Method

The Method section is where you describe what you did and how you conducted your study. This is very important because other researchers may use this information to try to replicate your study and see if they come up with the same results. If your description of your methodology is incomplete or poorly written then others will not be able to accurately replicate your study. The description of your methodology also allows others to critique how well designed the study is.

There are three main subsections in the Method section: Participants or Subjects, Apparatus, and Procedure.

Participants

In the Participants subsection, describe who your participants or subjects were. You should give the total number of subjects and their basic demographic information (e.g., age, sex, location, race/ethnicity, socioeconomic status). You should also describe how the participants were selected and assigned to groups (if applicable), and how many subjects were in each group. Do not give information that would enable others to identify the participants (e.g., names) because you need to maintain confidentiality.

Apparatus or Measures

This subsection is usually found in experimental studies that involve the use of specific equipment in order in order to execute the study. Such studies are typically conducted by subfields in psychology that use the experimental method frequently (e.g., cognitive, psychobiology, social psychology). The Apparatus section is generally only used when the researcher is using special equipment. If only questionnaires are used, the section is called Measures. Sometimes this section is combined into a "Measures and Procedure" section, but not always.

In the Apparatus subsection, you should describe the apparatus or materials used in the experiment. If you used questionnaires, give the name of the questionnaire and describe its subscales. Be sure to supply some sample questions. List any equipment used. Basic items, such as stopwatches, do not need to be described in detail, but specialized equipment that not everyone will be familiar with should be described in detail. You need to provide enough information so that readers will understand how your experiment was conducted and how they could replicate it.

Procedure

In the Procedure subsection, you describe each step in how the research was conducted. You should summarize how participants were divided into groups, the instructions given to the participants, and essentially what the subject experienced while participating in your study.

For correlational studies or longitudinal studies, a separate subsection called "Measures" is added to the Procedure section of the paper. In this section, the authors list the names of the measures used to assess different variables (usually questionnaires) in the study. In describing the questionnaires, authors usually include information about the measure’s reliability and validity. The authors should cite the individual or individuals who created the measure. Also, a description of subscales and a few sample items are included to give the reader an idea about the measure’s content. For example: Depressive symptoms. Adolescent depressive symptoms were assessed by a 20-item questionnaire developed by Johnson (1980).

Many researchers combine the last two subsections into a Measures and Procedures subsection, especially if their measures or apparatus are not complicated. See the sample experimental report for an example of a Method section.