Psychology lab report: discussion
time to complete: 10 minutes
Let’s now turn to the discussion section of the same lab report from psychology. We have one final task for you to practise identifying important features.
Task 14: Look at the extract from the discussion section. Can you identify the following elements:
- Linking back to the introduction
- Reporting findings
- Providing examples to illustrate your findings
- Implications of the findings
Discussion
We predicted that, as boys are observed to be involved in a greater number of traffic accidents than girls, and as this finding was probably due to poorer attention skills of boys than girls, boys should perform worse at an attention task. Our results support this prediction, showing that boys do indeed perform more worse girls at the attentions tasks, both in the distraction and no-distraction conditions. Our findings also revealed that a distraction had a greater negative impact on the boys than the girls, something that should be taken into account when considering road safety. For example, whilst a distracting billboard and a conversation with a friend might impede girl’s abilities to concentrate on the safety of the road, the same distractions would cause a more serious problem for boys. As a result, and coupled with the fact that our findings suggest that boys already have poorer attention skills than girls, boys are even more likely to make a mistake in judging the safest time to cross the road under distracting conditions.
Adapted from BAWE (no date)
Check your answers by reading the highlighted sentences and think how they belong to the particular elements:
- Linking back to the introduction
- Reporting findings
- Providing examples to illustrate your findings
- Implications of the findings
Discussion
We predicted that, as boys are observed to be involved in a greater number of traffic accidents than girls, and as this finding was probably due to poorer attention skills of boys than girls, boys should perform worse at an attention task. Our results support this prediction, showing that boys do indeed perform more worse girls at the attentions tasks, both in the distraction and no-distraction conditions. Our findings also revealed that a distraction had a greater negative impact on the boys than the girls, something that should be taken into account when considering road safety. For example, whilst a distracting billboard and a conversation with a friend might impede girl’s abilities to concentrate on the safety of the road, the same distractions would cause a more serious problem for boys. As a result, and coupled with the fact that our findings suggest that boys already have poorer attention skills than girls, boys are even more likely to make a mistake in judging the safest time to cross the road under distracting conditions.
As you have seen, there is room for improvement in this model. Make sure that you follow the advice provided in this lesson to write good lab reports.