Assignent Solutionnurs

Dr. Bob’s Tips on Writing the Final Paper
Because we won’t have a chance to really go over the specifics about how to write the final
paper, I’ve prepared this not-so-brief document to give you advice on what points to cover.
Title Page
By now, you know how to do this. Right?
Abstract
As we said in class, this should be page 2. It should be about 120-150 words in length.
It gives a general summary of the manuscript including (each section of the paper gets its own
sentence): the general purpose of the study, the specific hypothesis tested, the experimental
design and procedure, the general pattern of results (whether the hypotheses were supported or
not), and the conclusions and implications of the findings for the literature. Remember, if
published, this would be the summary that people would see first to decide whether they want to
obtain the full paper. So, it should be fairly descriptive of what the paper looks like.
As I mentioned in class, I find it easiest to make this the last thing I write. In general you
can lift a few sentences from each section of the paper, and re-work them to make sense as a
cohesive paragraph. I suggest checking out a few abstracts from a source like PSYCARTICLES
on the library website or Google Scholar to use as models for this section.
Introduction

This begins with the title of the paper at the top of the page. (There isn’t a formal
“Introduction” heading.) The best approach here is the “funnel” method. Make the first
paragraph a sort of general statement about the broadest aspect of this research. In our case, it
should be about gender roles, gender stereotypes, and expectations in general. (Application to
perceptions of abuse and about children will come later.) Then, you can get into how gender
stereotypes affect our differing perceptions and beliefs about women and men. One thing that’s
particularly relevant is the fact that gender stereotypes can cause us to have different standards
about what’s appropriate and acceptable regarding the sexes.
In the present case, our stimulus persons, Christina and Adam, are presented in such a
way that they are sometimes behaving consistently with traditional sex roles and other times not.
You might describe here the general expectations of men and women based on society’s
understanding of sex roles, and cite an article or two as evidence. You can then focus on these
expectations and how they apply to aggressive behavior. For example, a traditional expectation
is that men will be more aggressive (and violent) toward women than women will be toward
men. (You should search out an article or two that documents the different expectations of male
and female aggressive behavior.)
Now you are set up to pose a possibility to the reader. Specifically, you can state that the
different expectations of women and men concerning aggression may also apply to expectations
about abusive behavior in romantic relationships. You then can cite a study or two suggesting
that women and men are expected to be different in the roles they play in abusive relationships.
It may be the case that women are thought to be more likely to serve as victims while men
expected to be more likely to serve as abusers. You can include studies or perhaps a few crime
statistics to back you up. Just be sure to cite your source(s).
Logically, the next step would be to present the argument that when women and men are
involved in an abusive romantic relationship, gender role expectations may dictate the perceived
acceptability of the abuse. For example, beliefs about traditional sex roles might lead people to
feel that a man (bigger and stronger) hitting a woman (smaller and weaker) is less acceptable
(and more serious) than the reverse scenario. Depending on how much you want to say, you
might also get into issues of justifiability, etc.
Once you have these areas laid out, you can integrate them in the next step as you move
toward a description of the current study. You want to make a case that it would be interesting to
study sex-role stereotypes and expectations in the case of two stimulus persons involved in a
romantic relationship where acts of aggression are carried out. And, that’s what the current
study does. It’s an attempt to determine whether people make gender-based judgments about
others in a romantic relationship where there are indications of abuse. If you can find a previous
study that looks at something similar, this would be the perfect time to cite it.
Once you have established the general hypothesis, you can work in the other two things
the study will look at. First, you want to bring in the idea of different kinds of aggressive
behavior. Using the idea of gender-based expectations, you may want to argue that men might
be expected to be more physically aggressive while women might be more emotionally
aggressive. Thus, the current study will also look at the perceptions of men and women
behaving traditionally vs. when the behaviors are reversed (i.e., men using emotional aggression
vs. women using physical aggression). Again, if you find any studies that have looked at
something similar, cite them here.
Now you can introduce the other issue in our study, namely the presence of a child as the
abuse takes place. Does having a couple’s child witness an act of aggression between her mother
and father make a difference in how acceptable the act is perceived to be? This is particularly
important in understanding how outside observers will see the couple and their future. Is a child
harmed by seeing her parents abuse each other? How might the presence of a child during an
abusive act affect the perception of traditional vs. non-traditional gender role behavior? Does the
presence of a child have an impact on perceptions of women as physically aggressive or men as
emotionally aggressive? Any relevant studies you can dig up may prove useful.
Next, you should give a general description of what the current study is trying to do.
Don’t talk about Christina or Adam, the specifics of the story, or the specific procedures we
used. Just give a general overview of what the study was about, and how it attempted to address
the points you raised in the previous paragraphs.
Finally, present the different hypotheses you are going to test. Once again, don’t make it
too formal or specific. Just describe what you expected the study to show. For example, will a
female behaving abusively toward a male be perceived as more acceptable or justified than the
reverse? There are several other hypotheses you need to spell out here as well, but I’ll leave it to
you to figure out what they are.
The Intro should be at least 2-3 pages long.
Method
Of all the sections, this one should be easiest to write. You already know what’s required
in the Participants, Materials, and Procedure sections. The only thing new is the Design section.
As I mentioned in class, you need to describe it as a 2 (Male Abuser vs. Female Abuser) X 2
(Physical vs. Emotional Aggression) X 2 (Presence vs. Absence of Child) between-subjects
factorial design.
For the Materials section, don’t tell too much about the story subjects read. You don’t
need to include every detail of the story. Describe the situation generally. For example, you can
state something like, “The couple were going out to dinner to celebrate their wedding
anniversary.” Then describe the sorts of aggressive behavior that occurred on the way to the
restaurant. You don’t need to include an appendix, unless you feel that it’s really necessary. (I
don’t think it is.)
