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Academic Paper: Introduction

6 min read • march 12, 2023

Dylan Black

Introduction (Pun Very Much Intended )

Time to start writing! As with most papers, the first section that you'll be expected to write for your academic paper is your introduction. "What's the point of the intro?" you may ask. Well, as the title of the section implies, the introduction is meant to introduce your paper and establish your narrow topic of inquiry with some basic introduction to the content matter.

It's important in AP® Research to remember that your audience will most likely know less about your specific topic than you do. After all, your research will most likely be so niche and narrow that you will be an expert on it by the time you're done with the class. Therefore, not only does the introduction serve to explain in brief terms what your research topic is and what your paper accomplishes, but it also gives context to your reader as to the larger scope of your issue, slowly but surely narrowing into your topic of inquiry. It's important to note that your introduction is not a mini-lit review. Your introduction can stay relatively broad, explaining the surrounding scope, while still explaining that you are studying a more specific aspect of a topic.

🔥 Pro Tip: Even if you are writing for an audience with way more knowledge than you, giving context is important because it establishes tone, credibility, and makes sure that your readers know what to expect. Think of the introduction as a movie trailer, but for your paper.

Your introduction will also outline the goals of your project and what you hope to accomplish by performing your research. In essence, what are you going to do? Without further ado, let's dive right in!

How to Write a Introduction

What makes a great intro great.

I'll be honest, the introduction is not a particularly difficult part of the paper to write, nor a particularly long one (we'll get into word counts a bit later). The introduction serves very specific key purposes that, if done well, make for an amazing start to a hopefully even more amazing paper.

Image from GIPHY .

Background Info / Context

Arguably the most important function of an introduction is to establish the larger context around your research question. The way to do this is by outlining the big ideas of your paper in a similar fashion to how you idealized your topic of inquiry as described in the previous guide. Starting broad and explaining the big ideas and then slowly explaining how this connects to your eventual narrow focus. Supporting this funneling of ideas can be tricky, but necessary. This is because introducing your big ideas provides context to your readers that is instrumental in understanding your narrow topic.

Where might you get the knowledge/content for your context? Well, the answer is pretty simple. Remember all that little-r research you did (and hopefully are still doing 👀)? Now's the time for you to show it off and use it! Along with using your sources as information and contextual evidence, looking at the introductions of similar papers to your discipline and topic of inquiry is an excellent strategy for making sure that you're writing your paper correctly. The tough part about AP Research is that there really is no "right" way to do things for the class, but things do have to match up to your topic. For example, a historical paper might spend a lot more time on context and establishing a proper background for a specific historical event, whereas a more scientific paper might spend a little less time on context and more time outlining the goals. Different disciplines will produce different papers.

Goals of Your Project

The next function of your introduction is to outline the overall goal of your project. What is your project going to accomplish? Whether it's answering a specific research question, or proving whether or not something is effective, or any other number of goals for your research, this must be established in your introduction. By making your goal and purpose clear from the get-go, your reader knows what to expect and what everything following is meant to do.

If you introduce your paper without at least a relative understanding of what you want to achieve, your reader won't know why they are reading the information they're reading. It would be watching a game of soccer without knowing that their aim is to kick the ball into the goal. Sure, the players are kicking around the ball and it looks like they're doing it well, but why ? What's the point? Explaining this to your readers in the context of your paper is integral to your introduction.

Image from GIPHY

Breaking Down the Rubric Logistics

The rubric what the cb expects.

Before we get into what the CollegeBoard expects on your introduction,

Image from College Board .

The rubric for AP Research is . . . interesting. Taking a look at this rubric, you may see some themes across rows. First and foremost, each row takes on roughly one of the sections in the paper. The first row is your intro and some of your literature review, the second is your literature review, the third is methodological, so on and so forth. However, you many also notice that the justifications for scores of one through five are super super vague. Very little of this rubric is tied to specific content—it's fairly holistic and subjective. The reason for this is pretty simple—every single AP Research paper is different, so the CollegeBoard needs to keep things broad. This is why so much of the rubric refers more to the writing of the paper itself and not to the content. Again, teachers who are reading your paper most likely know very little, if anything, about your topic of inquiry.

