APA Results Section: Full Guide + Tips + Example

The APA results section is a part of a research paper where the findings and statistical analyses are presented. You should briefly summarize the research outcomes stivking to specific APA style guidelines.

By now you probably have conducted your research and all that’s left is to share your findings in APA Results section. American Psychological Association has established multiple rules for designing your research outcomes. Chances are that you have numerous questions regarding this part of a paper, but only a limited time to find any sound answers. That’s why we have prepared this quick guide. Keep reading and find out what goes in the Result section and how to properly format it in APA writing style.

APA Results Section: Basics

APA Results section is a part of a research paper where scientists share their findings. After all, it is impossible to tell otherwise about the work’s significance. There is no need to elaborate on your research topic. Rather it just focuses on statistics and numerical data.

APA Results section should provide data that answers your research question. Here’s what you should include in this part of a paper:

You should maintain a consistent structure and offer an easy-to-follow flow of ideas. It’s usually written using the past tense. You must present the outcomes of a study that has already been finished.

How to Write Results Section: APA

When designing an APA format Results section, you should work out each block step by step. Let us walk you through each stage of the writing process:

Note that these details should only be summarized. Keep interpretations for your Discussion section.

Preliminary Discussion in Your APA Results Section

APA Results section of a research paper should start with a brief reminder. Briefly restate your main goal and hypotheses that you wanted to test. (We have the whole blog on how to write a hypothesis.) Then, you should mention a number of participants, excluded data (if there is any) and adverse effects.

Report how many people participated in your research. A number of participants may vary depending on each stage of your study. This being said, you should explain the reasons for attrition to ensure internal validity.

Your research depends much on how complete your data is. But sometimes, you might lack some necessary equipment or have things going the way you don’t expect. That’s why you should inform your readers about any missing data and reasons behind this. If it’s a clinical research, you should also report any side effects that have happened.

Pay extra attention to reporting style, as you must convince readers that your research was conducted according to set conditions. Without this, it won’t be possible to achieve a desired result.

Wonder how to cite a report APA? We have a special blog that contains all rules with every detail.

APA Results Section: Summarize Your Data Analysis

Writing the APA results section relies on preparing an explanation of your outcomes. Dry statistics isn’t your best option. Instead, you should make a descriptive analysis of data that you have collected. Introduce descriptive statistics for each type of analysis – preliminary, secondary and subgroup one.

Make sure you properly report descriptive statistics in your APA Results section. The means of reporting may vary depending on the nature of your data and conditions.


Means of reporting data

Presentation format