However, be sure to include a general description of the measures used. For example,
you can state that participants were asked to respond to three manipulation checks to verify their
memory of the story. State these precisely as they were written. Then, list off the other
dependent measures (e.g., acceptability of behavior). Note that they were measured on 11-point
Likert-type response scales with endpoints of “0” and “10” labeled appropriately for each
dependent measure. Remember that you don’t need to list off every measure used; just list the
ones to be reported in the Results section.
The order of sections is: Participants; Materials; Design; Procedure.
Results
This is where you describe what was found. The general pattern of description goes
something like this:
–overall mean of each of the dependent measures (the grand mean)
–description of the means when they’re broken down by experimental conditions (cell
means)
–report of F to determine whether each comparison of means is significant
I would use two subheadings: Manipulation Checks, and Tests of Hypotheses
Manipulation Checks: You have three manipulation checks: a crosstab for manipulation
check 1 (B1) and anovas for manipulation checks 2 (B2) and 3 (B3). For the crosstab, you can
simply describe the table (don’t put it in the Tables section!) and give the percent of total
accurate recall of whether the child was present when the abuse occurred.
Next, the anova for manipulation check 2 (B2). Here, all you have to report is whether
the means for each manipulation check are in the predicted direction, and whether there is a
significant difference in means across conditions. I’ll give you this one to use as a model.
“In order to check for the effectiveness of the manipulation, gender of abuser,
participants were asked whether they remembered the aggressive stimulus person as being
female or male. An ANOVA was conducted on participants’ memory for abuser gender. As
expected, analysis demonstrated a main effect for gender of abuser such that participants who
read that it was a male were more likely to remember that a male was indeed the abuser, M=9.12,
SD=2.32, than when they had read about a female abuser, M=0.92, S=2.21, F(1, 238)=785.86,
p<.001.” See? It’s not so bad. You report the means while explaining them, and then give the relevant F value. Now do the same thing for manipulation check 3 (B3). Tests of Hypotheses: Use the same approach for the different measures we looked at, For this section, you can report as many of the dependent measures as you like. However, you MUST report at least these: Acceptable (B12); Deserve (B5); Impact on the Child (B7); Harmful to the Child (B11); Forgive (B15); and Tell a third person (B13). You can also report participants’ willingness to intervene (B23), but it’s optional and I’ll leave this one up to you. Explain that ANOVA was used to examine the effects of the three manipulations, type of relationship, type of abuse, and gender of victim on each dependent measure. If there are any significant effects for any of these dependent measures, report them in the same way as you did for the manipulation checks, and interpret the direction of difference between means. Make sure to also report any marginal interactions, p<.10. Remember that all interactions should be presented as Table # in the back of the paper. Be sure to report any significant main effects along with the relevant means in the text of the paper. Again, make sure you interpret what each effect means. Tables are a pain. Don’t try to type them out. Hand- drawn tables are acceptable. Regardless of what else comes out, you must report at least one interaction in a Table. This may be the interaction for Forgive (B15) among others. This is a main dependent measure of the study and needs to be reported regardless of whether or not it’s significant. Refer the reader to Table # in the Results and report the F’s. Be sure to interpret the direction of difference between means. Look carefully at each Table you report. What do the means tell you about what S’s saw as more or less forgivable: Christina or Adam as abuser, and physical or emotional abuse, and the presence or absence of their child? Discussion Remember, you’re using a “reverse funnel” here. Begin with the specific hypotheses and become more general about the literature as you progress through the Discussion section. You’re now in a position to figure out whether the hypotheses in the Introduction section were supported or not. Begin with a paragraph or two generally summarizing the results. Don’t talk about significance or statistics or tables in the Discussion. Just give a broad sense to the reader about the pattern of results found. Next, you need to talk about why each finding came out as it did. First, point out that all three of the manipulations were effective. Then, describe the findings for several of the main dependent measures (e.g., Victim Should Forgive). Then, describe the findings for the other measures that showed significant differences between conditions. Then, focus on theoretical explanations and talk about what our findings might say about the general research on expectations and perceptions about gender and abuse/aggression. Then, you can discuss gender stereotypes and the issues of perpetrators and victims of abuse. Finally, discuss what these findings say about perceptions of abuse when children are present as witnesses to it. You must cite previous studies and talk about whether our results were consistent or inconsistent with them. (These can be the same studies you mentioned in the Intro.) You’re also in a position to talk about findings that came out differently from the predictions, but were interesting, nonetheless. Why, for example, did subjects think that it was more important for the victim to talk to someone when suffering physical rather than emotional abuse in front of the child? Finally, present the standard things for any Discussion section: study limitations, and future research. Given that there are real-world practical implications of this study, you might also make a recommendation that professionals in the legal and mental health systems need to be careful not to jump to conclusions about possible abuse based only on society’s gender-role expectations. References Look in the APA Publication Guide or the back of the textbook for help. Tables As noted above, these are a pain in the neck. Don’t bother trying to get SPSS to do it. I’ve found that it’s best to hand-draw them out. This is certainly acceptable for this assignment. General note: It would be a good idea to check out the sample papers in the APA Guide, the APA or OWL websites (on Canvas), and the back of the Rosnow & Rosenthal text. Everything you need to do is pretty much covered in those papers. Students in past classes have found the one in the APA Guide to be particularly helpful. I also suggest that you consider finding a brief published paper in an APA journal to use as a model. One place to look for brief articles is Psychology Reports.