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The sections of the report described in Part 1 of the book are particularly well designed for reporting experiments towards the laboratory end of the spectrum. However, most experiments and other studies involving questionnaires can be written up within this structure with little or no need to modify it. Of course, it is possible to run studies using questionnaires in the laboratory (especially where the questionnaire is complex or lengthy and you want to have your participant’s undivided attention). Nevertheless, more often than not, questionnaire-based studies take place outside the laboratory, often in informal settings where it is harder to control the participant’s attention. To caricature the two extremes:
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The laboratory experiment – this is relatively high on procedure, involving apparatus and perhaps even dramatis personae in the form of confederates or stooges; usually only one or two DVs. |
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The questionnaire study – this is relatively low on procedure, involving no apparatus or dramatis personae, may have several DVs and may also have more than one IV, some of which may not truly be independent variables. It may not even be an experiment at all. (To find out more about variables that are not true IVs see Section 13.8 of the book. You can also find some discussion of this issue in Section F of this Web site). |
This gives the clue as to where the differences lie in reports of these studies. They lie in the section, particularly in the , , and . However, in some cases, the and may also be different. Thus, if you have run a study that primarily involves giving a questionnaire to your participants, your report will:
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probably contain a fairly lengthy , in much of which you describe the contents of the questionnaire |
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probably not have any apparatus to report (unless you used a computer to present the questionnaire) |
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have a pretty short in which you describe the circumstances of questionnaire administration, the script for any face-to-face interaction that took place, and how and when the completed questionnaires were collected. |
Depending on the nature of the questionnaire, it may also:
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have a modified in which you describe the principal DVs, but have no room to describe each DV in detail, |
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contain a fairly lengthy , in which you describe the different sets of data and their analyses. |
The main difference in reports of these types of experiment, therefore, is in the balance of the material in the different sections.
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