The Introduction and the Rubric

The introduction is a relatively small part of your paper, but it plays an incredibly important role, providing a larger context about the relevancy and the importance of your research and explaining the overall point of it. This corresponds mostly to row one of the rubric, though realistically the introduction doesn't really have a row of its own. Let's get a closer look.

This row primarily focuses on how narrow your topic of inquiry is presented. To move from a 1 to a 5, you'll need to express a clear, narrow topic. While the introduction is never explicitly mentioned, the explanation of your purpose and topic of inquiry starts there and if you don't address it, it will weaken your paper. Your method and conclusion play a role in this too: Your method explains how you plan on achieving your purpose and why it will do so, and your conclusion answers your research question or explains how effectively your paper served its purpose. -----

Final Thoughts

At this point you should be armed and ready to take on your introduction! The introduction, while short and quick to write, is one of the most important components to your research paper, because it sets up everything else! Think of it like a race. Even if you run a perfect race, if you trip at the very beginning, you'll be off from the get go. However, if you start sprinting the second the starting gun fires, you're sure to win. That's not to say you should focus 110% of your effort on the introduction—in fact, sections like the literature review are just as important as the content of your paper—but it is to say that you should make sure that your introduction explicitly has the things that we talked about earlier: a clear and narrow focus with broad context and an explanation of the purpose of your paper. With these tools in hand, you should be set to write the best introduction AP Research has ever seen!

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• APA Style 7th edition
• How to write an APA methods section

How to Write an APA Methods Section | With Examples

Published on February 5, 2021 by Pritha Bhandari . Revised on June 22, 2023.

The methods section of an APA style paper is where you report in detail how you performed your study. Research papers in the social and natural sciences often follow APA style. This article focuses on reporting quantitative research methods .

In your APA methods section, you should report enough information to understand and replicate your study, including detailed information on the sample , measures, and procedures used.

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Table of contents

Structuring an apa methods section.

Participants

Example of an APA methods section

Other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about writing an apa methods section.

The main heading of “Methods” should be centered, boldfaced, and capitalized. Subheadings within this section are left-aligned, boldfaced, and in title case. You can also add lower level headings within these subsections, as long as they follow APA heading styles .

To structure your methods section, you can use the subheadings of “Participants,” “Materials,” and “Procedures.” These headings are not mandatory—aim to organize your methods section using subheadings that make sense for your specific study.

Note that not all of these topics will necessarily be relevant for your study. For example, if you didn’t need to consider outlier removal or ways of assigning participants to different conditions, you don’t have to report these steps.

The APA also provides specific reporting guidelines for different types of research design. These tell you exactly what you need to report for longitudinal designs , replication studies, experimental designs , and so on. If your study uses a combination design, consult APA guidelines for mixed methods studies.

Detailed descriptions of procedures that don’t fit into your main text can be placed in supplemental materials (for example, the exact instructions and tasks given to participants, the full analytical strategy including software code, or additional figures and tables).

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Begin the methods section by reporting sample characteristics, sampling procedures, and the sample size.

Participant or subject characteristics

When discussing people who participate in research, descriptive terms like “participants,” “subjects” and “respondents” can be used. For non-human animal research, “subjects” is more appropriate.

Specify all relevant demographic characteristics of your participants. This may include their age, sex, ethnic or racial group, gender identity, education level, and socioeconomic status. Depending on your study topic, other characteristics like educational or immigration status or language preference may also be relevant.

Be sure to report these characteristics as precisely as possible. This helps the reader understand how far your results may be generalized to other people.

The APA guidelines emphasize writing about participants using bias-free language , so it’s necessary to use inclusive and appropriate terms.

Sampling procedures

Outline how the participants were selected and all inclusion and exclusion criteria applied. Appropriately identify the sampling procedure used. For example, you should only label a sample as random  if you had access to every member of the relevant population.

