How to Design and Report Experiments

Andy Field is Professor of Quantitative Methods at the University of Sussex. He has published widely (100+ research papers, 29 book chapters, and 17 books in various editions) in the areas of child anxiety and psychological methods and statistics. His current research interests focus on barriers to learning mathematics and statistics.He is internationally known as a statistics educator. He has written several widely used statistics textbooks including Discovering Statistics Using IBM SPSS Statistics (winner of the 2007 British Psychological Society book award), Discovering Statistics Using R, and An Adventure in Statistics (shortlisted for the British Psychological Society book award, 2017; British Book Design and Production Awards, primary, secondary and tertiary education category, 2016; and the Association of Learned & Professional Society Publishers Award for innovation in publishing, 2016), which teaches statistics through a fictional narrative and uses graphic novel elements. He has also written the adventr and discovr packages for the statistics software R that teach statistics and R through interactive tutorials.His uncontrollable enthusiasm for teaching statistics to psychologists has led to teaching awards from the University of Sussex (2001, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019), the British Psychological Society (2006) and a prestigious UK National Teaching fellowship (2010).He′s done the usual academic things: had grants, been on editorial boards, done lots of admin/service but he finds it tedious trying to remember this stuff. None of them matter anyway because in the unlikely event that you′ve ever heard of him it′ll be as the ′Stats book guy′. In his spare time, he plays the drums very noisily in a heavy metal band, and walks his cocker spaniel, both of which he finds therapeutic.

• PART ONE: DESIGNING AN EXPERIMENTBefore You BeginPlanning an ExperimentExperimental DesignsPART TWO: ANALYZING AND INTERPRETING DATADescriptive StatisticsInferential StatisticsParametric TestsNon-Parametric TestsChoosing a Statistical TestPART THREE: WRITING UP YOUR RESEARCHA Quick Guide to Writing a Psychology Lab-ReportGeneral Points When Writing a ReportAnswering the Question ′Why?′The Introduction SectionAnswering the Question ′How?′The Method SectionAnswering the Question ′What Did I Find?′The Results SectionAnswering the Question ′So What?′The Discussion SectionTitle, Abstract, Reference and FormattingExample of an Experimental Write-up

This book is highly recommended for Undergraduate and Postgraduate students and even trainee clinical psychologists who need a quick revision of statistical concepts and experimental designs. My only regret was not purchasing this book during my early Undergraduate years, I have read and re-read countless books on the same phenomena, and despite the detail these books comprise of, they have never been able to impact on me the way this book has. Without sounding too much like a cliché’, if your only ever going to buy one statistical and research book, it has to be this one. Consider this the bible of all things statistically related! M. LPsych Me Up! I strongly recommend this book. The all-important steps of defining the research question and choosing an appropriate method are clearly written by these experienced authors and by doing so provide a framework, which if followed, would avoid many of the common difficulties encountered by those in training. The book is a succinct, clear, and readable treatise on this extremely important area. It should prove to be invaluable to researchers, practicing social scientists, students and anyone involved in the design and reporting of experiments Social Psychological Review