What components of the title and abstract are indexed to communicate your work? Why qualities should a title have? A title should be no longer than ______ words.
How can the quality of your title affect the likelihood that someone will read your paper? What is the function of keywords? A research paper is shaped like an __________. Explain what should be covered in each section (Abstract, Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion). What does it mean when someone says you are “stacking abstracts?” To avoid stacking abstracts, describe three different ways you can organize your literature.
Explain the recommendations for when to quote and how to cite quoted material (i.e., in text vs. parentheses), the use of present versus past tense in the manuscript, the length of the Introduction (for a manuscript submission), and why it may be hard to balance the length of the Introduction and Discussion.
What information about the participants, measures, and procedure should be presented? Why is it necessary to provide so much detail about the who, the what, and the how of your study? Why would you want to present both the Cronbach’s alpha in the literature and the Cronbach’s alpha from your study? What does a statement of your research design tell the reader?
Explain what Salovey (2000) meant when he talked about Results that tell a good story. How do you accomplish that? What is the advantage of putting the “preliminaries” (e.g., reliabilities and demographic characteristics) in the Method section? How do you organize your paper to create parallel construction? Why should you present as many findings as possible in tables and figures?
Don’t forget that Ms and SDs are statistical symbols and should be italicized, along with other statistical symbols. Explain the role of 0 as a placeholder in the presentation of results where the finding can theoretically be greater than 1 and where it cannot. Explain the rounding rules. Explain how to present a result where the printout shows p = .0000. What happens if you always round up (or not)? Findings should be presented in the text or in a table but not both. How many results of a particular kind (e.g., correlation, Ms, and SDs) should you have before moving to a table? What is the advantage of presenting findings in a table?
What similarities and differences are there when writing a Discussion section with significant versus nonsignificant findings? In terms of discussing results from a “fishing expedition,” introducing relevant literature in the Discussion is useful, but how much prominence does this material merit, relative to your original hypotheses? What kinds of issues may come up to address in your Limitations section? What is the distinction between statistical and practical significance?
First impressions make a difference, and correct grammatical usage “counts.” Explain the difference in use between while versus whereas; since versus because; and number versus amount. What is the best way to avoid gender bias in language? What stock phrases should be avoided at the beginning of sentences? What is a missing referent? When you use comparative language (e.g., higher), what does your sentence need to include? What does it mean to attribute agency incorrectly in a sentence? What are words that signify causality? Correlation?
Explain why less is more in terms of presentation software and posters. What are the essential slides for a paper presentation? What role do bullet points play? How is giving a presentation like telling a story? What is hard about doing a poster presentation?
