Scientific Reports
What this handout is about.
This handout provides a general guide to writing reports about scientific research you’ve performed. In addition to describing the conventional rules about the format and content of a lab report, we’ll also attempt to convey why these rules exist, so you’ll get a clearer, more dependable idea of how to approach this writing situation. Readers of this handout may also find our handout on writing in the sciences useful.
Background and pre-writing
Why do we write research reports.
You did an experiment or study for your science class, and now you have to write it up for your teacher to review. You feel that you understood the background sufficiently, designed and completed the study effectively, obtained useful data, and can use those data to draw conclusions about a scientific process or principle. But how exactly do you write all that? What is your teacher expecting to see?
To take some of the guesswork out of answering these questions, try to think beyond the classroom setting. In fact, you and your teacher are both part of a scientific community, and the people who participate in this community tend to share the same values. As long as you understand and respect these values, your writing will likely meet the expectations of your audience—including your teacher.
So why are you writing this research report? The practical answer is “Because the teacher assigned it,” but that’s classroom thinking. Generally speaking, people investigating some scientific hypothesis have a responsibility to the rest of the scientific world to report their findings, particularly if these findings add to or contradict previous ideas. The people reading such reports have two primary goals:
- They want to gather the information presented.
- They want to know that the findings are legitimate.
Your job as a writer, then, is to fulfill these two goals.
How do I do that?
Good question. Here is the basic format scientists have designed for research reports:
- Introduction
Methods and Materials
This format, sometimes called “IMRAD,” may take slightly different shapes depending on the discipline or audience; some ask you to include an abstract or separate section for the hypothesis, or call the Discussion section “Conclusions,” or change the order of the sections (some professional and academic journals require the Methods section to appear last). Overall, however, the IMRAD format was devised to represent a textual version of the scientific method.
The scientific method, you’ll probably recall, involves developing a hypothesis, testing it, and deciding whether your findings support the hypothesis. In essence, the format for a research report in the sciences mirrors the scientific method but fleshes out the process a little. Below, you’ll find a table that shows how each written section fits into the scientific method and what additional information it offers the reader.
Thinking of your research report as based on the scientific method, but elaborated in the ways described above, may help you to meet your audience’s expectations successfully. We’re going to proceed by explicitly connecting each section of the lab report to the scientific method, then explaining why and how you need to elaborate that section.
Although this handout takes each section in the order in which it should be presented in the final report, you may for practical reasons decide to compose sections in another order. For example, many writers find that composing their Methods and Results before the other sections helps to clarify their idea of the experiment or study as a whole. You might consider using each assignment to practice different approaches to drafting the report, to find the order that works best for you.
What should I do before drafting the lab report?
The best way to prepare to write the lab report is to make sure that you fully understand everything you need to about the experiment. Obviously, if you don’t quite know what went on during the lab, you’re going to find it difficult to explain the lab satisfactorily to someone else. To make sure you know enough to write the report, complete the following steps:
- What are we going to do in this lab? (That is, what’s the procedure?)
- Why are we going to do it that way?
- What are we hoping to learn from this experiment?
- Why would we benefit from this knowledge?
- Consult your lab supervisor as you perform the lab. If you don’t know how to answer one of the questions above, for example, your lab supervisor will probably be able to explain it to you (or, at least, help you figure it out).
- Plan the steps of the experiment carefully with your lab partners. The less you rush, the more likely it is that you’ll perform the experiment correctly and record your findings accurately. Also, take some time to think about the best way to organize the data before you have to start putting numbers down. If you can design a table to account for the data, that will tend to work much better than jotting results down hurriedly on a scrap piece of paper.
- Record the data carefully so you get them right. You won’t be able to trust your conclusions if you have the wrong data, and your readers will know you messed up if the other three people in your group have “97 degrees” and you have “87.”
- Consult with your lab partners about everything you do. Lab groups often make one of two mistakes: two people do all the work while two have a nice chat, or everybody works together until the group finishes gathering the raw data, then scrams outta there. Collaborate with your partners, even when the experiment is “over.” What trends did you observe? Was the hypothesis supported? Did you all get the same results? What kind of figure should you use to represent your findings? The whole group can work together to answer these questions.
- Consider your audience. You may believe that audience is a non-issue: it’s your lab TA, right? Well, yes—but again, think beyond the classroom. If you write with only your lab instructor in mind, you may omit material that is crucial to a complete understanding of your experiment, because you assume the instructor knows all that stuff already. As a result, you may receive a lower grade, since your TA won’t be sure that you understand all the principles at work. Try to write towards a student in the same course but a different lab section. That student will have a fair degree of scientific expertise but won’t know much about your experiment particularly. Alternatively, you could envision yourself five years from now, after the reading and lectures for this course have faded a bit. What would you remember, and what would you need explained more clearly (as a refresher)?
Once you’ve completed these steps as you perform the experiment, you’ll be in a good position to draft an effective lab report.
Introductions
How do i write a strong introduction.
For the purposes of this handout, we’ll consider the Introduction to contain four basic elements: the purpose, the scientific literature relevant to the subject, the hypothesis, and the reasons you believed your hypothesis viable. Let’s start by going through each element of the Introduction to clarify what it covers and why it’s important. Then we can formulate a logical organizational strategy for the section.
The inclusion of the purpose (sometimes called the objective) of the experiment often confuses writers. The biggest misconception is that the purpose is the same as the hypothesis. Not quite. We’ll get to hypotheses in a minute, but basically they provide some indication of what you expect the experiment to show. The purpose is broader, and deals more with what you expect to gain through the experiment. In a professional setting, the hypothesis might have something to do with how cells react to a certain kind of genetic manipulation, but the purpose of the experiment is to learn more about potential cancer treatments. Undergraduate reports don’t often have this wide-ranging a goal, but you should still try to maintain the distinction between your hypothesis and your purpose. In a solubility experiment, for example, your hypothesis might talk about the relationship between temperature and the rate of solubility, but the purpose is probably to learn more about some specific scientific principle underlying the process of solubility.
For starters, most people say that you should write out your working hypothesis before you perform the experiment or study. Many beginning science students neglect to do so and find themselves struggling to remember precisely which variables were involved in the process or in what way the researchers felt that they were related. Write your hypothesis down as you develop it—you’ll be glad you did.
As for the form a hypothesis should take, it’s best not to be too fancy or complicated; an inventive style isn’t nearly so important as clarity here. There’s nothing wrong with beginning your hypothesis with the phrase, “It was hypothesized that . . .” Be as specific as you can about the relationship between the different objects of your study. In other words, explain that when term A changes, term B changes in this particular way. Readers of scientific writing are rarely content with the idea that a relationship between two terms exists—they want to know what that relationship entails.
Not a hypothesis:
“It was hypothesized that there is a significant relationship between the temperature of a solvent and the rate at which a solute dissolves.”
Hypothesis:
“It was hypothesized that as the temperature of a solvent increases, the rate at which a solute will dissolve in that solvent increases.”
Put more technically, most hypotheses contain both an independent and a dependent variable. The independent variable is what you manipulate to test the reaction; the dependent variable is what changes as a result of your manipulation. In the example above, the independent variable is the temperature of the solvent, and the dependent variable is the rate of solubility. Be sure that your hypothesis includes both variables.
Justify your hypothesis
You need to do more than tell your readers what your hypothesis is; you also need to assure them that this hypothesis was reasonable, given the circumstances. In other words, use the Introduction to explain that you didn’t just pluck your hypothesis out of thin air. (If you did pluck it out of thin air, your problems with your report will probably extend beyond using the appropriate format.) If you posit that a particular relationship exists between the independent and the dependent variable, what led you to believe your “guess” might be supported by evidence?
