Vocabulary List

• Demographics: Information about a population, including characteristics like age, gender, income, education, and family size.
  
• Ethnicity: A social group with shared cultural traditions, ancestry, language, and often, a common national or regional origin.
  
• Administered: Given or provided, especially in an organized manner.
  
• Subsection: A smaller part or division within a larger group or category.
  
• Causality: The relationship between cause and effect, where one event (the cause) leads to another (the effect).
  
• Qualitative: Relating to qualities or characteristics rather than quantities or numbers.

3.1 How to Write a Methods Section

(Brigham Young University-Idaho, 2024)

The Methods section has four subsections. They should contain the following information. 

3.1.1 Participants

This section of the paper tells the reader about who participated in your study. You should include the following:

• The number of people who participated.
• The demographics of the people who participated (i.e. sex, age, ethnicity, etc.).
  • It is common to use the mean age and percentage of males and females in your study.
• How you recruited your participants (social media, classroom, emails).

3.1.2 Design

This section of the paper tells the reader how you designed your study.

• There are many different study designs. For the purpose of this course, you will be using a cross-sectional, non-experimental design. A cross-sectional design is an observational study where you will be measuring the outcome and the exposures at the same time. This is also a non-experimental design since we are not manipulating an independent variable, we are merely measuring variables as they occur.
• You should mention the variables that you are measuring such as weight, height, number of vegetables consumed per day, and so on.

3.1.3 Materials

This section of the paper tells the reader what materials you used to complete the study.

• Did participants complete an online survey, and if so, what type of survey instrument did they use (you will be using Google Forms for this course)?
• What tool(s) did you use to analyze the results of your study (you will be using Microsoft Excel for this course)?

3.1.4 Procedure

This section of the paper tells the reader how you carried out your study.

• How did the participants complete the survey (they will complete the survey online for this course)?
• Did you remind the participants to complete the survey? If so, after how many days? (You should remind the participants after three days by email.)
• Did you give the participants any specific instructions?
• How did you collect your results?
• How did you analyze your results?

3.2 Example Methods Section

(Brigham Young University-Idaho, 2024)

The following is an example Methods Section.

Methods

Participants

The participants in the study consisted of 100 Brigham Young University-Idaho students enrolled in PUBH 391 course for Fall 2023. Each student was required to take the survey. The participants consisted of 59 females (59%) and 41 males (41%). The mean age of the participants is 24.5 years. The ethnicity of the participants were 35% African, 25% Hispanic, and 40% Caucasian. 

Design

The study is a cross-sectional, non-experimental design using a convenience sample through class enrollment. Weight and height were used to compute a BMI score, as well as a sleep score computed based on participants’ answers to certain survey questions.

Materials

The survey consisted of 15 questions related to demographics and sleep habits. Participants were asked about their average sleep duration per night and bedtime routines. Additionally, the survey asked about height and weight in order to calculate BMI scores. The survey was administered through Google Forms and emailed to each participant through I-Learn. Microsoft Excel was used to analyze the results.

Procedure

The survey was designed in Google Forms and emailed to each participant through I-Learn by the PUBH 391 Instructor. A reminder email was sent three days later. The data was downloaded as a .csv file from Google Forms and analyzed using Microsoft Excel. 

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References 

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