Results Reporting for a
Social Psychology Experiment

RESEARCH QUESTION

What the Study Set Out to Test

This APA results reporting example follows a social psychology group that has finished a preregistered online experiment on whether an imagined-contact message reduces prejudice toward an outgroup, and whether the effect depends on prior contact. The analysis has been run, and the group needs it reported for a journal in APA 7 style.

The need is a results section and supporting tables that report every preregistered test, show effects with their uncertainty, and state honestly where the analysis departed from the plan. The group writes the paper. OnlineSPSS checks the numbers against the output and prepares the tables, figures and statistical wording for the methods and results, matched to the output, for the group to check and incorporate.

STUDY DESIGN AND DATA

A Preregistered Experiment With a Moderator

A two-condition online experiment with about 400 participants after exclusions. The dataset holds the randomized condition, prior contact measured before randomization, one primary attitude scale, two further outcomes and an attention check taken after the message. Because prior contact was measured before the message, the message could not have changed it.

METHOD AND ASSUMPTIONS

Reporting the Interaction as It Was Planned

The preregistered question is whether the condition effect depends on prior contact, so the primary test is the interaction term in a regression with prior contact centered, run in SPSS with the PROCESS macro, model 1. Simple slopes are reported after the interaction, not as separate subgroup tests, because comparing significant and non-significant subgroups is not a test of a difference. The two further outcomes are corrected as a family.

Reporting checks what was planned against what was done. Exclusion rates are shown by condition, results are repeated without exclusions, and each deviation is listed: for instance, an attention-check rule that needs clarifying after data collection, or a log transformation for one skewed outcome. The report separates confirmatory results from exploratory ones, and it states how the sample size relates to the effects it could detect, not only whether the interaction was significant.

OUTPUT AND INTERPRETATION

What the Written Results Contain

The results section reports the condition effect and the interaction with unstandardized coefficients, 95% confidence intervals and an effect size with its interval, in APA 7 numeric format. A figure shows the predicted attitude by condition at low, average and high prior contact, with confidence bands, and a table gives the simple slopes with their intervals, so a reader can judge size and precision, not just significance.

The wording describes the condition effect as an effect of the randomized message and the moderation as a difference in that effect across levels of a measured variable, which is not itself randomized. If the interval for the interaction is wide, the text says that the data are compatible with a range of patterns. Interpretation of what the findings mean for theory, and the discussion section, remain with the researchers.

REPORTING

What the Researcher Received

APA 7 tables and figures aligned to JARS-Quant, statistical wording for the methods and results, matched to the output, and a list of preregistration deviations, for the group to check and incorporate. The research question, interpretation, discussion and conclusions remain with the research team, who also remain the authors.