Scientists often refer to this type of justification as “motivating” the hypothesis, in the sense that something propelled them to make that prediction. Often, motivation includes what we already know—or rather, what scientists generally accept as true (see “Background/previous research” below). But you can also motivate your hypothesis by relying on logic or on your own observations. If you’re trying to decide which solutes will dissolve more rapidly in a solvent at increased temperatures, you might remember that some solids are meant to dissolve in hot water (e.g., bouillon cubes) and some are used for a function precisely because they withstand higher temperatures (they make saucepans out of something). Or you can think about whether you’ve noticed sugar dissolving more rapidly in your glass of iced tea or in your cup of coffee. Even such basic, outside-the-lab observations can help you justify your hypothesis as reasonable.
Background/previous research
This part of the Introduction demonstrates to the reader your awareness of how you’re building on other scientists’ work. If you think of the scientific community as engaging in a series of conversations about various topics, then you’ll recognize that the relevant background material will alert the reader to which conversation you want to enter.
Generally speaking, authors writing journal articles use the background for slightly different purposes than do students completing assignments. Because readers of academic journals tend to be professionals in the field, authors explain the background in order to permit readers to evaluate the study’s pertinence for their own work. You, on the other hand, write toward a much narrower audience—your peers in the course or your lab instructor—and so you must demonstrate that you understand the context for the (presumably assigned) experiment or study you’ve completed. For example, if your professor has been talking about polarity during lectures, and you’re doing a solubility experiment, you might try to connect the polarity of a solid to its relative solubility in certain solvents. In any event, both professional researchers and undergraduates need to connect the background material overtly to their own work.
Organization of this section
Most of the time, writers begin by stating the purpose or objectives of their own work, which establishes for the reader’s benefit the “nature and scope of the problem investigated” (Day 1994). Once you have expressed your purpose, you should then find it easier to move from the general purpose, to relevant material on the subject, to your hypothesis. In abbreviated form, an Introduction section might look like this:
“The purpose of the experiment was to test conventional ideas about solubility in the laboratory [purpose] . . . According to Whitecoat and Labrat (1999), at higher temperatures the molecules of solvents move more quickly . . . We know from the class lecture that molecules moving at higher rates of speed collide with one another more often and thus break down more easily [background material/motivation] . . . Thus, it was hypothesized that as the temperature of a solvent increases, the rate at which a solute will dissolve in that solvent increases [hypothesis].”
Again—these are guidelines, not commandments. Some writers and readers prefer different structures for the Introduction. The one above merely illustrates a common approach to organizing material.
How do I write a strong Materials and Methods section?
As with any piece of writing, your Methods section will succeed only if it fulfills its readers’ expectations, so you need to be clear in your own mind about the purpose of this section. Let’s review the purpose as we described it above: in this section, you want to describe in detail how you tested the hypothesis you developed and also to clarify the rationale for your procedure. In science, it’s not sufficient merely to design and carry out an experiment. Ultimately, others must be able to verify your findings, so your experiment must be reproducible, to the extent that other researchers can follow the same procedure and obtain the same (or similar) results.
Here’s a real-world example of the importance of reproducibility. In 1989, physicists Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischman announced that they had discovered “cold fusion,” a way of producing excess heat and power without the nuclear radiation that accompanies “hot fusion.” Such a discovery could have great ramifications for the industrial production of energy, so these findings created a great deal of interest. When other scientists tried to duplicate the experiment, however, they didn’t achieve the same results, and as a result many wrote off the conclusions as unjustified (or worse, a hoax). To this day, the viability of cold fusion is debated within the scientific community, even though an increasing number of researchers believe it possible. So when you write your Methods section, keep in mind that you need to describe your experiment well enough to allow others to replicate it exactly.
With these goals in mind, let’s consider how to write an effective Methods section in terms of content, structure, and style.
Sometimes the hardest thing about writing this section isn’t what you should talk about, but what you shouldn’t talk about. Writers often want to include the results of their experiment, because they measured and recorded the results during the course of the experiment. But such data should be reserved for the Results section. In the Methods section, you can write that you recorded the results, or how you recorded the results (e.g., in a table), but you shouldn’t write what the results were—not yet. Here, you’re merely stating exactly how you went about testing your hypothesis. As you draft your Methods section, ask yourself the following questions:
- How much detail? Be precise in providing details, but stay relevant. Ask yourself, “Would it make any difference if this piece were a different size or made from a different material?” If not, you probably don’t need to get too specific. If so, you should give as many details as necessary to prevent this experiment from going awry if someone else tries to carry it out. Probably the most crucial detail is measurement; you should always quantify anything you can, such as time elapsed, temperature, mass, volume, etc.
- Rationale: Be sure that as you’re relating your actions during the experiment, you explain your rationale for the protocol you developed. If you capped a test tube immediately after adding a solute to a solvent, why did you do that? (That’s really two questions: why did you cap it, and why did you cap it immediately?) In a professional setting, writers provide their rationale as a way to explain their thinking to potential critics. On one hand, of course, that’s your motivation for talking about protocol, too. On the other hand, since in practical terms you’re also writing to your teacher (who’s seeking to evaluate how well you comprehend the principles of the experiment), explaining the rationale indicates that you understand the reasons for conducting the experiment in that way, and that you’re not just following orders. Critical thinking is crucial—robots don’t make good scientists.
- Control: Most experiments will include a control, which is a means of comparing experimental results. (Sometimes you’ll need to have more than one control, depending on the number of hypotheses you want to test.) The control is exactly the same as the other items you’re testing, except that you don’t manipulate the independent variable-the condition you’re altering to check the effect on the dependent variable. For example, if you’re testing solubility rates at increased temperatures, your control would be a solution that you didn’t heat at all; that way, you’ll see how quickly the solute dissolves “naturally” (i.e., without manipulation), and you’ll have a point of reference against which to compare the solutions you did heat.
Describe the control in the Methods section. Two things are especially important in writing about the control: identify the control as a control, and explain what you’re controlling for. Here is an example:
“As a control for the temperature change, we placed the same amount of solute in the same amount of solvent, and let the solution stand for five minutes without heating it.”
Structure and style
Organization is especially important in the Methods section of a lab report because readers must understand your experimental procedure completely. Many writers are surprised by the difficulty of conveying what they did during the experiment, since after all they’re only reporting an event, but it’s often tricky to present this information in a coherent way. There’s a fairly standard structure you can use to guide you, and following the conventions for style can help clarify your points.
- Subsections: Occasionally, researchers use subsections to report their procedure when the following circumstances apply: 1) if they’ve used a great many materials; 2) if the procedure is unusually complicated; 3) if they’ve developed a procedure that won’t be familiar to many of their readers. Because these conditions rarely apply to the experiments you’ll perform in class, most undergraduate lab reports won’t require you to use subsections. In fact, many guides to writing lab reports suggest that you try to limit your Methods section to a single paragraph.
- Narrative structure: Think of this section as telling a story about a group of people and the experiment they performed. Describe what you did in the order in which you did it. You may have heard the old joke centered on the line, “Disconnect the red wire, but only after disconnecting the green wire,” where the person reading the directions blows everything to kingdom come because the directions weren’t in order. We’re used to reading about events chronologically, and so your readers will generally understand what you did if you present that information in the same way. Also, since the Methods section does generally appear as a narrative (story), you want to avoid the “recipe” approach: “First, take a clean, dry 100 ml test tube from the rack. Next, add 50 ml of distilled water.” You should be reporting what did happen, not telling the reader how to perform the experiment: “50 ml of distilled water was poured into a clean, dry 100 ml test tube.” Hint: most of the time, the recipe approach comes from copying down the steps of the procedure from your lab manual, so you may want to draft the Methods section initially without consulting your manual. Later, of course, you can go back and fill in any part of the procedure you inadvertently overlooked.