Of all the people invited to participate in your study, note the percentage that actually did (if you have this data). Additionally, report whether participants were self-selected, either by themselves or by their institutions (e.g., schools may submit student data for research purposes).

Identify any compensation (e.g., course credits or money) that was provided to participants, and mention any institutional review board approvals and ethical standards followed.

Sample size and power

Detail the sample size (per condition) and statistical power that you hoped to achieve, as well as any analyses you performed to determine these numbers.

It’s important to show that your study had enough statistical power to find effects if there were any to be found.

Additionally, state whether your final sample differed from the intended sample. Your interpretations of the study outcomes should be based only on your final sample rather than your intended sample.

Write up the tools and techniques that you used to measure relevant variables. Be as thorough as possible for a complete picture of your techniques.

Primary and secondary measures

Define the primary and secondary outcome measures that will help you answer your primary and secondary research questions.

Specify all instruments used in gathering these measurements and the construct that they measure. These instruments may include hardware, software, or tests, scales, and inventories.

• To cite hardware, indicate the model number and manufacturer.
• To cite common software (e.g., Qualtrics), state the full name along with the version number or the website URL .
• To cite tests, scales or inventories, reference its manual or the article it was published in. It’s also helpful to state the number of items and provide one or two example items.

Make sure to report the settings of (e.g., screen resolution) any specialized apparatus used.

For each instrument used, report measures of the following:

• Reliability : how consistently the method measures something, in terms of internal consistency or test-retest reliability.
• Validity : how precisely the method measures something, in terms of construct validity  or criterion validity .

Giving an example item or two for tests, questionnaires , and interviews is also helpful.

Describe any covariates—these are any additional variables that may explain or predict the outcomes.

Quality of measurements

Review all methods you used to assure the quality of your measurements.

These may include:

• training researchers to collect data reliably,
• using multiple people to assess (e.g., observe or code) the data,
• translation and back-translation of research materials,
• using pilot studies to test your materials on unrelated samples.

For data that’s subjectively coded (for example, classifying open-ended responses), report interrater reliability scores. This tells the reader how similarly each response was rated by multiple raters.

Report all of the procedures applied for administering the study, processing the data, and for planned data analyses.

Data collection methods and research design

Data collection methods refers to the general mode of the instruments: surveys, interviews, observations, focus groups, neuroimaging, cognitive tests, and so on. Summarize exactly how you collected the necessary data.

Describe all procedures you applied in administering surveys, tests, physical recordings, or imaging devices, with enough detail so that someone else can replicate your techniques. If your procedures are very complicated and require long descriptions (e.g., in neuroimaging studies), place these details in supplementary materials.

To report research design, note your overall framework for data collection and analysis. State whether you used an experimental, quasi-experimental, descriptive (observational), correlational, and/or longitudinal design. Also note whether a between-subjects or a within-subjects design was used.

For multi-group studies, report the following design and procedural details as well:

• how participants were assigned to different conditions (e.g., randomization),
• instructions given to the participants in each group,
• interventions for each group,
• the setting and length of each session(s).

Describe whether any masking was used to hide the condition assignment (e.g., placebo or medication condition) from participants or research administrators. Using masking in a multi-group study ensures internal validity by reducing research bias . Explain how this masking was applied and whether its effectiveness was assessed.

Participants were randomly assigned to a control or experimental condition. The survey was administered using Qualtrics (https://www.qualtrics.com). To begin, all participants were given the AAI and a demographics questionnaire to complete, followed by an unrelated filler task. In the control condition , participants completed a short general knowledge test immediately after the filler task. In the experimental condition, participants were asked to visualize themselves taking the test for 3 minutes before they actually did. For more details on the exact instructions and tasks given, see supplementary materials.

Data diagnostics

Outline all steps taken to scrutinize or process the data after collection.

This includes the following:

• Procedures for identifying and removing outliers
• Data transformations to normalize distributions
• Compensation strategies for overcoming missing values

To ensure high validity, you should provide enough detail for your reader to understand how and why you processed or transformed your raw data in these specific ways.

