Comments on article summaries:

1. Don’t get freaked out if I wrote all over your summary. Everyone’s got written all over. No matter how good a writer you are, you can become a better one. Pay attention to the comments to improve your next summary due on Wed. (I’ll expect even better things on the next one.) This is a different kind of writing than what you may have done in your other classes.

2. Some abbreviations I used in my comments: awk (awkward), uncl (unclear), sp (spelling), gr (grammar), colloq (colloquial—not formal language), expl (explain), hypo (hypothesis), b/c (because), keep // (keep lists parallel--if you have a list of things, the words should be in the same form--ing verbs or whatever). If you don’t understand any of my comments, ask. I won’t be insulted.

3. They are participants, not subjects. This change (which may not be seen in all your journal articles yet) reflects the idea that people are helping us out by participating in research as opposed to being our little guinea pigs to do with as we please.

4. Get all the relevant details, but try to keep things simple and concise. You want to always strive to write for one level lower than your intended audience. So in this case, you should be writing so that an intro psych person or your grandmother could understand what you’ve written with no problems.

5. Be precise in your language. We don’t “use,” “take,” or “divide” people (ouch), and they are not “obligated” to do our study.

6. When you describe the method section, if you mention measures by their formal name you need to cite them. Alternately, you can use a more general description that doesn’t need to be cited. For example, “Participants completed Rosenberg’s (1965) Self-Esteem Scale and the Beck (1972) Depression Inventory.” or “Participants completed measures of self-esteem and depression.”

7. Be sure to state what the hypotheses were if there were specific hypotheses (e.g., if they say that the X group will be higher in self-esteem than the Y group, say that rather than that they investigated the relationship between XY and self-esteem).

8. Some people got points taken off for quoting from the article without using “ marks. This is plagiarism, even if you didn’t realize that you were doing it. (It’s based on the consequences, not the intentions, because no one but you can know your intentions.) This is very bad, and will result in larger cuts on your grades in the future, down to a “0” on your major papers. So break the habit early and be careful about how you state things!

9. Make sure you understand the results section of your article. If you don’t understand what they mean (sometimes it’s hard, esp. if you haven’t had statistics), ask the TA or me. You need to make sure you’re interpreting what they found correctly.

10. Write out numbers if they begin a sentence or if they are under 10. Otherwise, use numerals.

11. Tell what the study adds—why was it done? Also address the meaning of the results—why should we care?

12. Don’t just say that X and Y were related or correlated---tell how. E.g., Participants who were higher in authoritarianism also tended to be more socially dominant.

13. In APA style, male and female are adjectives, not nouns.

14. Effect is a noun; affect is a verb.

15. In the method section be sure to mention who the participants were and how they were recruited (e.g., from classes, from doctor’s offices, through newspaper ads).