- Past tense: Remember that you’re describing what happened, so you should use past tense to refer to everything you did during the experiment. Writers are often tempted to use the imperative (“Add 5 g of the solid to the solution”) because that’s how their lab manuals are worded; less frequently, they use present tense (“5 g of the solid are added to the solution”). Instead, remember that you’re talking about an event which happened at a particular time in the past, and which has already ended by the time you start writing, so simple past tense will be appropriate in this section (“5 g of the solid were added to the solution” or “We added 5 g of the solid to the solution”).
- Active: We heated the solution to 80°C. (The subject, “we,” performs the action, heating.)
- Passive: The solution was heated to 80°C. (The subject, “solution,” doesn’t do the heating–it is acted upon, not acting.)
Increasingly, especially in the social sciences, using first person and active voice is acceptable in scientific reports. Most readers find that this style of writing conveys information more clearly and concisely. This rhetorical choice thus brings two scientific values into conflict: objectivity versus clarity. Since the scientific community hasn’t reached a consensus about which style it prefers, you may want to ask your lab instructor.
How do I write a strong Results section?
Here’s a paradox for you. The Results section is often both the shortest (yay!) and most important (uh-oh!) part of your report. Your Materials and Methods section shows how you obtained the results, and your Discussion section explores the significance of the results, so clearly the Results section forms the backbone of the lab report. This section provides the most critical information about your experiment: the data that allow you to discuss how your hypothesis was or wasn’t supported. But it doesn’t provide anything else, which explains why this section is generally shorter than the others.
Before you write this section, look at all the data you collected to figure out what relates significantly to your hypothesis. You’ll want to highlight this material in your Results section. Resist the urge to include every bit of data you collected, since perhaps not all are relevant. Also, don’t try to draw conclusions about the results—save them for the Discussion section. In this section, you’re reporting facts. Nothing your readers can dispute should appear in the Results section.
Most Results sections feature three distinct parts: text, tables, and figures. Let’s consider each part one at a time.
This should be a short paragraph, generally just a few lines, that describes the results you obtained from your experiment. In a relatively simple experiment, one that doesn’t produce a lot of data for you to repeat, the text can represent the entire Results section. Don’t feel that you need to include lots of extraneous detail to compensate for a short (but effective) text; your readers appreciate discrimination more than your ability to recite facts. In a more complex experiment, you may want to use tables and/or figures to help guide your readers toward the most important information you gathered. In that event, you’ll need to refer to each table or figure directly, where appropriate:
“Table 1 lists the rates of solubility for each substance”
“Solubility increased as the temperature of the solution increased (see Figure 1).”
If you do use tables or figures, make sure that you don’t present the same material in both the text and the tables/figures, since in essence you’ll just repeat yourself, probably annoying your readers with the redundancy of your statements.
Feel free to describe trends that emerge as you examine the data. Although identifying trends requires some judgment on your part and so may not feel like factual reporting, no one can deny that these trends do exist, and so they properly belong in the Results section. Example:
“Heating the solution increased the rate of solubility of polar solids by 45% but had no effect on the rate of solubility in solutions containing non-polar solids.”
This point isn’t debatable—you’re just pointing out what the data show.
As in the Materials and Methods section, you want to refer to your data in the past tense, because the events you recorded have already occurred and have finished occurring. In the example above, note the use of “increased” and “had,” rather than “increases” and “has.” (You don’t know from your experiment that heating always increases the solubility of polar solids, but it did that time.)
You shouldn’t put information in the table that also appears in the text. You also shouldn’t use a table to present irrelevant data, just to show you did collect these data during the experiment. Tables are good for some purposes and situations, but not others, so whether and how you’ll use tables depends upon what you need them to accomplish.
Tables are useful ways to show variation in data, but not to present a great deal of unchanging measurements. If you’re dealing with a scientific phenomenon that occurs only within a certain range of temperatures, for example, you don’t need to use a table to show that the phenomenon didn’t occur at any of the other temperatures. How useful is this table?
As you can probably see, no solubility was observed until the trial temperature reached 50°C, a fact that the text part of the Results section could easily convey. The table could then be limited to what happened at 50°C and higher, thus better illustrating the differences in solubility rates when solubility did occur.
As a rule, try not to use a table to describe any experimental event you can cover in one sentence of text. Here’s an example of an unnecessary table from How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper , by Robert A. Day:
As Day notes, all the information in this table can be summarized in one sentence: “S. griseus, S. coelicolor, S. everycolor, and S. rainbowenski grew under aerobic conditions, whereas S. nocolor and S. greenicus required anaerobic conditions.” Most readers won’t find the table clearer than that one sentence.
When you do have reason to tabulate material, pay attention to the clarity and readability of the format you use. Here are a few tips:
- Number your table. Then, when you refer to the table in the text, use that number to tell your readers which table they can review to clarify the material.
- Give your table a title. This title should be descriptive enough to communicate the contents of the table, but not so long that it becomes difficult to follow. The titles in the sample tables above are acceptable.
- Arrange your table so that readers read vertically, not horizontally. For the most part, this rule means that you should construct your table so that like elements read down, not across. Think about what you want your readers to compare, and put that information in the column (up and down) rather than in the row (across). Usually, the point of comparison will be the numerical data you collect, so especially make sure you have columns of numbers, not rows.Here’s an example of how drastically this decision affects the readability of your table (from A Short Guide to Writing about Chemistry , by Herbert Beall and John Trimbur). Look at this table, which presents the relevant data in horizontal rows:
It’s a little tough to see the trends that the author presumably wants to present in this table. Compare this table, in which the data appear vertically:
The second table shows how putting like elements in a vertical column makes for easier reading. In this case, the like elements are the measurements of length and height, over five trials–not, as in the first table, the length and height measurements for each trial.
- Make sure to include units of measurement in the tables. Readers might be able to guess that you measured something in millimeters, but don’t make them try.
- Don’t use vertical lines as part of the format for your table. This convention exists because journals prefer not to have to reproduce these lines because the tables then become more expensive to print. Even though it’s fairly unlikely that you’ll be sending your Biology 11 lab report to Science for publication, your readers still have this expectation. Consequently, if you use the table-drawing option in your word-processing software, choose the option that doesn’t rely on a “grid” format (which includes vertical lines).
How do I include figures in my report?
Although tables can be useful ways of showing trends in the results you obtained, figures (i.e., illustrations) can do an even better job of emphasizing such trends. Lab report writers often use graphic representations of the data they collected to provide their readers with a literal picture of how the experiment went.
When should you use a figure?
Remember the circumstances under which you don’t need a table: when you don’t have a great deal of data or when the data you have don’t vary a lot. Under the same conditions, you would probably forgo the figure as well, since the figure would be unlikely to provide your readers with an additional perspective. Scientists really don’t like their time wasted, so they tend not to respond favorably to redundancy.
If you’re trying to decide between using a table and creating a figure to present your material, consider the following a rule of thumb. The strength of a table lies in its ability to supply large amounts of exact data, whereas the strength of a figure is its dramatic illustration of important trends within the experiment. If you feel that your readers won’t get the full impact of the results you obtained just by looking at the numbers, then a figure might be appropriate.
Of course, an undergraduate class may expect you to create a figure for your lab experiment, if only to make sure that you can do so effectively. If this is the case, then don’t worry about whether to use figures or not—concentrate instead on how best to accomplish your task.
Figures can include maps, photographs, pen-and-ink drawings, flow charts, bar graphs, and section graphs (“pie charts”). But the most common figure by far, especially for undergraduates, is the line graph, so we’ll focus on that type in this handout.
