a linear manner that matches the linear sequence of your specific goals or hypotheses statements. What you really want to avoid is a jarring experience for a reader who is expecting to see you follow the same se-quence you used in an earlier part of your dissertation. Use Goal- or Hypotheses-related subheadings to aid with this.

First, present the data that form the bases for any statistical analysis you conducted. For example, if you intend to present a table of correlations among variables, the means and standard deviations of the measures that you are correlating should be presented first, for the total sample and any relevant subsamples. If you are going to report the results from multivariate hierarchical linear regression ana-lyses, first present the bivariate correlations upon which they are based. If you are going to report on interrupted time-series analyses, first present, or illustrate, the time-course of the measures across conditions. Box 12.8 offers suggestions for making your Results section meaningful and organized.

Box 12.8 Guidelines to Avoid Common Errors in the Results Section

• Use goal-related subheadings rather than statistical-related subheadings. For example, use the “Between-Group Comparisons on Measures of X and Y” rather than “Analysis of Variance” subheading.

• Use short introductory sentences at the beginning of each subheading to remind readers of your intent with the analyses, especially if you are presenting results from several analyses (e.g., “The goal of this set of analyses was to examine …”).

• Don’t discuss, judge, evaluate, or interpret the results of your data analyses (such as labeling some findings as “strong” or “approaching significance,” or using adverbs such as “surprisingly”).

• Don’t redundantly present data in your text that is included in your tables (although pointing out in the text important findings that are included in a table can be acceptable).

• Don’t forget to report data on effect sizes in addition to statistical significance (although some research disciplines in psychology do not emphasize effect size).

• Don’t confuse supplementary analyses with your primary analyses. First present the primary analyses that specifically address your goals. Then you can present supplementary analyses, appropriately labeled as such, that were suggested by your committee members after your proposal meeting, or suggested by the results of your primary analyses.

• Follow APA guidelines for constructing tables and figures and reporting the results of statistical analyses. Remember that tables and figures should be interpretable independently from the text.


Closely follow APA standards for reporting the results of your statistical analyses, and for constructing your tables and figures (see sources of in-formation in Resources at the end of this chapter). Remember to be sure that every variable, measure, acronym, score, and direction of relation is defined. All tables and figures should be independently interpretable without requiring a reader to consult the text. Use the editorial review strategy that we have often suggested—scrutinize your table and figure as if you were really smart but unknowledgeable in this area of research, and ask others to do the same. The question you need to ask about each table and figure is whether it is understandable independent of the text.

In some universities, most dissertations involve multiple studies, some of which may have already been published. In these cases, the final dissertation often includes reproductions of the published study. What should you do if your dissertation includes multiple unpublished studies? After your initial Introduction and Methods sections, describe each study independently. The outline for a multiple dissertation would look something like what we present in Box 12.9.

The APA Publication Manual (https://apastyle.apa.org/6th-edition- resources/sample-experiment-paper-2.pdf ) gives some guidance on re-porting multiple studies. At the time of the writing of this book, this was the most recent web page available (i.e., no similar page was available for the seventh edition of the Publication Manual).

Discussion

Your Discussion section is your chance to summarize your major findings, integrate them with the findings from other articles, articulate the con-tributions of your findings to the area of research, acknowledge limitations of your research and their implications, point out methodological con-straints and errors, and suggest future studies. The Discussion section can be particularly challenging to write if many of your findings suggest non-significant relations or ineffective manipulations. Even then, remember that there may be important inferences associated with nonsignificant findings.

The recommendations for writing in Chapter 5 “How to Conduct and Organize Your Literature Review” and Chapter 6 “How to Write Your Dissertation Competently and Efficiently” also apply to the Discussion sec-tion. To briefly review these recommendations: (a) strive for PPP in your writing, (b) make an outline and work from it, (c) use subheadings, (d) carefully construct your paragraphs, (e) discuss one major idea per paragraph, (f ) keep sentences and paragraphs in logical sequence, (g) include transition phrases and sentences, (h) avoid sentence and paragraph non sequiturs, (i) have your writing reviewed and constructively critiqued, and ( j) follow our recommendations for presenting the results of previous research.

