The basics on structuring a journal article in the sciences and social sciences.

1. Anatomy of a
Journal Article
Moving from conceptual to operational
(and what that means).

2. Agenda
• Types of information sources in
the sciences
• The role and purpose of articles
• Structure of a research article
• Parts of a research article
• How to read them

3. Types of Sources
• Book chapters
• Books
• Paper presentations at conferences
• Invited talks at conferences
• Poster presentations at conferences
• Symposia/informal meetings
• Special Reports
• Journal articles

4. Journal Article Types
• Empirical – based on new data
• Review – summarizes existing work
• Theoretical – introduces a new theory
• Statistical – introduces a new
statistical technique
• All are available in short and long
forms

5. The Empirical Journal Article is our focus
• A summary of an experimental study or
series of studies
• The primary record of psychological
knowledge – this is how scientists share
information with one another and for
posterity.
• A big yardstick for hiring, pay, promotions,
tenure, respect, and the most crucial part of
the CV

6. The Empirical Journal Article
• Peer-reviewed
• Reviewed also by a journal editor
• Tough to get published
• Cited in other articles, review articles,
books, and misreported in popular press.
• Biased in favor of significant results

7. Academic Publishing:
Flaws with the Process
• https://medium.com/@dr_eprice/academic-publishing-is-
an-exploitative-farce-b367ceadd3c5
• Explains how academic articles are used to determine a
professional’s success.
• Also goes into some of the flaws with the publication
process.

8. Types of Journals
• Monthly, Quarterly, or Annually Published
by Societies
• General (e.g. Current Directions
Psychological Science) and Specific
(Political Cognition; Personal
Relationships) Journals exist
• Vary in Prestige (JPSP-Psych Review)

9. Generally, only
significant results are
published…
• The File Drawer
Problem: Studies that
don’t work go “in the
file drawer” and are
never seen again.
• Read about it here:
https://www.ma.utexas.
edu/users/mks/statmista
kes/filedrawer.html
•

10. Structure of a Journal Article

11. Anatomy of a Journal
Article
Chapter 3: Planning Research
Concepts That Are Clarified in the Different Sections of a Research Report.
Introduction
• What is the general topic of the research article?
• What do we know about this topic from previous research?
• What are the authors trying to demonstrate in their own research?
• What are their hypotheses?
Methods
Participants--Who took part in the research
• How many people (or animals) were studied?
• If there were nonhuman animals, what kind were they?
• If there were people, what were their characteristics (e.g., average and range of age, gender, race
or ethnicity, were they volunteers or were they paid)?

12. Chapter 3: Planning Research
1
Apparatus and Materials–What did the researchers need to carry out their study?
• What kind of stimuli, questions, etc. were used?
• How many different kinds of activities did participants complete?
• What instrumentation was used to present material to participants and to record their responses?
Procedure–What did the people actually do during the research session?
• After the participants arrived what did they do?
• What did the experimenters do as they interacted with participants?
Results
• What were patterns of behaviors among participants?
• Did behaviors differ when different groups were compared?
• What type of behaviors are predictable in the different testing conditions?
• What were the results of any statistical tests?

13. Chapter 3: Planning Research
1
Discussion
• What do the results mean?
• What explanations can you develop for why the participants responded as they did?
• What psychological processes help you explain participants’ responses?
• What questions have not been answered fully?
• How do your results relate to the research cited in the introduction?
• How do your results relate to other kinds of research?
• What new ideas emerge that you could evaluate in a subsequent experiment?
Reference
What research was cited in the research report (e.g., work published in journals or other written sources,
research presentations, in online sources)?

14. Introduction
Method
Results
Operationalization
General,
theoretical,
broad.
Specific
measures
and tests
Worldly,
Theoretical

15. Title
• Clear but specific, punchy when possible.
“Learning (Not) to Talk About Race: When Older Children
Underperform in Social Categorization”
“How do I love thee? Let me count the J’s: Implicit Egotism and
Interpersonal Attraction”
“It’s all Relative: Sexual Aversions and Moral Judgments Regarding Sex
Among Siblings” (yup this one’s real)
“Working Memory Capacity, Attentional Focus, and Problem Solving” (see
you don’t have to use a cute phrase in front of a colon, it’s just really popular to do
so)

17. Abstract
• Short summary of the study
• It’s the thing everybody skims to see if they need to
actually read your paper.
• It’s also the thing you should skim when looking for
papers.
• Should be conceptual
• Describes purpose, study, and results
• 100-200 words
• What you submit to a conference