At the undergraduate level, you can often draw and label your graphs by hand, provided that the result is clear, legible, and drawn to scale. Computer technology has, however, made creating line graphs a lot easier. Most word-processing software has a number of functions for transferring data into graph form; many scientists have found Microsoft Excel, for example, a helpful tool in graphing results. If you plan on pursuing a career in the sciences, it may be well worth your while to learn to use a similar program.
Computers can’t, however, decide for you how your graph really works; you have to know how to design your graph to meet your readers’ expectations. Here are some of these expectations:
- Keep it as simple as possible. You may be tempted to signal the complexity of the information you gathered by trying to design a graph that accounts for that complexity. But remember the purpose of your graph: to dramatize your results in a manner that’s easy to see and grasp. Try not to make the reader stare at the graph for a half hour to find the important line among the mass of other lines. For maximum effectiveness, limit yourself to three to five lines per graph; if you have more data to demonstrate, use a set of graphs to account for it, rather than trying to cram it all into a single figure.
- Plot the independent variable on the horizontal (x) axis and the dependent variable on the vertical (y) axis. Remember that the independent variable is the condition that you manipulated during the experiment and the dependent variable is the condition that you measured to see if it changed along with the independent variable. Placing the variables along their respective axes is mostly just a convention, but since your readers are accustomed to viewing graphs in this way, you’re better off not challenging the convention in your report.
- Label each axis carefully, and be especially careful to include units of measure. You need to make sure that your readers understand perfectly well what your graph indicates.
- Number and title your graphs. As with tables, the title of the graph should be informative but concise, and you should refer to your graph by number in the text (e.g., “Figure 1 shows the increase in the solubility rate as a function of temperature”).
- Many editors of professional scientific journals prefer that writers distinguish the lines in their graphs by attaching a symbol to them, usually a geometric shape (triangle, square, etc.), and using that symbol throughout the curve of the line. Generally, readers have a hard time distinguishing dotted lines from dot-dash lines from straight lines, so you should consider staying away from this system. Editors don’t usually like different-colored lines within a graph because colors are difficult and expensive to reproduce; colors may, however, be great for your purposes, as long as you’re not planning to submit your paper to Nature. Use your discretion—try to employ whichever technique dramatizes the results most effectively.
- Try to gather data at regular intervals, so the plot points on your graph aren’t too far apart. You can’t be sure of the arc you should draw between the plot points if the points are located at the far corners of the graph; over a fifteen-minute interval, perhaps the change occurred in the first or last thirty seconds of that period (in which case your straight-line connection between the points is misleading).
- If you’re worried that you didn’t collect data at sufficiently regular intervals during your experiment, go ahead and connect the points with a straight line, but you may want to examine this problem as part of your Discussion section.
- Make your graph large enough so that everything is legible and clearly demarcated, but not so large that it either overwhelms the rest of the Results section or provides a far greater range than you need to illustrate your point. If, for example, the seedlings of your plant grew only 15 mm during the trial, you don’t need to construct a graph that accounts for 100 mm of growth. The lines in your graph should more or less fill the space created by the axes; if you see that your data is confined to the lower left portion of the graph, you should probably re-adjust your scale.
- If you create a set of graphs, make them the same size and format, including all the verbal and visual codes (captions, symbols, scale, etc.). You want to be as consistent as possible in your illustrations, so that your readers can easily make the comparisons you’re trying to get them to see.
How do I write a strong Discussion section?
The discussion section is probably the least formalized part of the report, in that you can’t really apply the same structure to every type of experiment. In simple terms, here you tell your readers what to make of the Results you obtained. If you have done the Results part well, your readers should already recognize the trends in the data and have a fairly clear idea of whether your hypothesis was supported. Because the Results can seem so self-explanatory, many students find it difficult to know what material to add in this last section.
Basically, the Discussion contains several parts, in no particular order, but roughly moving from specific (i.e., related to your experiment only) to general (how your findings fit in the larger scientific community). In this section, you will, as a rule, need to:
Explain whether the data support your hypothesis
- Acknowledge any anomalous data or deviations from what you expected
Derive conclusions, based on your findings, about the process you’re studying
- Relate your findings to earlier work in the same area (if you can)
Explore the theoretical and/or practical implications of your findings
Let’s look at some dos and don’ts for each of these objectives.
This statement is usually a good way to begin the Discussion, since you can’t effectively speak about the larger scientific value of your study until you’ve figured out the particulars of this experiment. You might begin this part of the Discussion by explicitly stating the relationships or correlations your data indicate between the independent and dependent variables. Then you can show more clearly why you believe your hypothesis was or was not supported. For example, if you tested solubility at various temperatures, you could start this section by noting that the rates of solubility increased as the temperature increased. If your initial hypothesis surmised that temperature change would not affect solubility, you would then say something like,
“The hypothesis that temperature change would not affect solubility was not supported by the data.”
Note: Students tend to view labs as practical tests of undeniable scientific truths. As a result, you may want to say that the hypothesis was “proved” or “disproved” or that it was “correct” or “incorrect.” These terms, however, reflect a degree of certainty that you as a scientist aren’t supposed to have. Remember, you’re testing a theory with a procedure that lasts only a few hours and relies on only a few trials, which severely compromises your ability to be sure about the “truth” you see. Words like “supported,” “indicated,” and “suggested” are more acceptable ways to evaluate your hypothesis.
Also, recognize that saying whether the data supported your hypothesis or not involves making a claim to be defended. As such, you need to show the readers that this claim is warranted by the evidence. Make sure that you’re very explicit about the relationship between the evidence and the conclusions you draw from it. This process is difficult for many writers because we don’t often justify conclusions in our regular lives. For example, you might nudge your friend at a party and whisper, “That guy’s drunk,” and once your friend lays eyes on the person in question, she might readily agree. In a scientific paper, by contrast, you would need to defend your claim more thoroughly by pointing to data such as slurred words, unsteady gait, and the lampshade-as-hat. In addition to pointing out these details, you would also need to show how (according to previous studies) these signs are consistent with inebriation, especially if they occur in conjunction with one another. To put it another way, tell your readers exactly how you got from point A (was the hypothesis supported?) to point B (yes/no).
Acknowledge any anomalous data, or deviations from what you expected
You need to take these exceptions and divergences into account, so that you qualify your conclusions sufficiently. For obvious reasons, your readers will doubt your authority if you (deliberately or inadvertently) overlook a key piece of data that doesn’t square with your perspective on what occurred. In a more philosophical sense, once you’ve ignored evidence that contradicts your claims, you’ve departed from the scientific method. The urge to “tidy up” the experiment is often strong, but if you give in to it you’re no longer performing good science.
Sometimes after you’ve performed a study or experiment, you realize that some part of the methods you used to test your hypothesis was flawed. In that case, it’s OK to suggest that if you had the chance to conduct your test again, you might change the design in this or that specific way in order to avoid such and such a problem. The key to making this approach work, though, is to be very precise about the weakness in your experiment, why and how you think that weakness might have affected your data, and how you would alter your protocol to eliminate—or limit the effects of—that weakness. Often, inexperienced researchers and writers feel the need to account for “wrong” data (remember, there’s no such animal), and so they speculate wildly about what might have screwed things up. These speculations include such factors as the unusually hot temperature in the room, or the possibility that their lab partners read the meters wrong, or the potentially defective equipment. These explanations are what scientists call “cop-outs,” or “lame”; don’t indicate that the experiment had a weakness unless you’re fairly certain that a) it really occurred and b) you can explain reasonably well how that weakness affected your results.
