Tips for good practical write-ups

The practical report is composed of a series of separate sections in which specific information is conveyed.

Your task in the report is to tell your reader all about the study you conducted, you do this through a number of sections:

1. Title
2. Introduction - what’s it all about?
3. Method
   • Prediction - What you think will happen…
   • Theory Summarize the basic physics of your experiment. Include equations and other principle things the reader would need to know in order to understand the experiment.
   • Variables - What will change - what stays the same
   • Apparatus & Materials - what will you use to do what?
   • Procedure -Describe briefly how you carried out the experiment. Do not include relatively trivial things like turning on a switch. On the other hand, you should include descriptions of how you determine things that are necessary to the anticipated results. This should be very short as well. Mention the particular pitfalls in data taking that you discovered and managed to maneuver around. You may need to recreate a wiring diagram or draw the apparatus in order to refer to it later during discussion
4. Results - a neat table
5. Discussion
   • Analysis - hat’s the pattern in the results - gradients etc
   • Conclusion - what do the results tell you?
   • Evaluation - Are your results valid etc?

You should try to write your report as if the person reading it is intelligent but unknowledgeable about your study and the area of psychology in which it took place.

The marker will be checking to see that you have written your report with this sort of reader in mind. So, you must make sure that you have:

* provided sufficient background material to understand what you did and why you did it
* have spelt out and developed your arguments clearly
* defined all technical terms
* provided precise details of the way in which you went about collecting and analysing the data.

Putting the report into specific sections makes this task much easier than it might otherwise be.