The lab report is a genre, and most points are lost to the genre rather than the experiment
APA-format reports have a fixed structure, and each section has a specific job. Students who write a good experiment into the wrong structure lose points that have nothing to do with the psychology.
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Each part answers one question, and only one
Introduction: what is known, what is not, and what this study predicts. It should funnel from the general area to a specific hypothesis, and the hypothesis should feel inevitable by the time it arrives. Introductions that review everything and then state an unrelated prediction are the commonest structural failure.
Method has to be replicable. Someone should be able to run your study from it. Students under-specify apparatus, stimuli and procedure constantly, usually because it feels obvious to the person who was there.
Results reports, discussion interprets. That boundary is enforced strictly in psychology reports, and interpretation appearing in results is the single most graded error. The discussion then has to connect back to the models named in the introduction, which is the part that turns a report into psychology rather than a description of an event.
- An introduction that funnels to the hypothesis
- A method someone could actually replicate
- Results reported completely, in APA format
- A discussion that returns to the models the introduction raised
What we work on
Your own report and your own data
- APA 7 report structure, section by section
- Writing a hypothesis that follows from the literature
- Reporting statistics completely and formatting tables
- Interpreting results against the cognitive model being tested
- Writing limitations that engage rather than hedge
Your experiment, your report
- We do not write your lab reports or papers.
- We do not fabricate or alter experimental data.
- We do not run your analysis for you.
- We do not supply completed reports to adapt.
- We teach the genre, review what you wrote, and check the reporting.
Fabricating or adjusting data is the one error in this subject that is treated as research misconduct rather than as a grade deduction, including at undergraduate level. Read the full policy.
Frequently Asked Questions
A narrowing account of the relevant literature, the gap or question it leaves, and your hypothesis. By the time the reader reaches the hypothesis it should look like the obvious next study. Reviews that cover the field broadly and then state an unconnected prediction are the usual problem.
Detailed enough to replicate. Participants and how they were recruited, apparatus and stimuli with specifics, and the procedure in order. Assume the reader was not there, because that is the test being applied.
In the discussion, never in results. Results states what was found with the statistics. If a sentence in your results section explains why, it belongs one section later. This is graded strictly in psychology.
Test statistic with degrees of freedom, exact p value, and an effect size, alongside descriptives. A p value alone is incomplete and is the most common single omission in undergraduate reports.
No. Report it and discuss why in the discussion, considering power, measurement and whether the manipulation worked. A thoughtfully discussed null result scores better than a strained attempt to find support that is not there.
Send the report and the data
We will check the structure section by section, confirm the reporting is complete, and tell you whether the discussion connects back to the introduction.
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