If, for example, your hypothesis dealt with the changes in solubility at different temperatures, then try to figure out what you can rationally say about the process of solubility more generally. If you’re doing an undergraduate lab, chances are that the lab will connect in some way to the material you’ve been covering either in lecture or in your reading, so you might choose to return to these resources as a way to help you think clearly about the process as a whole.
This part of the Discussion section is another place where you need to make sure that you’re not overreaching. Again, nothing you’ve found in one study would remotely allow you to claim that you now “know” something, or that something isn’t “true,” or that your experiment “confirmed” some principle or other. Hesitate before you go out on a limb—it’s dangerous! Use less absolutely conclusive language, including such words as “suggest,” “indicate,” “correspond,” “possibly,” “challenge,” etc.
Relate your findings to previous work in the field (if possible)
We’ve been talking about how to show that you belong in a particular community (such as biologists or anthropologists) by writing within conventions that they recognize and accept. Another is to try to identify a conversation going on among members of that community, and use your work to contribute to that conversation. In a larger philosophical sense, scientists can’t fully understand the value of their research unless they have some sense of the context that provoked and nourished it. That is, you have to recognize what’s new about your project (potentially, anyway) and how it benefits the wider body of scientific knowledge. On a more pragmatic level, especially for undergraduates, connecting your lab work to previous research will demonstrate to the TA that you see the big picture. You have an opportunity, in the Discussion section, to distinguish yourself from the students in your class who aren’t thinking beyond the barest facts of the study. Capitalize on this opportunity by putting your own work in context.
If you’re just beginning to work in the natural sciences (as a first-year biology or chemistry student, say), most likely the work you’ll be doing has already been performed and re-performed to a satisfactory degree. Hence, you could probably point to a similar experiment or study and compare/contrast your results and conclusions. More advanced work may deal with an issue that is somewhat less “resolved,” and so previous research may take the form of an ongoing debate, and you can use your own work to weigh in on that debate. If, for example, researchers are hotly disputing the value of herbal remedies for the common cold, and the results of your study suggest that Echinacea diminishes the symptoms but not the actual presence of the cold, then you might want to take some time in the Discussion section to recapitulate the specifics of the dispute as it relates to Echinacea as an herbal remedy. (Consider that you have probably already written in the Introduction about this debate as background research.)
This information is often the best way to end your Discussion (and, for all intents and purposes, the report). In argumentative writing generally, you want to use your closing words to convey the main point of your writing. This main point can be primarily theoretical (“Now that you understand this information, you’re in a better position to understand this larger issue”) or primarily practical (“You can use this information to take such and such an action”). In either case, the concluding statements help the reader to comprehend the significance of your project and your decision to write about it.
Since a lab report is argumentative—after all, you’re investigating a claim, and judging the legitimacy of that claim by generating and collecting evidence—it’s often a good idea to end your report with the same technique for establishing your main point. If you want to go the theoretical route, you might talk about the consequences your study has for the field or phenomenon you’re investigating. To return to the examples regarding solubility, you could end by reflecting on what your work on solubility as a function of temperature tells us (potentially) about solubility in general. (Some folks consider this type of exploration “pure” as opposed to “applied” science, although these labels can be problematic.) If you want to go the practical route, you could end by speculating about the medical, institutional, or commercial implications of your findings—in other words, answer the question, “What can this study help people to do?” In either case, you’re going to make your readers’ experience more satisfying, by helping them see why they spent their time learning what you had to teach them.
Works consulted
We consulted these works while writing this handout. This is not a comprehensive list of resources on the handout’s topic, and we encourage you to do your own research to find additional publications. Please do not use this list as a model for the format of your own reference list, as it may not match the citation style you are using. For guidance on formatting citations, please see the UNC Libraries citation tutorial . We revise these tips periodically and welcome feedback.
American Psychological Association. 2010. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association . 6th ed. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Beall, Herbert, and John Trimbur. 2001. A Short Guide to Writing About Chemistry , 2nd ed. New York: Longman.
Blum, Deborah, and Mary Knudson. 1997. A Field Guide for Science Writers: The Official Guide of the National Association of Science Writers . New York: Oxford University Press.
Booth, Wayne C., Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph Bizup, and William T. FitzGerald. 2016. The Craft of Research , 4th ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Briscoe, Mary Helen. 1996. Preparing Scientific Illustrations: A Guide to Better Posters, Presentations, and Publications , 2nd ed. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Council of Science Editors. 2014. Scientific Style and Format: The CSE Manual for Authors, Editors, and Publishers , 8th ed. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press.
Davis, Martha. 2012. Scientific Papers and Presentations , 3rd ed. London: Academic Press.
Day, Robert A. 1994. How to Write and Publish a Scientific Paper , 4th ed. Phoenix: Oryx Press.
Porush, David. 1995. A Short Guide to Writing About Science . New York: Longman.
Williams, Joseph, and Joseph Bizup. 2017. Style: Lessons in Clarity and Grace , 12th ed. Boston: Pearson.
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Scientific Research Reports and Proposals: What Goes Where
Part 1: research reports.
In an effort to make our handouts more accessible, we have begun converting our PDF handouts to web pages. Download this page as a PDF: Scientific Research Reports and Proposals Return to Writing Studio Handouts
This is a one-paragraph version of your paper, which includes:
- one to two sentences of background information
- your question or hypothesis
- three to six sentences of methods and results
- your conclusion (and optionally, implications)
Introduction
- Describe how the work relates to a clinical problem or basic issue of broad interest.
- Include only the background necessary to explain this relationship.
- At the end, state the question addressed by your report.
- Explain how you did the study.
- Did you follow other researchers’ methods exactly? Give the reference only.
- Did you modify other researchers’ methods? Give the reference and note the changes.
- If you are doing one big experiment, include an experimental design section at the beginning of the methods section.
The results section reports what you observed.
- If you did one big experiment, describe the observations in order of importance.
- If you did many experiments, you may include a reference to the method for each (no more detail than necessary to understand result).
- Explain the background at the beginning (if necessary) and conclusion of each experiment to provide rationale for the next experiment.
The discussion section explains what your results mean for the field.
- Start with the major conclusion(s); this should clearly correspond to the research question addressed in your introduction.
- defense of the conclusions
- explanation of unexpected results
- importance and novelty of the results
- implications for future research or disease therapy
- speculation (what the results may mean about the thing studied)
Part 2: Proposals
This is a one-paragraph version of your proposal, which includes
- one to two sentences of background
- your hypothesis
- your specific aims and corresponding experiments
Specific Aims (approximately one page)
State the purpose of the proposed research by describing
- a problem or unknown
- a hypothesis (and optional brief rationale)
- a broad description of your approach
- two to four independent goals/questions (one sentence each)
Background and Significance (approximately two pages)
This section should
- explain how the proposed research will address an important problem
- convince committee members or reviewers that you understand the field and that the proposed research is innovative
- provide rationale for your hypotheses (you might also explain or defend your choice of experimental approach)
Preliminary Data
Preliminary data provides experimental support for your hypotheses and proposed methods.
For each experiment, explain:
- why and how it was performed
- what was observed
- what the results mean
Research Design and Methods
Describe how the project will be carried out.
- For each aim, describe the set of experiments (and their controls) that you will use to test the corresponding hypothesis.
- For each experiment, identify outcomes that would confirm the hypothesis and potential problems and how they will be addressed.
Last revised: 07/2010 | Adapted for web delivery: 02/2021
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How to Write a Scientific Report | Step-by-Step Guide
- How to Write a Scientific Report | Step-by-Step Guide1111
Matrix Blog
Science 7-10.
Got to document an experiment but don't know how? In this post, we'll guide you step-by-step through how to write a scientific report and provide you with an example.
Is your teacher expecting you to write an experimental report for every class experiment? Are you still unsure about how to write a scientific report properly? Don’t fear! We will guide you through all the parts of a scientific report, step-by-step.