The outline and sequence of topics for your Discussion section is


https://apastyle.apa.org

https://apastyle.apa.org

Box 12.9 Typical Format for a Dissertation That Involves Multiple Studies

Table of Contents

Key Words (sometimes omitted) ....................................................1 Acknowledgments (sometimes omitted) .........................................2 Abstract (sometimes omitted) .........................................................3 Table of Contents (sometimes omitted)..........................................4 Introduction ...................................................................................5

(subheading) ...........................................................................6 Specific Goals, Hypotheses, or Objectives ....................................16 General Methods (this section may or may not be necessary).......... 17

(subheading) .........................................................................18 (subheading) .........................................................................19

Study 1 Introduction .................................................................................21

(subheading) .........................................................................24 Specific Goals, Hypotheses, or Objectives ....................................27 Methods .......................................................................................28


Results .........................................................................................38 (subheading) .........................................................................41 (subheading) .........................................................................43

Discussion ....................................................................................45 (Subheading) ........................................................................48

Study 2 Introduction .................................................................................57

(subheading) .........................................................................61 Specific Goals, Hypotheses, or Objectives ....................................65 Methods .......................................................................................67


Results .........................................................................................75 (subheading) .........................................................................78 (subheading) .........................................................................84

Discussion ....................................................................................88 (Subheading) ........................................................................93

General Discussion .......................................................................99 References.................................................................................. 111


particularly important. In Box 12.10 we present a common sequence you will often see for this section.

Given what we just described, it is hardly surprising that there are lots of ways that the writing of this section can go awry. To help you avoid these problems, Box 12.11 highlights common errors made when writing Discussion sections.

Your Discussion should suggest that you are an unbiased and highly skilled clinical, social, and behavioral scientist. Investigator bias is most obvious when you (a) focus on positive, but not negative, results; (b) discuss findings that “approach statistical significance” as if they are statistically significant; (c) don’t acknowledge methodological limitations of your research and their implications; (d) don’t acknowledge restraints on the generalization of your

Tables and Figures Table 1 .................................................................................. 132 Figure 1 ................................................................................. 133

Appendices Appendix 1 ........................................................................... 134

Box 12.10 How to Structure Your Discussion Section

1. Begin with a brief summary (i.e., one to two paragraphs) of your goals, methods, and major findings.

2. Discuss your findings in the same sequence as in your Goals and Results sections. For each section of your major findings, in sequence, present a summary of the results and then interpret them. Be careful not to over-interpret them or insert your confirmatory biases into the interpretations.

3. Integrate your findings with those from other studies. 4. Offer your erudite insights and judgments based on these data. 5. After you have summarized and commented on your findings,

acknowledge methodological limitations and how they affect your inferences. Limitations could be associated with your sample; the composition of your sample (such as age, sex, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, animal strain); measures, measurement instruments, and measurement strategies (such as using a monomethod measurement strategy, insufficiently validated measures); an insufficient number of time samples; a high dropout rate; equipment problems; a weak manipulation effect; or alternative hypotheses or variables that were not investigated.

6. In the context of your study, discuss future directions for research in this field.


results; (e) use superlative adjectives in discussing your results; and (f) petu-lantly criticize the work of others who reported different results or whose research methods were, in your view, inferior to yours.

“Future studies” or “future directions” is usually a short subsection in the Discussion section whose content should be obvious from the preceding sections of the dissertation. This subsection often includes recommended

Box 12.11 To Avoid Common Errors in Your Discussion Section, Do Not:

• Fail to integrate recently published studies (especially those published since your proposal meeting).

• Rely solely on statistical significance when interpreting your results. Also consider the strength of the effects you obtained.

• Allow the Discussion to be disorganized. Keep the Discussion section well-organized and linear, with one major idea per paragraph.

• Minimize the methodological limitations of your research. • Let “investigator bias creep” diminish the scholarly ambiance of

your discussion. • Overemphasize positive results and underemphasize negative

results. • Discuss statistically nonsignificant results as if they were

statistically significant. • Confuse a measure of a phenomenon with the phenomenon

itself. Because all measures include error, they are fallible estimates of a phenomenon. Use language such as “A composite measure of Y based upon observational data was found to be significantly correlated with a self-report measure of Y”—more words, less parsimonious, but more accurate, and this specificity of wording reflects well on your psychological science orientation.

• Underemphasize the strength of the relations found in your study by overemphasizing statistical significance. Indices of statistical significance are useful, but they are not a direct measure of the strength of effect, or the effect size, of the relation. Stated differently, don’t overinterpret findings that are statistically significant but less meaningful in terms of variance that is accounted for in the targeted phenomenon.