18. Introduction
• Reviews the literature on the topic
• Summarizes past studies that are relevant
• Organization is very important
• Begins with very broad general findings on the topic (e.g.
self-esteem)
• Works it way down to more specific concepts (e.g. implicit
self-esteem versus explicit self esteem)
• Ends with a hypothesis pertaining to an IV and a DV

19. Methods
• Where operationalization occurs
• Theoretical constructs are turned into specific
measures
• The specific study is described in detail
• Easiest section to write, often to read as well

20. Operationalization:
translates conceptual
variables into:
• Specific measures (e.g. IQ score, Rosenberg self-esteem
scale, Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator)
• Specific manipulations (e.g., having the person you play
a game with be either white or black, giving a child
positive versus negative feedback)

22. Methods Sub-Sections
• Participants
• Recruitment, demographics
• Materials
• Operationalized measures and manipulations are described
• And cited
• Procedure
• A step-by-step walkthrough of what participants experience, or what
the experimenter does.

23. Results
A good results section should:
• Rehash the theoretical question
(briefly)
• Then deliver the answer (say directly
if the hypothesis was supported)
• Describe the statistical tests

24. Results: Describing Stats
• Name the specific statistic:
• One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA)
• Multiple Regression
• Within-groups T-test
• Report the p-value – significance level
• Refer to Tables
• If there’s an interaction between multiple
variables, break it down

25. Discussion
• Should open with clear statement on
hypothesis
• Are findings consistent with other studies?
• Moves broader and broader: What does this
tell us about actual life?
• Makes note of limitations
• Future directions

26. Discussion subsections
• Limitations
• flaws in design, alternative explanations of effect,
inconsistency with other studies, conditions that should
have been explored
• Future Directions
• Things that can remedy the limitations, and extensions
of the work
• Consider generalizability
• To other settings
• To other times (and over longer periods of time)
• To other kinds of people

27. HOW TO READ
These things

28. Reading: Skimming
• Skimming is your friend
• Especially if you’re looking for relevant articles
• Title, abstract
• Run through Intro quickly, focus on last few paragraphs
• See if what they’re specifically doing is relevant
• Gloss over Methods quickly
• Scan Results and Discussion to see what they found

29. Reading: Intro
• Review the whole intro to see what research
tradition they are building on
• Note important theories they reference
• Highlight articles that are referenced in the Intro, and
look them up later
• Ask yourself if you can understand why they decided
to do they study, given the points they’ve laid out.

30. Reading: Methods
• Methods is very important if you’re doing a deep reading.
• Make note of the materials they are borrowing
• And that they created
See if you can understand the procedure: what did participants
do? What did they experience?

31. Reading: Results and
Methods
• If by the end of the Methods, you can’t explain exactly what the
researchers did (and what comparisons/hypotheses they’re about to be
testing) you need to go back.
• Of course, it’s not necessarily your fault if something makes no sense
(that whole pretentious writing thing again)

32. Reading: Results
• Were hypotheses supported?
• Does everything follow logically from Intro? Are they
testing what you thought they’d be?
• If you were studying this, what would you control for? Did
they? Does anything seem missing?
• Did any statistical tests not work? How do they explain it?
• Are there any numbers you’d like to see that are missing?

33. Discussion
• Slap on your B.S. detection goggles
• Is everything consistent with the intro?
• Did they rule out possible alternate explanations?
• Always ask yourself: What is the reason? What is the
mechanism?
• Is the relationship causal? Or is it just an association? Does
the author acknowledge this?
• Consider what conditions might moderate the effect or
make it disappear.
• If you wanted to counter this study/disprove it, what could
you do? (Note: You should always be “testing to disprove”)

34. Discussion
• What’s another angle to examine this question from?
• Consider replication across different settings, places, tasks,
measures, people, on a different time frame, etc. Would this result
always hold?
• What about this theory makes sense? What doesn’t?
• Always be on the lookout for new connections– maybe a totally
different literature can inform this one!
• Political psychology and Self research: If you’re patriotic, does flag
burning make you more upset because you associate the flag with
yourself, or see it as an extension of yourself?

37. • Overly honest methods
• https://www.buzzfeed.com/kmallikarjuna/how-to-science-
as-told-by-17-overly-honest-
scientists?utm_term=.wvYpWnW5E#.lmb0b5brE