Analytic strategies

The methods section is also where you describe your statistical analysis procedures, but not their outcomes. Their outcomes are reported in the results section.

These procedures should be stated for all primary, secondary, and exploratory hypotheses. While primary and secondary hypotheses are based on a theoretical framework or past studies, exploratory hypotheses are guided by the data you’ve just collected.

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This annotated example reports methods for a descriptive correlational survey on the relationship between religiosity and trust in science in the US. Hover over each part for explanation of what is included.

The sample included 879 adults aged between 18 and 28. More than half of the participants were women (56%), and all participants had completed at least 12 years of education. Ethics approval was obtained from the university board before recruitment began. Participants were recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk; www.mturk.com). We selected for a geographically diverse sample within the Midwest of the US through an initial screening survey. Participants were paid USD $5 upon completion of the study.

A sample size of at least 783 was deemed necessary for detecting a correlation coefficient of ±.1, with a power level of 80% and a significance level of .05, using a sample size calculator (www.sample-size.net/correlation-sample-size/).

The primary outcome measures were the levels of religiosity and trust in science. Religiosity refers to involvement and belief in religious traditions, while trust in science represents confidence in scientists and scientific research outcomes. The secondary outcome measures were gender and parental education levels of participants and whether these characteristics predicted religiosity levels.

Religiosity

Religiosity was measured using the Centrality of Religiosity scale (Huber, 2003). The Likert scale is made up of 15 questions with five subscales of ideology, experience, intellect, public practice, and private practice. An example item is “How often do you experience situations in which you have the feeling that God or something divine intervenes in your life?” Participants were asked to indicate frequency of occurrence by selecting a response ranging from 1 (very often) to 5 (never). The internal consistency of the instrument is .83 (Huber & Huber, 2012).

Trust in Science

Trust in science was assessed using the General Trust in Science index (McCright, Dentzman, Charters & Dietz, 2013). Four Likert scale items were assessed on a scale from 1 (completely distrust) to 5 (completely trust). An example question asks “How much do you distrust or trust scientists to create knowledge that is unbiased and accurate?” Internal consistency was .8.

Potential participants were invited to participate in the survey online using Qualtrics (www.qualtrics.com). The survey consisted of multiple choice questions regarding demographic characteristics, the Centrality of Religiosity scale, an unrelated filler anagram task, and finally the General Trust in Science index. The filler task was included to avoid priming or demand characteristics, and an attention check was embedded within the religiosity scale. For full instructions and details of tasks, see supplementary materials.

For this correlational study , we assessed our primary hypothesis of a relationship between religiosity and trust in science using Pearson moment correlation coefficient. The statistical significance of the correlation coefficient was assessed using a t test. To test our secondary hypothesis of parental education levels and gender as predictors of religiosity, multiple linear regression analysis was used.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Normal distribution
• Measures of central tendency
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles

Methodology

• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Thematic analysis
• Cohort study
• Peer review
• Ethnography

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Conformity bias
• Hawthorne effect
• Availability heuristic
• Attrition bias
• Social desirability bias

In your APA methods section , you should report detailed information on the participants, materials, and procedures used.

• Describe all relevant participant or subject characteristics, the sampling procedures used and the sample size and power .
• Define all primary and secondary measures and discuss the quality of measurements.
• Specify the data collection methods, the research design and data analysis strategy, including any steps taken to transform the data and statistical analyses.

You should report methods using the past tense , even if you haven’t completed your study at the time of writing. That’s because the methods section is intended to describe completed actions or research.

In a scientific paper, the methodology always comes after the introduction and before the results , discussion and conclusion . The same basic structure also applies to a thesis, dissertation , or research proposal .

Depending on the length and type of document, you might also include a literature review or theoretical framework before the methodology.

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Bhandari, P. (2023, June 22). How to Write an APA Methods Section | With Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved April 16, 2024, from https://www.scribbr.com/apa-style/methods-section/

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