An empirical psychology thesis, at honors or master's level, reports one study or a small set of studies the way a journal article does: an introduction that ends in hypotheses, a method section someone else could repeat, results with the statistics in full, and a discussion that stays within what the data show. This page goes through each part, the ethics review that comes before data collection, how to report statistics precisely, and what an advisor and committee read for.
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Each department guide quoted on this page asks for APA style in some form, and most of them for a research report shaped like a journal article. At East Tennessee State University, the honors program puts it plainly: “The thesis should be considered a manuscript that may be submitted for publication in a scholarly journal.” St. Mary's University in Calgary asks its honours students for a manuscript in the format of a typical research article that complies with APA standards.
Master's programs vary more. The University of Bergen's master's thesis in psychology can be handed in as an article manuscript with a separate thesis summary, or in a longer thesis format with a broader literature review and a more in-depth discussion than a journal article has room for. If you are still deciding between a thesis and other final projects, see the page on the senior thesis.
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Get a free previewConnecticut College's psychology department lists the order of an honors thesis, with two lines that sum up the core: “Introduction (includes literature review and hypotheses)” and “Method (includes participants/subjects, apparatus/measures, procedure)”. The table below follows that APA order.
| Section | What goes in it | What a reader checks |
|---|---|---|
| Abstract | Question, sample, design, main results with the key statistics, main conclusion | Do the numbers match the Results section? |
| Introduction | The literature that leads to your question, then the hypotheses | Does each hypothesis follow from the studies you cite? |
| Method: participants | Who took part, how they were recruited, exclusions and the reasons | Do the numbers add up from recruitment to analysis? |
| Method: measures | Each instrument, what it measures, its reliability in this sample | Is each construct in the hypotheses measured here? |
| Method: procedure and analysis plan | What happened in what order; which test answers which hypothesis | Could someone repeat the study from this description? |
| Results | Descriptive statistics, assumption checks, the test for each hypothesis, effect sizes | Is every hypothesis tested, in the order stated? |
| Discussion | What the results mean for each hypothesis, limitations, implications | Do the claims stay within the data? |
A hypothesis in a psychology thesis usually names the variables, the expected direction of the effect, and the population. "Mindfulness affects stress" leaves the direction and the comparison open; "Students who complete the four-week program will report lower perceived stress than a waitlist group" can be tested and can fail.
The analysis belongs in the plan as well. The University of Guelph's psychology department lists questionable research practices (QRPs) such as deciding after the fact how to handle outliers, missing data, or violated assumptions, and adds: “You can avoid these QRPs by constructing a formal data analysis plan that concretely addresses all decisions.” Preregistration fixes that plan in a time-stamped record, often public, before the data are collected or analyzed. At Bergen, students in the master's program who prepare a preregistration of data collection and analysis may hand in a shorter project outline with the preregistration attached.
Tests you didn't plan are allowed if you label them. Guelph's guidance is short: “Exploratory analysis should be reported as exploratory.” A hypothesis that appears in the introduction only after you saw the data is the problem known as HARKing (hypothesizing after the results are known).
Any study with human participants needs ethics review before the first participant takes part, and the timing belongs in your plan. At St. Mary's University in Calgary: “If collecting data from humans, students will need to apply for ethics approval and be approved before conducting their research in the Winter term.” At East Tennessee State, the thesis proposal comes with the IRB paperwork: “If human subjects are to be used, preliminary submission materials for the IRB should be developed as well.”
At the University of Oslo, privacy and ethics are separate steps. Its guidelines for the master's thesis in psychology state: “All projects with person data must be reported to SIKT: Norwegian Agency for Shared Services in Education and Research at the latest 30 days before the data collection starts.” SIKT assesses data handling and privacy, not research ethics; clinical projects and projects on health and sensitive themes should also get advice from the regional ethics committee (REK) before data collection starts. In the thesis itself, the method section names the approving body and the approval or reference number, and describes consent, debriefing where there was deception, and how the data were stored.
A p-value is the probability of obtaining data at least as extreme as yours if the null hypothesis, and every assumption of the test, were true. It is not the probability that the null hypothesis is true, and it is not the probability that your result is due to chance. A p below .05 doesn't prove the hypothesis, and a p above .05 doesn't show that there is no effect: a small sample can miss a real effect of moderate size.
A p-value also says nothing about how large an effect is. Guelph's department, citing the American Statistical Association's position that conclusions should not rest on p-values alone, asks for more: “Consequently, effect sizes (raw or standardized) with confidence intervals should be reported for each hypothesis.” The confidence interval shows how precisely the effect was estimated. A wide interval that runs from about zero to a large effect means the study can't tell those apart.
The University of Oslo lists the criteria its committees use for the master's thesis in psychology. One of them is “Discussion of results; related to the research question and choice of methods”. In practice, that means each claim in the discussion should point back to a result and to a design that can carry it. For the general difference between the two chapters, see results vs. discussion.
Gaps to look for between results and discussion in a psychology thesis: a non-significant result described as "no effect"; a correlational design followed by causal language ("social media use increases anxiety"); a benchmark label ("a large effect") with no comparison to effects in the same research area; conclusions about "people" from a sample of psychology undergraduates; a hypothesis called "proven".
Who reads the thesis differs by program: at East Tennessee State, the thesis mentor and the thesis readers approve an honors thesis; at the University of Oslo, a master's thesis in psychology goes to an examination committee. Some departments build in staged drafts. Connecticut College, for instance, has students send a complete introduction and method section to the advisor and two readers, then the results and a full draft to the committee at set points before the final deadline. The third column of the table above shows what those readers look for in each section.
This example is made up; the student, study, and numbers are fictional. An honors student tests whether two weeks of gratitude journaling lower perceived stress compared with a control group. The method section reports 52 students recruited; an independent-samples t-test in the results gives t(46) = 1.20, p = .24, d = 0.35, 95% CI [-0.22, 0.92] (positive values mean lower stress in the journaling group). A careful reader would flag three things:
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In the department guides quoted on this page, an empirical psychology thesis follows the APA research report: title page, abstract, introduction ending in hypotheses, method (participants, measures, procedure, analysis plan), results, discussion, references, and appendices. Some master's programs, such as Bergen's, also accept an article manuscript with a separate thesis summary. Your department's guidelines decide which form applies.
The sections are the same; the scale differs. A doctoral dissertation in psychology often reports several studies, each with its own method and results, framed by a general introduction and a general discussion.
Not always. Some departments encourage or accept it, and a preregistration can stand in for parts of the proposal in some master's programs. Even without one, a dated analysis plan agreed with your advisor before data collection gives you a record to point to when your committee asks about analytic choices.
Usually both. APA style expects the test statistic, degrees of freedom, and exact p-value, and some departments, such as Guelph's, also ask for effect sizes with confidence intervals for each hypothesis. Ask your advisor which conventions your committee follows.
Report them in full, with effect sizes and confidence intervals, and discuss what the interval allows. A non-significant result is not evidence of no effect unless the interval is narrow around zero. Expect questions about power and sample size in this case.
Read on November 7, 2026.
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