Verywell / Nusha Ashjaee
Psychology papers generally follow a specific structure.
One important section of a paper is known as the results section.
An APA results section of apsychology papersummarizes the data that was collected and the statistical analyses that were performed.
Verywell / Nusha Ashjaee
This section often includes descriptive text, tables, and figures to help summarize the findings.
This article covers how to write an APA results section, including what to include and what to avoid.
It will appear after theintroductionandmethodssections and before the discussion section.
How long should a results section be?
In most cases, this will be the shortest section of your paper.
Be sure to mentionallrelevant information.
Don’t omit findings simply because they failed to support your predictions.
How is the results section different from the discussion section?
The results section provides the results of your study orexperiment.
The goal of the section is to report what happened and the statistical analyses you performed.
Report Your Statistical Findings
Always assume that your readers have a solid understanding of statistical concepts.
There’s no need to explain what a t-test is or how a one-way ANOVA works.
Include Tables and Figures
Your results section should include both text and illustrations.
Presenting data in this way makes it easier for readers to quickly look at your results.
Structure your results section around tables or figures that summarize the results of your statistical analysis.
Next, write the summary text to support your illustrative materials.
Avoid making any claims suggesting that your result “proves” that something is true.
Interpretations
Statistics Without Context
Don’t include statistics without narration.
The results section should not be a numbers dump.
Instead, you should sequentially narrate what these numbers mean.
Raw Data
Don’t include the raw data in the results section.
The results section should be a concise presentation of the results.
If there is raw data that would be useful, include it in theappendix.
Text Alone
Don’t only rely on descriptive text.
Use tables and figures to present these findings when appropriate.
This makes the results section easier to read and can convey a great deal of information quickly.
Repeated Data
Don’t present the same data twice in your illustrative materials.
If you have already presented some data in a table, don’t present it again in a figure.
If you have presented data in a figure, don’t present it again in a table.
All of Your Findings
Don’t feel like you have to include everything.
If data is irrelevant to the research question, don’t include it in the results section.
This section is often the shortest part of your paper, and in most cases, the most clinical.
Be sure not to include any subjective interpretation of the results.
Simply relay the data in the most objective and straightforward way possible.
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2015 Sep;63(9):44-6.
Snyder N, Foltz C, Lendner M, Vaccaro AR.How to write an effective results section.Clin Spine Surg.
Washington DC: The American Psychological Association; 2019.
Purdue Online Writing Lab.APA sample paper: Experimental psychology.
Berkeley University.Reviewing test results.
2013;39(Suppl 1):16-19. doi:10.5152/tud.2013.048