How to write a scientific report:
- What is a scientific report
- General rules to write Scientific reports
- Syllabus dot point
- Introduction/Background information
- Risk assessment
What is a scientific report?
A scientific report documents all aspects of an experimental investigation. This includes:
- The aim of the experiment
- The hypothesis
- An introduction to the relevant background theory
- The methods used
- The results
- A discussion of the results
- The conclusion
Scientific reports allow their readers to understand the experiment without doing it themselves. In addition, scientific reports give others the opportunity to check the methodology of the experiment to ensure the validity of the results.
A scientific report is written in several stages. We write the introduction, aim, and hypothesis before performing the experiment, record the results during the experiment, and complete the discussion and conclusions after the experiment.
But, before we delve deeper into how to write a scientific report, we need to have a science experiment to write about! Read our 7 Simple Experiments You Can Do At Home article and see which one you want to do.
General rules about writing scientific reports
Learning how to write a scientific report is different from writing English essays or speeches!
You have to use:
- Passive voice (which you should avoid when writing for other subjects like English!)
- Past-tense language
- Headings and subheadings
- A pencil to draw scientific diagrams and graphs
- Simple and clear lines for scientific diagrams
- Tables and graphs where necessary
Structure of scientific reports:
Now that you know the general rules on how to write scientific reports, let’s look at the conventions for their structure!
The title should simply introduce what your experiment is about.
The Role of Light in Photosynthesis
2. Introduction/Background information
Write a paragraph that gives your readers background information to understand your experiment.
This includes explaining scientific theories, processes and other related knowledge.
Photosynthesis is a vital process for life. It occurs when plants intake carbon dioxide, water, and light, and results in the production of glucose and water. The light required for photosynthesis is absorbed by chlorophyll, the green pigment of plants, which is contained in the chloroplasts.
The glucose produced through photosynthesis is stored as starch, which is used as an energy source for the plant and its consumers.
The presence of starch in the leaves of a plant indicates that photosynthesis has occurred.
The aim identifies what is going to be tested in the experiment. This should be short, concise and clear.
The aim of the experiment is to test whether light is required for photosynthesis to occur.
4. Hypothesis
The hypothesis is a prediction of the outcome of the experiment. You have to use background information to make an educated prediction.
It is predicted that photosynthesis will occur only in leaves that are exposed to light and not in leaves that are not exposed to light. This will be indicated by the presence or absence of starch in the leaves.
5. Risk assessment
Identify the hazards associated with the experiment and provide a method to prevent or minimise the risks. A hazard is something that can cause harm, and the risk is the likelihood that harm will occur from the hazard.
A table is an excellent way to present your risk assessment.
Remember, you have to specify the type of harm that can occur because of the hazard. It is not enough to simply identify the hazard.
- Do not write: “Scissors are sharp”
- Instead, you have to write: “Scissors are sharp and can cause injury”
The method has 3 parts:
- A list of every material used
- Steps of what you did in the experiment
- A scientific diagram of the experimental apparatus
Let’s break down what you need to do for each section.
6a. Materials
This must list every piece of equipment and material you used in the experiment.
Remember, you need to also specify the amount of each material you used.
- 1 geranium plant
- Aluminium foil
- 2 test tubes
- 1 test tube rack
- 1 pair of scissors
- 1 250 mL beaker
- 1 pair of forceps
- 1 10 mL measuring cylinder
- Iodine solution (5 mL)
- Methylated spirit (50ml)
- Boiling water
- 2 Petri dishes
The rule of thumb is that you should write the method in a clear way so that readers are able to repeat the experiment and get similar results.
Using a numbered list for the steps of your experimental procedure is much clearer than writing a whole paragraph of text. The steps should:
- Be written in a sequential order, based on when they were performed.
- Specify any equipment that was used.
- Specify the quantity of any materials that were used.
You also need to use past tense and passive voice when you are writing your method. Scientific reports are supposed to show the readers what you did in the experiment, not what you will do.
- Aluminium foil was used to fully cover a leaf of the geranium plant. The plant was left in the sun for three days.
- On the third day, the covered leaf and 1 non-covered leaf were collected from the plant. The foil was removed from the covered leaf, and a 1 cm square was cut from each leaf using a pair of scissors.
- 150 mL of water was boiled in a kettle and poured into a 250 mL beaker.
- Using forceps, the 1 cm square of covered leaf was placed into the beaker of boiling water for 2 minutes. It was then placed in a test tube labelled “dark”.
- The water in the beaker was discarded and replaced with 150 mL of freshly boiled water.
- Using forceps, the 1 cm square non-covered leaf was placed into the beaker of boiling water for 2 minutes. It was then placed in a test tube labelled “light”
- 5 mL of methylated spirit was measured with a measuring cylinder and poured into each test tube so that the leaves were fully covered.
- The water in the beaker was replaced with 150 mL of freshly boiled water and both the “light” and “dark” test tubes were immersed in the beaker of boiling water for 5 minutes.
- The leaves were collected from each test tube with forceps, rinsed under cold running water, and placed onto separate labelled Petri dishes.
- 3 drops of iodine solution were added to each leaf.
- Both Petri dishes were placed side by side and observations were recorded.
- The experiment was repeated 5 times, and results were compared between different groups.
6c. Diagram
After you finish your steps, it is time to draw your scientific diagrams! Here are some rules for drawing scientific diagrams:
- Always use a pencil to draw your scientific diagrams.
- Use simple, sharp, 2D lines and shapes to draw your diagram. Don’t draw 3D shapes or use shading.
- Label everything in your diagram.
- Use thin, straight lines to label your diagram. Do not use arrows.
- Ensure that the label lines touch the outline of the equipment you are labelling and not cross over it or stop short of it
- The label lines should never cross over each other.
- Use a ruler for any straight lines in your diagram.
- Draw a sufficiently large diagram so all components can be seen clearly.
This is where you document the results of your experiment. The data that you record for your experiment will generally be qualitative and/or quantitative.
Qualitative data is data that relates to qualities and is based on observations (qualitative – quality). This type of data is descriptive and is recorded in words. For example, the colour changed from green to orange, or the liquid became hot.
Quantitative data refers to numerical data (quantitative – quantity). This type of data is recorded using numbers and is either measured or counted. For example, the plant grew 5.2 cm, or there were 5 frogs.
You also need to record your results in an appropriate way. Most of the time, a table is the best way to do this.
Here are some rules to using tables
- Use a pencil and a ruler to draw your table
- Draw neat and straight lines
- Ensure that the table is closed (connect all your lines)
- Don’t cross your lines (erase any lines that stick out of the table)
- Use appropriate columns and rows
- Properly name each column and row (including the units of measurement in brackets)
- Do not write your units in the body of your table (units belong in the header)
- Always include a title
Note : If your results require calculations, clearly write each step.
Observations of the effects of light on the amount of starch in plant leaves.
If quantitative data was recorded, the data is often also plotted on a graph.
8. Discussion
The discussion is where you analyse and interpret your results, and identify any experimental errors or possible areas of improvements.
You should divide your discussion as follows.
1. Trend in the results
Describe the ‘trend’ in your results. That is, the relationship you observed between your independent and dependent variables.
The independent variable is the variable that you are changing in the experiment. In this experiment, it is the amount of light that the leaves are exposed to.
The dependent variable is the variable that you are measuring in the experiment, In this experiment, it is the presence of starch in the leaves.
Explain how a particular result is achieved by referring to scientific knowledge, theories and any other scientific resources you find. 2. Scientific explanation:
The presence of starch is indicated when the addition of iodine causes the leaf to turn dark purple. The results show that starch was present in the leaves that were exposed to light, while the leaves that were not exposed to light did not contain starch.
