Instructions on Abstract and Introduction

o 1

Write an abstract of your paper that is approximately 100 to 300 words. Your abstract should be a brief summary of your paper and include its purpose, execution and results. Your abstract helps to tell readers if your paper is something that they should read and whether or not it may be relevant to their own work.

o 2

Introduce your paper with a paragraph that is interesting and grabs the reader's attention. Your introductory paragraph should start out broadly and quickly narrow so that by the end of this paragraph your reader knows what your study is about, roughly how you conducted it and possibly even what you found. Unlike a good fiction novel, a scientific paper should not be a suspenseful piece of writing. Your reader wants to quickly learn what you have found, and you want to present this information as concisely and clearly as possible.

o 3

Provide a thorough review of the existing literature that is relevant to the study you are presenting in your paper. Highlight the strengths and weaknesses of past research and explain how your study fills in the gaps and adds new information to the field or provides answers to important questions.

o 4

Describe the purpose of the current study by connecting it to the previous research and providing the rationale for the study. Include a brief summary of the study's method and describe any hypotheses, major thesis statements or arguments that you plan to present within the paper.

Method

o 5

Provide your reader with a description of your participants, or research sample. Your reader needs to know the size of your sample, the characteristics of your sample and how you selected your sample.

o 6

List the materials that were used in your study. Perhaps you had participants complete a series of questionnaires; if so, provide information about each questionnaire, example items and statistical measures of reliability and validity.

o 7

Describe the exact procedures used in your study. The goal of the Procedures section is to allow other researchers to replicate your research. Provide enough information that would allow another researcher to feasibly conduct the same study. Answer these questions: In what order did events occur? How did participants find out about the study? What were the exact conditions under which you executed each condition of your experiment?