Psychology lab reports

This resource will help you:

• Set up a psychology lab report in American Psychological Association 7th edition (APA7) format.
• Identify important components for each section of a psychology lab report.
• Understand APA7 referencing conventions.
   

The psychology lab report follows the IMRAD structure.  IMRAD stands for: Introduction; Methods; Results; And Discussion.  If you are unfamiliar with this structure or these basics sections please then check out our 'Scientific report writing' guide (link below).

A psychology lab report uses the APA formatting style and referencing guidelines.  APA stands for American Psychological Association.  There is a manual for APA Style called “The Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, Seventh Edition”, which contains all the details about formatting, grammar, referencing and publication using APA style. 

Referencing

The APA style uses parenthetical in-text citations.  These in-text citations correspond to an entry in the reference list.  The reference list goes towards the end of the document, on a new page after the Discussion.  The label at the top of the page is ‘References’ (use a Level 1 heading style). Every citation used in the document must be included here, providing the full reference details. 

The entries in the reference list should be ordered alphabetically and formatted using the hanging-indent paragraph style.  There are very particular formatting requirements for the entries.  

• Writing tense: 
  • Past tense: The Abstract (can change when talking about the Discussion), Introduction, Methods, and Results.  
  • Present tense: The Discussion is written in present tense.
• You can use first person language, such as “I”, “we”.  But always use academic and professional language. 
• Your topic is almost always your dependant variable. Your topic should feature in your title and first paragraph of the introduction. 
• An estimate for word count is: 1/3 Introduction, 1/3 Method and Results, 1/3 Discussion.
• Use page break formatting to ensure content starts on new pages as required and regardless of which software displays the document. 
• If an Appendix is required, it goes after the reference list and on a new page. 

Some common errors to avoid

• Numbers 10 and greater can be written using digits; numbers less than 10 must be written out using words.  There are some instances where this is not the case such as percentages, ages, time and date. The APA Numbers and Statistics Guide (link below in 'Additional resources' provides a great summary of when to use numerals and when to use words.   
• You can never start a sentence with a digit. If you want to start a sentence with a number, you will need to write it out in words.  Otherwise, you can rephrase the sentence so that the number is presented later in the sentence, for instance: “The 156 participants…”.
• In academic writing, generally, and in scientific reports, specifically, you should avoid contractions (don’t, can’t, shouldn’t) 
• APA states that back-to-back parenthesis should not be used.  Instead, you can combine the parentheses into one and separate the content using semi-colons, for instance: “…by the World Health Organization (WHO; Orchid, 2015)” or “(Smith & Lentil, 2020; Zen & Parlor, 2016)”.

This video (11:54 min) will show you how to format your paper in APA7 style.