2. Scientific explanation:
Provide an explanation of the results using scientific knowledge, theories and any other scientific resources you find.
As starch is produced during photosynthesis, these results show that light plays a key role in photosynthesis.
3. Validity
Validity refers to whether or not your results are valid. This can be done by examining your variables.
VA lidity = VA riables
Identify the independent, dependent, controlled variables and the control experiment (if you have one).
The controlled variables are the variables that you keep the same across all tests e.g. the size of the leaf sample.
The control experiment is where you don’t apply an independent variable. It is untouched for the whole experiment.
Ensure that you never change more than one variable at a time!
The independent variable of the experiment was amount of light that the leaves were exposed to (the covered and uncovered geranium leaf), while the dependent variable was the presence of starch. The controlled variables were the size of the leaf sample, the duration of the experiment, the amount of time the solutions were heated, and the amount of iodine solution used.
4. Reliability
Identify how you ensured the reliability of the results.
RE liability = RE petition
Show that you repeated your experiments, cross-checked your results with other groups or collated your results with the class.
The reliability of the results was ensured by repeating the experiment 5 times and comparing results with other groups. Since other groups obtained comparable results, the results are reliable.
5. Accuracy
Accuracy should be discussed if your results are in the form of quantitative data, and there is an accepted value for the result.
Accuracy would not be discussed for our example photosynthesis experiment as qualitative data was collected, however it would if we were measuring gravity using a pendulum:
The measured value of gravity was 9.8 m/s 2 , which is in agreement with the accepted value of 9.8 m/s 2 .
6. Possible improvements
Identify any errors or risks found in the experiment and provide a method to improve it.
If there are none, then suggest new ways to improve the experimental design, and/or minimise error and risks.
Possible improvements could be made by including control experiments. For example, testing whether the iodine solution turns dark purple when added to water or methylated spirits. This would help to ensure that the purple colour observed in the experiments is due to the presence of starch in the leaves rather than impurities.
9. Conclusion
State whether the aim was achieved, and if your hypothesis was supported.
The aim of the investigation was achieved, and it was found that light is required for photosynthesis to occur. This was evidenced by the presence of starch in leaves that had been exposed to light, and the absence of starch in leaves that had been unexposed. These results support the proposed hypothesis.
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Library Guides
Report writing: scientific reports.
- Scientific Reports
- Business Reports
Scientific and lab reports
A good scientific report has a clear organisational structure that is divided into headings and sub-headings. The outline below details typical sections of a standard scientific report.
The structure and scientific conventions you should use in your report will be based on your department or subject field requirements. Therefore, it is always best to check your departmental guidelines or module/assignment instructions first.
Scientific reports often adopt the IMRaD format: I ntroduction, M ethods, R esults, and D iscussion.
The summary below outlines the standard components of a scientific report:
The abstract is a short summary of your project. Here, you should state your research questions and aims and provide a brief description of your methodology. It also includes an overview of your most significant findings. It is best to write this last after finalising the report.
- Introduction
This is where you set the scene for your report. The introduction should clearly articulate the purpose and aim (and, possibly, objectives) of the report, along with providing the background context for the report's topic and area of research. A scientific report may have an hypothesis in addition or in stead of aims and objectives. It may also provide any definitions or explanations for the terms used in the report or theoretical underpinnings of the research so that the reader has a clear understanding of what the research is based upon. It may be useful to also indicate any limitations to the scope of the report and identify the parameters of the research.
The methods section includes any information on the methods, tools and equipment used to get the data and evidence for your report. You should justify your method (that is, explain why your method was chosen), acknowledge possible problems encountered during the research, and present the limitations of your methodology.
If you are required to have a separate results and discussion section, then the results section should only include a summary of the findings, rather than an analysis of them - leave the critical analysis of the results for the discussion section. Presenting your results may take the form of graphs, tables, or any necessary diagrams of the gathered data. It is best to present your results in a logical order, making them as clear and understandable as possible through concise titles, brief summaries of the findings, and what the diagrams/charts/graphs or tables are showing to the reader.
This section is where the data gathered and your results are truly put to work. It is the main body of your report in which you should critically analyse what the results mean in relation to the aims and objectives (and/or, in scientific writing, hypotheses) put forth at the beginning of the report. You should follow a logical order, and can structure this section in sub-headings.
The conclusion should not include any new material but instead show a summary of your main arguments and findings. It is a chance to remind the reader of the key points within your report, the significance of the findings and the most central issues or arguments raised from the research. The conclusion may also include recommendations for further research, or how the present research may be carried out more effectively in future.
Similar to your essays, a report still requires a bibliography of all the published resources you have referenced within your report. Check your module handbook for the referencing style you should use as there are different styles depending on your degree. If it is the standard Westminster Harvard Referencing style, then follow these guidelines and remember to be consistent.
Scientific Writing Style
Scientific report/lab writing and essay writing differ in style. Compared to essay writing styles, scientific report writing styles expect the following:
- A lean and direct approach to the words chosen: do not use words unnecessarily, be concise, and always consider the purpose of each and every word.
- Each sentence must serve a purpose , so treat each sentence as important in the role it performs within the report.
- The focus is on measurement and observation, and conveying the evidence with clarity , we therefore want to avoid using our opinions or suppositions : be objective and avoid the use of superlatives, emotive language, or wishy washy phrases, such as 'somewhat,' 'potentially,' 'possibly,' 'nearly,' and 'may be.'
- It is important to not only begin with a question, but also the method by which you will answer that question: pre-plan and be sure of the methods you're using so that your approach is organised and systematic. Your way of answering the question must be reproducible in order to check the validity of the results and conclusions, and produce 'intersubjectively accessible knowledge.
- It is important to show your evidence , as this is what your conclusions will be based on. Be critical of the evidence, don't just tell the reader, but show the reader what it means by questioning how the evidence supports the answer to the question.
- Maintain a rigid structure to your writing that reflects the scientific method that underlines the report: check the specific guidelines of the assignment and thoroughly follow these. If, however, you are not provided with a required structure, consider following the IMRaD structure and adapt where needed.
Recommendation: Check out the further resources for more advice, AND also take a look through scientific articles and research - use your reading effectively !
Reading scientific papers is an excellent way of not only developing your knowledge of a subject, but also developing your scientific writing practices and gaining a greater understanding of what is to be expected. When reading, be sure to keep in mind the author's use of language and phrases, ways of presenting and discussing evidence, and ways of organising, structuring, and formatting material, as you may wish to emulate or imitate (NOT plagiarise or copy) the styles you read.
Further Resources
Science Writing Resources for Learning by The University of British Columbia
Scientific Writing Resource by the Duke Graduate School
Scientific Writing by the Royal Literary Fund
Successful Scientific Writing by Janice R. Matthews, John M. Bowen and Robert W. Matthews
Writing for Science Students (Palgrave Study Skills) by Jennifer Boyle
The Scientist's Guide to Writing: How to Write More Easily and Effectively Throughout Your Scientific Career by Stephen B. Heard
Writing for Biomedical Sciences Students (Macmillan Study Skills) by Harry Witchel
Successful Scientific Writing: A Step-By-Step Guide for the Biological and Medical Sciences by Janice R. Matthews
Date Handling and Analysis (Fundamentals of Biomedical Science) by Andrew Blann
How to Write a Scientific Paper: An Academic Self-Help Guide for PhD Students by Jari Saramäki
Free and Purchasable Courses:
Writing in the Sciences run by Coursera
Science Writing run by The University of Cambridge Institute of Continuing Education
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Formatting Science Reports
This section describes an organizational structure commonly used to report experimental research in many scientific disciplines, the IMRAD format: I ntroduction, M ethods, R esults, And D iscussion.
