USING APA STYLE

1
USING APA STYLE
Slides 1-8 of following presentation are adapted
from The Little, Brown Handbook, Ninth Ed.
Research Report with Survey The APA manual
specifies the following outline for the text of a
research report

1. Abstract
2. Introduction
3. Method
4. Results
5. Discussion

2
Research Report with Survey

1. Abstract

a summary (about 100 words) of the subject,
the research method, the findings, and the
conclusions. See Sample here.

1. Introduction

a presentation of the problem researched,
the research method used, the background (other
studies), and the hypothesis tested.

3
Research Report with Survey

1. Methods

a detailed discussion of how the research was
conducted, including a description of the
research subjects, any materials or tools used
(such as surveys or questionnaires), and the
procedure followed.

4
Research Report with Survey
a summary of the data collected and how they
were statistically analyzed, along with a
detailed presentation of the data, often in
tables, graphs, or charts.

1. Results

5
Research Report with Survey

1. Discussion

an interpretation of the data and
presentation of conclusions, related to the
original hypothesis. (When the discussion is
brief, it may be combined with the previous
section under the heading Results and
Discussion.)

6
Research Report with Survey Conducting a Survey

1. Think about why you are interested in a topic.
   Decide what you want to find outwhat your
   hypothesis is. What questions will you ask?
   Whats your purpose?
2. Define your population. Who is your hypothesis
   about? Women who smoke? Ten-year-old children?
   Plan to sample enough of this population so that
   your findings will be representative.

7
Research Report with Survey Conducting a Survey

• Write your questions.
• Closed Questions direct the respondents answers
  checklists, multiple-choice, true/false, or
  yes/no.
• Open-ended questions allow brief, descriptive
  answers. How will you interpret these?
• AVOID LOADED QUESTIONS that reveal your own
  biases or that make assumptions
• Should we stop murdering civilians in war?
• How much more money does your father make than
  your mother?

8
Research Report with Survey Conducting a Survey

1. Test your questions. Use a few respondents and
   discuss the clarity, comfort-level, and
   answerability of the questions with them.
2. Tally the results. Count the actual numbers of
   answers. Include the nonanswers.
3. Look for patterns that emerge from the data. Do
   the patterns confirm your hypothesis? Contradict
   it? Revise your hypothesis or conduct more
   research if necessary.

9
Research Report with Survey See Sample Format
Title page Include a running head for
publication, title, byline, and
affiliation. Page numbers with running head In
the upper right-hand corner of each page, include
a 1-2 word version of your title. Follow with
five spaces and then the page number. From The
OWL at Purdue Website http//owl.english.purdue.ed
u/owl/resource/560/01/

10
How Not to Plagiarize
http//www.utoronto.ca/writing/plagsep.html Writte
n by Margaret Procter, Coordinator of Writing
Support, University of Toronto
No.

• Can't I avoid problems just by listing every
  source in the bibliography?

• If I put the ideas into my own words, do I
  still have to clog up my pages
• with all those names and numbers?

Yes.

• I didn't know anything about the subject until
  I started this paper. Do I
• have to acknowledge every point I make?

Better to be safe than sorry.

• How can I tell what's my own idea and what has
  come from somebody
• else?

Careful record-keeping helps.

• So what exactly do I have to document?

Quotations, paraphrases, or summaries e.g. As
Morris puts it in The Human Zoo (1983), We can
always be sure that today's daring innovation
will be tomorrow's respectability" (p. 189).
Specific facts used as evidence for your argument
or interpretation e.g. Other recent researchers
(Monroe, 2006) confirm the findings that drug
treatment has little effect in the treatment of
pancreatic pseudocysts. Distinctive or
authoritative ideas, whether you agree with them
or not e.g. One writer (Von Daniken, 1970) even
argues that the Great Pyramid was built for the
practical purpose of guiding navigation.

11
Research Report Writing a Summary
How would you summarize these ideas? The cause
of autism has also been a matter of dispute. Its
incidence is about one in a thousand, and it
occurs throughout the world, its features
remarkably consistent even in extremely different
cultures. It is often not recognized in the first
year of life, but tends to become obvious in the
second or third year. Though Asperger regarded it
as a biological defect of affective
contactinnate, inborn, analogous to a physical
or intellectual defectKanner tended to view it
as a psychogenic disorder, a reflection of bad
parenting, and most especially of a chillingly
remote, often professional, "refrigerator
mother." At this time, autism was often regarded
as "defensive" in nature, or confused with
childhood schizophrenia. A whole generation of
parentsmothers, particularlywere made to feel
guilty for the autism of their children.
Excerpted from Oliver Sacks essay An
Anthropologist on Mars.

Materials created by Jerry Plotnick, University
College Writing Workshop, University of Toronto.
Click here for details on summaries
http//www.utoronto.ca/ucwriting/paraphrase.html
12
Research Report Sample In-Text Citations for a
Summary
In An Anthropologist on Mars, Sacks notes that
although there is little disagreement on the
chief characteristics of autism, researches have
differed considerably on its causes. As he points
out, Asperger saw the condition as an innate
defect in the childs ability to connect with the
external world, whereas Kanner regarded it as a
consequence of harmful childrearing practices
(247-48).

13
Research Report Sample Abstract

• Short 2-3 paragraphs/100-150 words
• 1st paragraph Introduce the problem
• 2nd paragraph Describe your approach
• 3rd paragraph Brief conclusions and impact
• Do not include bibliographic citations or
  mathematics.

Embedded hard real-time software systems
often need fine-grained parallelism and precise
control of timing, things typical real-time
operating systems do not provide. The Esterel
language has both, but compiling large Esterel
programs has been challenging, producing either
needlessly slow or large code. This paper
presents the first Esterel compiler able to
compile large Esterel programs into fast, small
code. By choosing a concurrent control-flow graph
as its intermediate representation, it preserves
many of the control constructs to produce code
that can be a hundred times faster and half the
size than that from other compilers with similar
capacity. The primary contribution is an
algorithm that generates efficient sequential
code from a concurrent control-flow graph. While
developed specifically for compiling Esterel, the
algorithm could be used to compile other
synchronous languages with fine-grained
parallelism. Back to slide
Click here for
original source.