How to write up a lab report/simple experiment

How to Write a Psychology Lab Report
A psychology lab report describes an experiment. Lab reports take the same format used in professional journal articles. If you are unsure of how a journal article is organized, look at some examples in psychology journals to get an idea of how your lab report will look.
Lab Report Structure:
Your lab report should follow the format below:
1. Title Page:The title page should be the first page of your lab report.
2. Abstract:The abstract should be the second page of your lab report. An abstract is a brief synopsis of your report, usually no longer than a paragraph. According to the American Psychological Association (APA) style guide, your abstract should be no longer than 120 words.

3. Introduction: Your paper should begin with an introduction that outlines previous research on the topic, explains the goals of your current research, and provides your hypothesis. This section is usually several pages long and requires significant research in order to provide a sufficient overview of previous research on the topic. Remember to give proper citation to all sources.
4. Method:The next section of your lab report will be the method section, in which you describe the procedures used in your experiment. Information you should provide includes: number of participants, background of participants, your independent and dependent variables, and the type of experimental design you used.
5. Results:The next part of your lab report will be the results section. In your results section, describe statistical data gathered from your experiment. This section is usually quite short and does not include any interpretation of your results. Use tables and figures to display statistical data and results.
6. Discussion:Next, your lab report should include a discussion section in which you interpret the results of your experiment. Did the results of your experiment support or refute your hypothesis? You should also suggest possible explanations for the results of your experiment and what these results might mean in terms of future research on the topic.
7. References:After your discussion section, your lab report should also include a list of references used in your experiment and lab report. Remember, all references cited in-text must be listed in the references section and vice versa. All references should be in APA format.
8. Tables and Figures: Any tables or figures used to display your results should be included in this final section of your lab report.

How to Conduct a Psychology Experiment
Conducting your first psychology experiment can be a long, complicated and intimidating process. It can be especially confusing if you are not quite sure where to begin or which steps to take. Like other sciences, psychology utilizes the scientific method and bases conclusions upon empirical evidence. When conducting an experiment, it is important to follow the five basic steps of the scientific method:
Ask a question that can be tested ,Design a study and collect data ,Analyze results and reach conclusion; Share the results with the scientific community
1. Find a Research Problem or Question
• Investigate a commonly held belief. Folk psychology is a good source of unanswered questions that can serve as the basis for psychological research. For example, many people believe that staying up all night to cram for a big exam can actually hurt test performance. You could conduct a study in which you compare the test scores of students who stayed up all night studying, versus the scores of students who got a full night's sleep prior to the exam.
• Review psychology literature. Published studies are a great source of unanswered research questions. In many cases, the authors will even note the need for further research. Find a published study that you find intriguing, and then come up with some questions that remain unanswered.
• Think about everyday problems. There are many practical applications for psychology research. Explore various problems that you or others face each day, and then consider how you could research potential solutions. For example, you might investigate different memorization strategies to determine which methods are most effective.
2. Operationally Define Your Variables
Variables are anything that might impact the outcome of your study. An operational definition describes exactly what the variables are and how they are measured within the context of your study. For example, if you were doing a study on the impact of sleep deprivation on driving performance, you would need to operationally define what you mean by sleep deprivation and driving performance. What is the purpose of operationally defining variables? The main purpose is control. By understanding what your are measuring, you can control for it by holding the variable constant between all of the groups or manipulating it as an independent variable.
3. Develop a Hypothesis
The next step is to develop a testable hypothesis that predicts how the operationally defined variables are related. In our example in the previous step, our hypothesis might be: "Students who are sleep deprived will perform worse than students who are not sleep deprived on a test of driving performance."
4. Conduct Background Research
Once you have developed a testable hypothesis, it is important to spend some time conducting background research. What do researchers already know about your topic? What questions remain unanswered? You can learn about previous research on your topic by exploring books, journal articles, online databases, newspapers and websites devoted to your topic.
5. Select an Experimental Design
After conducting background research and finalizing your hypothesis, your next step is to develop an experimental design. There are three basic types of experimental designs that you may use. Each has its own strengths and weaknesses.
6. Standardize Your Procedures
In order to arrive at legitimate conclusions, it is essential to compare apples to apples. Each participant in each group must receive the same treatment under the same conditions.
7. Choose Your Participants
In addition to making sure that the testing conditions are standardized, it is also essential to ensure that your pool of participants is the same. If the individuals in your control group (those who are not sleep deprived) all happen to be amateur race car drivers while your experimental group (those that are sleep deprived) are all people who just recently earned their drivers licenses, your experiment will lack standardization.
When choosing subjects, there are a number of different techniques you can use. A simple random sample involves randomly selecting a number of participants from a group. A stratified random sample requires randomly selecting participants from different subsets of the population. These subsets might include characteristics such as geographic location, age, sex, race or socioeconomic status.
8. Conduct Tests and Collect Data
After you have selected participants, the next steps are to conduct tests and collect the data. Prior to doing any testing, however, there are a few important concerns that need to be addressed. First, you need to be sure that your testing procedures are ethical. Generally, you will need to gain permission to conduct any type of testing with human participants by submitting the details of your experiment to your school's Institutional Review Board, often referred to as the 'Human Subject Committee.'
9. Analyze the Results
After collecting your data, it is time to analyze the results of your experiment. Researchers utilize statistics to determine if the results of the study support the original hypothesis and to determine if the results are statistically significant. Statistical significance means that the results of the study are unlikely to have occurred simply by chance. The types of statistical methods you use to analyze your data depend largely on the type of data that you collected. If you are using a random sample of a larger population, you will need to utilize inferential statistics. These statistical methods make inferences about how the results related to the population at large. Because you are making inferences based upon a sample, it has to be assumed that there will be a certain margin of error.
10. Write Up and Share Your Results
Your final task in conducting a psychology experiment is to communicate your results. By sharing your experiment with the scientific community, you are contributing to the knowledge base on that particular topic. One of the most common ways to share research results is to publish the study in a peer-reviewed professional journal. Other methods include sharing results at conferences, in book chapters or in academic presentations.