Instructions on Final Reports

The final research report should consist of the following sections: introduction, literature review, methods, findings/results, discussion, references and appendix. The first draft includes the first three sections (introduction, literature, and methods) and your research instrument (appendix). You must follow the APA style (5th edition) to write your report. Illustrations of the APA style is given below.

The introduction section briefly introduces the research topic under consideration, justifies the significance of the topic, and/or provides a brief overview of the structure of your paper.

The literature review section needs to establish:

a) What past research has found in relation to your research topic.

b) What is the value of your study, i.e., what can your study offer in addition to past findings.

c) In light of past research, what are the key concepts that need to be examined in your study.

d) What is/are your research question(s), or hypothesis/hypotheses.

The method section details the data collection procedures. If you are doing a survey, you need to specify: who are your respondents; how you are going to locate them; and key variables included in the survey. If you are conducting an experiment, you need to include: who are your subjects; experiment conditions; stimuli utilized; and key variables examined.

The results section reports the findings based on your data analysis. It usually consists of two parts: A) a brief overall description of your data: number of respondents, average age, gender distribution, and some other descriptives; B) findings that are related to your hypotheses. Remember, you simply report what you find from your data analyses, never comment on your findings in the results section.

In the discussion section, you should examine the implications of your findings, acknowledge the limitations of your study and point out the directions for future research on your topic.

References must be formatted in APA style (5th edition).

The appendix section is your research instrument. If you are doing a survey or an experiment, this section should inlcude your complete questionnaire.

General Guidelines

The length of your final report should be between 6-8 pages, excluding references and the appendix. You should include at least 10 sources related to your research topic. Among these sources, there should be no more than four Web sources. Journal articles retrieved from the Web are not considered Web sources.