Writing a Concise Introduction to a Psychology Journal Article: An Article Deconstruction

I often talk about article deconstruction as a useful method for extracting principles for writing journal articles. The following is an article deconstruction of the introduction section of Fujita and Diener (2005). The writing principles extracted may be relevant to others writing introductions to journal articles in psychology.

How to convert manual APA references to Endnote references in Word

When collaborating on a journal article with colleagues I sometimes get Word documents that have manually formatted references. I often want to convert the manual references to Endnote references. The following post discusses a workflow for doing this.

Export from Endnote to BibTeX, JabRef, and LaTeX

This post sets out a procedure that I used to migrate a large set of Endnote references in a Word Document to a Latex document with BibTeX references in JabRef. In particular, it sets out (1) how to export an Endnote database into BibTeX format ready for inclusion in a LaTeX document; and (2) how to modify an existing document with Endnote citations into a document that cites the BibTeX database.

How to Write Predictions and Hypotheses in Psychological Research Reports

This post discusses the topic of predictions in psychological research. The main aim of the post is to provide assistance to researchers who are in the process of writing their predictions in a thesis, lab report, or journal article. The post: (a) provides an overview of the purpose of prediction in empirical reports; (b) discusses properties of predictions, such as the rationale, research question, and relationship with researcher belief; (c) discusses types of prediction, including abstract versus operational, qualitative versus quantitative, and single versus grouped; and (d) presents ideas about how to write about predictions in the introduction of an empirical report.

How to Write the Introduction Section in Psychology: Theses, Lab Reports, and Journal Articles

This post discusses how to write an effective introduction in a psychological empirical report, including lab reports, theses, and journal articles. It discusses: (1) the overall purpose of the introduction; (2) the different elements of the introduction, including the opening, literature review, and the current study; (3) issues associated with main and transitional introductions in multiple study investigations; and (4) provides links to additional resources on writing introductions.

Writing a Method Section in Psychology: Lab Reports, Theses, Articles

This post discusses how to write a method section in psychology. It has relevance to writing journal articles, theses, and lab reports. It includes discussion of: (a) key elements to include in each section; (b) specific issues to consider; and (c) links to online and offline resources.

Article Deconstruction: How to Write a Method Section in Psychology

The following post applies an approach that I call article deconstruction to extract principles for writing a Method section in a psychological empirical report. The post aims to both extract useful principles for writing a Method section and to demonstrate how article deconstruction can be applied to writing challenges in scientific psychology. It builds on my other post discussing general principles and resources for writing a method.

Tips for Writing Up Research in Psychology

This post provides a list of links on writing in psychology with a particular emphasis on writing results sections.

How to Write a Literature Review in Psychology

This post presents a set of principles on what makes a good literature review. The principles aim to assist students who are writing a literature review. Researchers preparing an academic publication may also find them a useful refresher. The principles pertain to dedicated literature reviews and introduction sections of empirical reports.

Classifying the Status of a Document with Quality Codes

I find it useful when preparing a journal article or thesis to think about the status of each section in terms of a rating from 0 to 10. I call this rating the quality code. To give the coding system substance each code has a label and a description. The codes and their groupings are listed below:

Grammar of Tables | Tables for Results Sections - Journal Articles and Theses

This post discusses ways of thinking about tables. What is the basic conceptual structure of a table? What are the implications of this conceptual structure for communicating with tables? How can this improve the quality of results presented in journal articles and theses?

Statistics and Basic Data Analysis: Summary of Earlier Posts

I've recently activated Feedburner. It has not included my posts prior to March 2009. Thus, this post lists these earlier posts for any interested readers.

Statistics:

• Formatting correlation matrices into psychological format using SPSS, Excel and Word
• One-group observational study: Basic set of analyses with links to SPSS resources
• Longitudinal data: Basic data management and analyses
• dyadic data: Basic data analysis and how to merge data in SPSS in dyadic data situations.
• Carry-over effects in repeated measures designs: what to think about and a case study from my own research
• Issues of causal inference in mediation analysis and basic resources for performing mediation and moderation analyses.

Writing:

• How to import references from Google Scholar into Endnote
• Books on writing style

And to put first things last:

• my first post.

Introduction to Journal Article Deconstruction

One of the most powerful strategies that I use to learn how to write journal articles is to consciously study the writing conventions of good journal articles. I often want to communicate this strategy to other researchers who are battling the process of writing research. This is particularly the case with results sections. Thus, I plan to post various case studies using this approach to demonstrate how it works. Perhaps the principles generated from the deconstruction will also be relevant to others. I'll post all such instances with the label Article Deconstruction.

Pen and Paper

For a long while I did almost all my thinking and writing either in my head or on the computer. More and more lately I find myself returning to pen and paper.
Examples:

Books on Writing, Grammar, and Style in Psychology and Beyond

This post lists some books on academic writing, which I've found useful.

Avoiding typing references into Endnote using Google Scholar

This post provides a tip for using Google Scholar to make importing references more efficient.