How to Work on APA Methods
The APA formatting and citation style is often used in natural and social sciences. You need to describe how you have been performing your research work in more detail in the ‘Methods’ section and structure it according to APA requirements. You need to provide consistent information on measures, procedures, and samples you have used. Both fields of study usually use quantitative research methods, so let's focus on them.
The Structure of the ‘Methods’ Section in APA
The heading of this section is, of course, ‘Methods.’ You have to place it in the center of the page, capitalize, and boldface. Make all subheadings if you need them left-aligned, and format them in the boldfaced title case. You can also utilize the lower-leveled subheadings but all of them should be formatted according to APA.
The main parts of this section are ‘Participants,’ ‘Materials,’ and ‘Procedures.’ However, you may decide whether to use the subheadings for them or not. Every specific study may need these headings or may skip them, replacing them by separate paragraphs highlighting each point. Nevertheless, you should know what to write about in these subsections or paragraphs.
In general, when you write about participants, you need to include their characteristics, sampling procedures, and the notes about the size and importance of each sample.
When you speak about materials, think about the primary and secondary
measures you have used and the overall quality of measurements.
The procedure requires a more detailed description that will include the methods of collecting data, one of the
research designs (correlational, experimental, or descriptive) and its explanation, the way of processing data and
their diagnostics, such as outlier removal, and the description of the strategy you have used for data analysis, for
example, regression testing or comparison of data sets.
Nevertheless, not all these parts are necessary for your research paper. For instance, if you exclude the outlier removal from your research procedure, you do not need to write about it. APA also offers specific guidelines for different research designs. They differ for experimental design, replication studies, or longitudinal research. There are also mixed designs, so make sure that you report them due to the APA requirements.
Do not include the detailed descriptions of research procedures in this section. If you feel that they are important, describe them in the supplements.
Now, let’s consider different parts of the ‘Methods’ section according to APA.
How to Write About Participants
Samples chosen by you for the research are the focus of this part. You should write about their characteristics, what procedures you have used for sampling, and what the size of different samples is. The stages of your description should include the following:
1. Characterize the Subjects or Participants
Use the terms of ‘respondents,’ ‘participants,’ or ‘subjects’ to refer to those who have taken part in your research. ‘Subjects’ can refer to animals or non-living objects.
The demographic characteristics of participants are also important to specify. They involve their age, race, ethnicity, gender, education, and socioeconomic status. Immigration characteristics and languages used by them can also be specified if they are essential for the study. You need to be specific while reporting them because your readers need to understand whether your research is bias-free and accurate.
Use the appropriate terminology and language to describe them.
ExampleYou need to write about the characteristics of the research participants. You report the following: The participants included 145 young women aged between 25-30 from the Ontario economics college. They all were first-year students with a good command of English.
2. Describe the Sampling Procedure
Specify the sampling procedure with all the features that were included and excluded from it. You can just indicate the type of a sampling procedure if you feel it is enough for understanding, for example, random sampling.
If you have invited many people to participate in the study, say how many actually participated (use percentage if it is available). Show how the participants were selected - by themselves, their teachers, or in some other way. If you offered some compensation, indicate what kind it was. Mention the standards according to which the sampling was ethically approved.
ExampleThe example of a sampling procedure report can be the following. We have received the ethical approval from the institutions before we started recruiting the participants. The first-year students only were invited by emails and social media posts. We also spread the flyers within the campus. All the participants agreed to get involved by themselves. We offered a compensation of $15 for one hour of their time.
3. Indicate the Size and Statistical Power of the Samples
The requirements included 75% power to be able to see the effect of 15% and the significance level required was .07, so 21 participants were needed for every condition. The final sample has met all these requirements.
How to Write About Materials
In this part of the ‘Methods’ section, you need to describe the techniques and tools you have used in your research to measure variables. Try to provide as many details as possible here. They should relate to:
1. Describing Primary and Secondary Measures
The chosen measures should provide the answers to all the primary and secondary questions. Write about all the tools that you have utilized for collecting the appropriate measurements and what exactly they have been used for. These tools may involve inventories, tests, scales, hardware, or software. Describe why you have used them:
- ✔️ use references to manuals or articles that describe the scales, tests, and inventories, give examples of items measured with them and show how many items have been measured
- ✔️ cite the software use with the help of its full name, the number of the version, and/or URL of the website.
- ✔️ indicate the manufacturer and the number of the hardware model.
Describe the settings of every specific part of software or hardware. You also need to describe the reliability and validity of these measuring tools and the criteria of their consistency. Provide one or two examples of questionnaires, tests, or interviews you have been using.
