The Importance of Research Writing in Psychology

Psychology is a science and not an art. It fascinates me when students debate over how they can make their report more 'attractive.'This is a very poor objective, for the essence of a good report is its communicative ability and not the creativity of the report writer. 

Try an exercise of empathy here. Imagine you are a researcher who has decided to investigate the impact of regular smoking on female adolescents. Now, as a first step in your research, you will look at past studies done in this area, to find out how much is already known, and gauge what is still desired to be known. Suppose you find fifty relevant, published articles on this topic.Now imagine these were all written in different formats, and every writer had decided for him/herself how much to report and how much to omit. You find that some reports cover fifty pages of narratives including the writer's own opinions and struggles with the topic; while others complete the entire report in two paragraphs, only including the highlights of the procedure and the statistical results.  Suddenly, research seems to be a very chaotic enterprise, doesn't it?

What is the purpose of a research report?

This is key knowledge in understanding why reports have such defined formats. A researcher can very well publish only what he has found in his/her research in a single sentence so that others can know the present state of various topics. Yet, the APA format demands that the researcher include his/her aims, hypotheses, sample characteristics, etc. This is because interested peer researchers, publishers, consumers, etc. need to know about how and why the research was conducted. How else will they know whether the research has desired quality?; whether research funds are being wisely utilized?; whether the research is contributing to the existing knowledge of the subject? Besides, future researchers need complete details of studies conducted earlier so that they can detect exactly what factors were lacking, or which factors can be varied to cover the gap in research. Students benefit from knowing the details of research so that they know exactly how they must go about conducting studies in future. 

The APA format of research writing

I do not intend to discuss how to follow the APA format here. I am reserving that for another post. Every scientific study has its gold standard of writing a report. For Psychology, this is the APA format. If a researcher wants his/her study to even be considered for publication, (s)he must adhere to this format. The advantage of doing this assures a standardization of reports across researchers. For the reader, this is extremely useful, as (s)he can quickly get the most out of the report, and compare aims, methods and results across reports. The details that a researcher must present in a report are also standardized, ensuring that the publishers can make a thorough check on the quality of articles presented to them.

How do research reports contribute to Psychology?

I would call these reports the backbone of the field. As I've mentioned in several posts previously, research is the foundation of theory in psychology which goes further into application. Without these reports, we would not have solid theories, and what would we do in practice then?

How does report writing benefit me as a student?

 If the aforementioned reasons still do not answer your question, understand that as a student research will answer many questions of the topics you learn about. For example, when you read about the factors that contribute to job satisfaction, understand that these factors have been determined through research. Sometimes, you will be asked to read some of the original research papers that have helped these determinations, and being able to write reports, means being able to read them correctly.

When you perform Practicals at the introductory level, you are expected to report your findings. These reports help you to make sense out of your own data, and understand what you are achieving. As you move to higher levels, you are expected to perform more complex tests and experiments, till the point where you have to prepare your own dissertation. With good performance on writing reports at the base level, report writing will become much easier at these higher levels.

Last but not the least, for students whose interest is restricted to obtaining marks on the examination, report writing is one of those areas which once understood, guarantees easy marks for it is a technical skill not dependent on memorization of explicit facts.