• Fail to acknowledge findings from other studies that differ from yours.


studies that do not share your methodological limitations, extend your findings to other populations, provide additional tests of your goals and hypotheses, focus on new variables or measures, consider moderating and mediating variables, or apply your findings in a different way.

Appendices

Recall that an important goal of a thesis or dissertation proposal is to carefully delineate your methods and reduce the chance of methodological errors in your research. To that end, every instrument, measure, letter to participants, recruitment poster, phone call format, informed consent form, experimental and laboratory procedure, and formula should be included as an appendix, lettered in the order in which they appear in the text. Of course, important aspects of these appendices should also be parsimoniously included in the body of the dissertation. The appendices help readers and committee members to follow your methods, interpret the results in the final document, and facilitate follow-up research by you and others. Appendices are especially important at the proposal stage but should be retained in your final version, when the dissertation is ready for presenta-tion to your committee.

Summary and Recommendations

• Strive for precision, parsimony, and power, and ensure that all sections of your dissertation are well organized.

• Adhere to the guidelines for writing presented in Chapters 5 and 6.

• Adhere to your university’s guidelines for dissertations. • The Abstract summarizes and give readers an introduction to the

major focus and concepts in your dissertation. Write it carefully and consider your target audience when writing your Abstract and Key Words.

• The Abstract should parsimoniously introduce the topic; summarize the purpose, underlying concepts, and background research; present the specific goals or hypotheses and methods; and, for the final version of your thesis/dissertation, include a summary of important results and their implications.

• Make sure that your Table of Contents is complete and accurate. • In your Literature Review provide specific results from important

studies, rather than your evaluation of the results, and don’t forget to include information on the strength of effects found in the literature.


• Psychometric evidence pertains to measures, not instruments, and is multidimensional, conditional, and dynamic.

• Summary statements of psychometric evidence for a measure are warranted only when the measure has been repeatedly subjected to independent psychometric evaluations.

• In constructing your Methods section, adhere to the principle of “replicability.”

• The primary goal of the Participants section is to strengthen inferences about the internal validity and generalizability of your results.

• Present the psychometric evidence to support each measure used in your dissertation.

• If you construct your own assessment instrument, include additional instruments in the dissertation that target the same construct and provide psychometric evidence about the convergent validity of the untested measure.

• You must explain how you obtain every piece of data and its meaning.

• The data analytic strategies you select should be those that are most appropriate for the goals or hypotheses of your dissertation.

• Understand your statistics and their conceptual foundations. • Present your findings in a linear manner that matches the linear

sequence of your specific goals or hypotheses. • Present the data that form the bases for any statistical analysis

you conducted. • Don’t judge, evaluate, or interpret the results of your data

analyses in your Results section. • Report data on effect sizes in addition to statistical significance. • Discuss your findings in the same sequence as in your Goals

and Results sections and integrate your results with those from other studies.

• Maintain an orientation as an unbiased scholar when writing your Discussion.


Resources

References

American Educational Research Association, American Psychological Association, & National Council on Measurement in Education. (2014). Standards for Educational and Psychological Testing. Washington, DC: American Educational Research Association.

American Psychological Association. (2020). Publication manual of the American Psychological Association (7th ed.). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Barker, K. K., & Hunsley, J. (2014). Reliability and validity of the Psychotherapy Supervisor Development Scale: A meta-analytic evaluation. The Clinical Supervisor, 33, 123–143.

Dahlman, K. A., & Geisinger, K. F. (2015). The prevalence of measurement in un-dergraduate psychology curricula across the United States. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology, 1, 189–199.

Therrien, Z., & Hunsley, J. (2013). Assessment of anxiety in older adults: A reliability generalization meta-analysis of commonly used measures. Clinical Gerontologist, 36, 171–194.

Abstracts

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstract_(summary). https://writing.colostate.edu/guides/page.cfm?pageid=1252&guideid=59. https://www.wikihow.com/Write-an-Abstract.

Table of Contents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Table_of_contents. https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/table-of-contents/.


https://en.wikipedia.org

https://writing.colostate.edu

https://www.wikihow.com

https://en.wikipedia.org

https://www.scribbr.com

Documents

12 Preparing and Presenting Written Sections of Your