The Confined Spaces Fear Inventory (MMI; Johnson & Luke, 2019) was a means for measuring closed space anxiety in first-year college students. The inventory involves 28 Likert scale questions with bottom-up and top-down scales. The participants had to indicate their levels of fear on a 6-point scale ranging from ‘very bad’ to ‘very good’ feelings about confined spaces. The example used is ‘I feel very bad when in a cave. The alpha indicators were moderate (about .54) for every point of the subscales, so the research was internally consistent. The questions were formulated on the basis of the materials taken from the previous study (see Appendix ABi). The test involved 28 multiple choice questions with four answer options each. You also need to describe any additional variable (covariate) that might affect or predict the results.
2. Describing the Quality of Measurements
The quality of all measurements is important. Think about all the methods you have used to ensure the highest quality. They involve:
- pilot studies to test the efficiency of all the possible samples and materials
- training sessions for researchers involved into gathering data
- using translations of materials provided in other languages
- involving different people into material and data assessment
Be careful about the subjective coding of the data, especially from open-ended questions and answers. It can spoil the results and final scores.
How to Write About the Procedure
Provide the detailed description of all the procedures you have used in the research, collecting data, and their analysis. Pay attention to the following aspects:
1. What Methods You Have Used for Data Collection and What Kind of Research Design You Have Chosen
The main methods of data collection include observations, surveys, cognitive tests, interviews, neuroimaging, focus groups, and some others. You need to provide a detailed description of all the procedures you have conducted to administer them. You also have to mention devices, recordings, tests, and questionnaires you have applied. Give as many details as possible because your followers may need to repeat all these procedures exactly as you did. If the procedure you have used is rather sophisticated and needs a lot of description, include the lengthy schemes and instructions in the supplements.
Do not forget to describe your research design in detail too.
Provide the general framework used in data gathering and its analysis. Describe the design as longitudinal, correlational, descriptive or observational, experimental, or quasi-experimental. You can also describe it as a mixture of design formats, within-subjects or between-subjects ones.
If you have used multiple groups in your research, provide such details as:
- specific instructions for each separate group
- the location, settings, and length of every experimental session
- the randomization techniques used for assigning participants to different groups and conditions
You can also indicate the use of masking to create the equal conditions for all the groups. Indicate whether it was used for administrators or participants, or for both. Describe any other ways you have utilized to reduce research bias and explain how they were used. You also need to explain how the efficiency of the experiments was evaluated.
We told all the participants that the survey will be related to general knowledge, and it will take them not more than 45 minutes. They gave consent to using their responses in the research design and were guaranteed the entire confidentiality after their arrival to the laboratory.
All the participants were divided then between the experimental and control groups randomly. We used the OpenGo software (opengo.com) to administer the survey. The experiment started with the MMA and demographics questionnaire. Then, the open-question survey was conducted. The fillers with a short general knowledge test were provided to both groups. When working with the experimental group, we asked the participants to imagine that they are doing the survey in a confined space. They were given 2 minutes to do that. You will find the detailed instructions and tasks offered within the experiments in the supplements.
The between-subjects design’s elements were used to check whether the intervention of the confined space visualization had influenced the independent and dependent variables and to which extent.
2. How to Make Data Diagnostics
You also need to describe all the steps you have taken for data processing after you completed gathering it. They may involve such procedures as:
- steps for identification and removing outliers
- steps for transforming data and regulating distributions
- steps for compensating the outcomes of missing values and their overcoming strategies
You should take all these measures to ensure high validity of the research. You need to explain how you have improved it because your readers would like to know how you have managed to transform the raw data to make it more demonstrative and effective.
3. How to Apply Analytic Strategies
You should also describe the procedures applied to the statistical analysis in this section. However, never include the description of the outcomes. It is the theme for the ‘Results’ section.
All the analytical procedures should be described for all the hypotheses of your research work - primary, secondary, and exploratory ones. The primary and secondary hypotheses and their explanation need to use the background knowledge, the results of previous studies, and the theoretical basis related to the topic. The exploratory hypotheses can be explained only by the data you have just collected within your current study process.
First of all, we evaluated the main differences between the two groups in terms of their demographics and MMA scores. Then, we tested the primary hypothesis that the age and social status of the individuals can influence the fear of confined spaces. Meanwhile, we administered the t-test for independent variables.
You can use other analytic strategies for data analysis to obtain the best results.
Final Thoughts
You can see that writing the ‘Methods’ section of your research paper according to APA requirements is not a difficult task. If you follow all the instructions and recommendations, your explanations will be clear, straightforward, and applicable to all further research attempts based on the results described in your research paper.