{"id":117,"date":"2017-11-16T17:41:57","date_gmt":"2017-11-16T17:41:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-geneseo-psychologyresearchmethods\/chapter\/12-3-expressing-your-results\/"},"modified":"2017-11-16T17:41:57","modified_gmt":"2017-11-16T17:41:57","slug":"12-3-expressing-your-results","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-psychologyresearchmethods\/chapter\/12-3-expressing-your-results\/","title":{"raw":"12.3 Expressing Your Results","rendered":"12.3 Expressing Your Results"},"content":{"raw":"
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Learning Objectives<\/h3>\n
  1. Write out simple descriptive statistics in American Psychological Association (APA) style.<\/li>\n
  2. Interpret and create simple APA-style graphs\u2014including bar graphs, line graphs, and scatterplots.<\/li>\n
  3. Interpret and create simple APA-style tables\u2014including tables of group or condition means and correlation matrixes.<\/li>\n <\/ol><\/div>\n

    Once you have conducted your descriptive statistical analyses, you will need to present them to others. In this section, we focus on presenting descriptive statistical results in writing, in graphs, and in tables\u2014following American Psychological Association (APA) guidelines for written research reports. These principles can be adapted easily to other presentation formats such as posters and slide show presentations.<\/p>\n

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    Presenting Descriptive Statistics in Writing<\/h2>\n

    When you have a small number of results to report, it is often most efficient to write them out. There are a few important APA style guidelines here. First, statistical results are always presented in the form of numerals rather than words and are usually rounded to two decimal places (e.g., \u201c2.00\u201d rather than \u201ctwo\u201d or \u201c2\u201d). They can be presented either in the narrative description of the results or parenthetically\u2014much like reference citations. Here are some examples:<\/p>\n \n The mean age of the participants was 22.43 years with a standard deviation of 2.34.\n <\/span>\n \n Among the low self-esteem participants, those in a negative mood expressed stronger intentions to have unprotected sex (M<\/em> = 4.05, SD<\/em> = 2.32) than those in a positive mood (M<\/em> = 2.15, SD<\/em> = 2.27).\n <\/span>\n \n The treatment group had a mean of 23.40 (SD<\/em> = 9.33), while the control group had a mean of 20.87 (SD<\/em> = 8.45).\n <\/span>\n \n The test-retest correlation was .96.\n <\/span>\n \n There was a moderate negative correlation between the alphabetical position of respondents\u2019 last names and their response time (r<\/em> = \u2212.27).\n <\/span>\n

    Notice that when presented in the narrative, the terms mean<\/em> and standard deviation<\/em> are written out, but when presented parenthetically, the symbols M<\/em> and SD<\/em> are used instead. Notice also that it is especially important to use parallel construction to express similar or comparable results in similar ways. The third example is much<\/em> better than the following nonparallel alternative:<\/p>\n \n The treatment group had a mean of 23.40 (SD<\/em> = 9.33), while 20.87 was the mean of the control group, which had a standard deviation of 8.45.\n <\/span>\n <\/div>\n

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    Presenting Descriptive Statistics in Graphs<\/h2>\n

    When you have a large number of results to report, you can often do it more clearly and efficiently with a graph. When you prepare graphs for an APA-style research report, there are some general guidelines that you should keep in mind. First, the graph should always add important information rather than repeat information that already appears in the text or in a table. (If a graph presents information more clearly or efficiently, then you should keep the graph and eliminate the text or table.) Second, graphs should be as simple as possible. For example, the Publication Manual<\/em> discourages the use of color unless it is absolutely necessary (although color can still be an effective element in posters, slide show presentations, or textbooks.) Third, graphs should be interpretable on their own. A reader should be able to understand the basic result based only on the graph and its caption and should not have to refer to the text for an explanation.<\/p>\n

    There are also several more technical guidelines for graphs that include the following:<\/p>\n