You will start the body of your paper with a brief description of past findings on your topic (one or two paragraphs) and another paragraph will describe the hypothesis or hypotheses to be tested in your study. This is considered the introduction portion of your paper.
1) Then describe the participants in the study-the number of subjects, where and how the sample of individuals were selected, and ethnic, racial, gender, age descriptions (if available). Other pertinent descriptive information (usually in percentages) should be included.
2) Then summarize the materials and questionnaires employed in the study and the procedure involved. Give specifics about how the experiment(s) was conducted, for example, were subjects given a personality test at different stages of their lives? How were they tested? Which instruments were used and why?
3) Give a summary of the results statistically. Were there statistically differences between the groups being studied? What statistics were used? Provide findings and level of significance (For example, an ANOVA was conducted with F (2,20) = 6. 40, p<.05) You need to understand what groups are being compared and how, before you write this section.
4) In your discussion section, discuss the implications of the results and how the findings relate to previous research. Tell me, from your point of view, why these results are important.
5) Critically evaluate the experiment from your viewpoint as well as the authors. In your judgment, what were the strengths and weaknesses of the study and how would YOU improve upon the research in future work?