Management of Information Systems

you will write a complete APA-style Results section. This will include a separate section for each of your hypotheses. You will include all needed statistical
information, such as p-values, referring to Figures, etc. You can see some sample Results sections on Canvas in the module. this assignment is due
tomorrow. the above instructions. This section of the paper presents the statistical analysis. Assume that the reader has a basic
understanding of statistics. You do not need to explain the concept of rejecting the null hypothesis, what
a t-test is used for, or what a significant p-value is. This section of the paper is usually written in past
tense.
Usually the first part of your results section presents measures of central tendency or frequency,
using tables or graphs. See https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/tables-figures for the
guidelines. Make sure that you refer to all tables and/or figures in the text of your Results section.
The section on inferential statistics should follow the structure of your hypotheses. For example,
you might write, To evaluate Hypothesis 1, [repeating the hypothesis here so the reader doesn’t have to
look back], we ran a 2 x 2 analysis of variance and found a main effect of NameofFactor, F(df, df) = x.xx,
p = .xx, η = .xx, indicating that LevelofFactor (M = x.xx, sd = x.xx) differed significantly from OtherLevel
(M = x.xx, sd = x.xx; see Figure 1). Include information about the value of the test statistics, the degrees
of freedom, the p value, the effect size, and the direction of the effect. You may choose to report
confidence intervals – that depends on how well you understand them/what you learned in stats. The
University of Washington Writing Center has a great although slightly dated handout showing how to
write the “statistical sentences” that go with each analysis and to link the numbers back to the variables
of the study. Jef Kahn at Illinois State also has a good one. Of note, APA style does not include a “leading
zero” if a decimal number cannot be greater than 1 – so it’s p < .05 and NOT p < 0.05. Note that p and the other letters used to represent statistics are italicized (e.g., M, F, r, t). Depending on the complexity of your study, you might include one paragraph per hypothesis, or one paragraph per analysis. Keep in mind your goal is to make what is a very complicated topic for the FIRST 4-5 WORDS OF YOUR TITLE HERE IN CAPS 8 reader (your stats) into something that the reader can easily understand. The English matters more than the jargon to keep your reader on track. The numbers are just the evidence for the claim. Discussion Discussion is the most critical part of a paper, because it summarizes the results in terms of the hypotheses and helps the reader understand both the study findings and the limitations. It is mostly written in the present tense, with some exceptions. APA has a great handout on writing an effective, professional discussion. The first paragraph typically summarizes the results of the study with regard to the hypotheses. Numbers rarely appear in discussion – use your words. It’s very common (and recommended) to begin with a sentence like the following: The purpose of this study was to gain a better understanding of ... That sort of sentence is usually followed with one like the following: The results support the hypothesis that ... The next set of paragraphs links the findings to the previous research presented in the literature review: The present results are consistent with the research on Topic (Author, date) ... The APA handout has other useful phrases to help the reader understand what the results mean. The next set of paragraphs usually present the limitations of the study. Note that this section of the paper is not intended to trash your study; it’s an honest assessment of what you can conclude and what you can’t conclude, given the design. “Our sample was small/homogeneous” is nearly always true, so it’s not really very interesting, and it’s never the only limitation of a study. Use your knowledge of validity here to discuss why some conclusions can’t be ruled in and others can’t be ruled out. This next section presents directions for future research. This is the place to suggest other avenues of new research that are specifically raised by or related to the findings, not everything under the sun. Note you’re not HARKing here – you’re proposing new ideas that will become a priori hypotheses for new studies. FIRST 4-5 WORDS OF YOUR TITLE HERE IN CAPS 9 The next section is typically implications (how the research findings can be used). This section generally answers the “why should I care” question. It should be specific – for example, if you say that the data suggest possible intervention programs for the future, you should give examples of what kinds of intervention programs are in fact suggested by the data. Finally, end with a closing paragraph that summarizes the take-home message. The APA handout has good ideas here too, but I encourage you not to use “We hope that the current research will stimulate further investigation of this important area” because I think that is trite. If you don’t know what trite means in this context, look it up. Yay, you’re finished, except for perfectly formatting the references, which are alphabetized by first author’s last name. In the next section I’ve highlighted parts of the references that you should pay particular attention to – punctuation, caps, and italics. See https://apastyle.apa.org/style-grammar-guidelines/references for more info on proper referencing