When and when not to use the IMRAD format
Although most scientific reports use the IMRAD format, there are some exceptions.
This format is usually not used in reports describing other kinds of research, such as field or case studies, in which headings are more likely to differ according to discipline. Although the main headings are standard for many scientific fields, details may vary; check with your instructor, or, if submitting an article to a journal, refer to the instructions to authors.
Developing a Title
Titles should.
- Describe contents clearly and precisely, so that readers can decide whether to read the report
- Provide key words for indexing
Titles should NOT
- Include wasted words such as “studies on,” “an investigation of”
- Use abbreviations and jargon
- Use “cute” language
Good Titles
The Relationship of Luteinizing Hormone to Obesity in the Zucker Rat
Poor Titles
An Investigation of Hormone Secretion and Weight in Rats Fat Rats: Are Their Hormones Different?
The Abstract
The guidelines below address issues to consider when writing an abstract.
What is the report about, in miniature and without specific details?
- State main objectives. (What did you investigate? Why?)
- Describe methods. (What did you do?)
- Summarize the most important results. (What did you find out?)
- State major conclusions and significance. (What do your results mean? So what?)
What to avoid:
- Do not include references to figures, tables, or sources.
- Do not include information not in report.
Additional tips:
- Find out maximum length (may vary from 50 to 300+ words).
- Process: Extract key points from each section. Condense in successive revisions.
The Introduction
Guidelines for effective scientific report introductions.
What is the problem?
- Describe the problem investigated.
- Summarize relevant research to provide context, key terms, and concepts so your reader can understand the experiment.
Why is it important?
- Review relevant research to provide rationale. (What conflict or unanswered question, untested population, untried method in existing research does your experiment address? What findings of others are you challenging or extending?)
What solution (or step toward a solution) do you propose?
- Briefly describe your experiment: hypothesis(es), research question(s); general experimental design or method; justification of method if alternatives exist.
- Move from general to specific: problem in real world/research literature –> your experiment.
- Engage your reader: answer the questions, “What did you do?” “Why should I care?”
- Make clear the links between problem and solution, question asked and research design, prior research and your experiment.
- Be selective, not exhaustive, in choosing studies to cite and amount of detail to include. (In general, the more relevant an article is to your study, the more space it deserves and the later in the Introduction it appears.)
- Ask your instructor whether to summarize results and/or conclusions in the Introduction.
Methods Section
Below are some questions to consider for effective methods sections in scientific reports.
How did you study the problem?
- Briefly explain the general type of scientific procedure you used.
What did you use?
(May be subheaded as Materials)
- Describe what materials, subjects, and equipment (chemicals, experimental animals, apparatus, etc.) you used. (These may be subheaded Animals, Reagents, etc.)
How did you proceed?
(May be subheaded as Methods or Procedures)
- Explain the steps you took in your experiment. (These may be subheaded by experiment, types of assay, etc.)
- Provide enough detail for replication. For a journal article, include, for example, genus, species, strain of organisms; their source, living conditions, and care; and sources (manufacturer, location) of chemicals and apparatus.
- Order procedures chronologically or by type of procedure (subheaded) and chronologically within type.
- Use past tense to describe what you did.
- Quantify when possible: concentrations, measurements, amounts (all metric); times (24-hour clock); temperatures (centigrade)
- Don’t include details of common statistical procedures.
- Don’t mix results with procedures.
Results Section
The section below offers some questions asked for effective results sections in scientific reports.
What did you observe?
For each experiment or procedure:
- Briefly describe experiment without detail of Methods section (a sentence or two).
- Representative: most common
- Best Case: best example of ideal or exception
- from most to least important
- from simple to complex
- organ by organ; chemical class by chemical class
- Use past tense to describe what happened.
- Don’t simply repeat table data; select .
- Don’t interpret results.
- Avoid extra words: “It is shown in Table 1 that X induced Y” –> “X induced Y (Table 1).”
Discussion Section
The table below offers some questions effective discussion sections in scientific reports address.
What do your observations mean?
- Summarize the most important findings at the beginning.
What conclusions can you draw?
For each major result:
- Describe the patterns, principles, relationships your results show.
- Explain how your results relate to expectations and to literature cited in your Introduction. Do they agree, contradict, or are they exceptions to the rule?
- Explain plausibly any agreements, contradictions, or exceptions.
- Describe what additional research might resolve contradictions or explain exceptions.
How do your results fit into a broader context?
- Suggest the theoretical implications of your results.
- Suggest practical applications of your results?
- Extend your findings to other situations or other species.
- Give the big picture: do your findings help us understand a broader topic?
- Move from specific to general: your finding(s) –> literature, theory, practice.
- Don’t ignore or bury the major issue. Did the study achieve the goal (resolve the problem, answer the question, support the hypothesis) presented in the Introduction?
- Give evidence for each conclusion.
- Discuss possible reasons for expected and unexpected findings.
- Don’t overgeneralize.
- Don’t ignore deviations in your data.
- Avoid speculation that cannot be tested in the foreseeable future.
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The basics of scientific writing.
Published: Tues., September 20, 2016
Graduate Connections recently spoke with Dr. Rick Lombardo from the Office of Graduate Studies about scientific writing and his best advice for writing well. He's presented writing workshops to both academic and non-academic audiences for over 15 years and continues to share his knowledge and experience with students.
GC: How is scientific writing different from other kinds of writing?
Scientific writing is not just writing about science; it is the technical writing that scientists do to communicate their research to others. Scientific writing is predicated on the rigors of scientific inquiry, so it must reflect the same precision as that demanded in the research process. Scientific communication demands precision (the precise use of words and phrases), clarity, and economy. This distinction is an important one because the writer is communicating highly technical information to others who might, or might not, be as knowledgeable; they may be from a different discipline; they may, or may not, be a native speaker of the language used. Many journals have international audiences, so precise communication helps prevent misunderstandings and mistranslations in other contexts. Communicating facts, figures, and methods used in research––as well as the description of the results––has to be precise and exact. The research question, hypotheses, methods, analysis, and conclusions must be stated clearly and simply.
GC: What does it mean to write clearly and precisely?
First, writers should focus on the words they use and their punctuation. Subtle differences in word choice or punctuation can have significantly different meanings. Here are a few examples:
- In some fields, “de-stabilized” does not mean “not stable”; it means less stable than before.
- The sentence “Isotopes, which were discovered in 1853, are radioactive,” reads as if all isotopes were discovered in 1853. What the writer intended to say, however, is that “The isotopes that were discovered in 1853 are radioactive.”
- Instead of writing, “Our models worked well when compared with the calculated values, which is evidenced by the percent errors,” write, “As the percent errors indicate, our models worked well when compared with the calculated values.” In the revised version of this sentence, the meaning suddenly emerges.
Also, the organization of your writing is critical. The organization of a paper is logical, with rules for what goes into each section. Read papers from your particular discipline to understand the relevant rules. Briefly, your order of presentation should make the most sense to your reader. This is what is commonly referred to as “readablility.” If your reader has to work too hard to understand your meaning or your organization, you have a problem in your writing. In a Methods section, the description should be complete enough to enable someone else to repeat your work. Also, explain why each procedure was done, i.e., what variable were you measuring and why?
Remember, you’re not writing to impress. You’re writing to communicate.
GC: What strategies can you use to write clearly and concisely?
This is the point where scientific writing most noticeably resembles other types of writing. Logic and organization isn’t automatic. It doesn’t come naturally from your head to the paper. You need to step back and impose logic on your writing; you then need to crystallize it by always asking yourself this question: “Will this make sense to the reader?” It doesn’t matter if it makes sense to you. It must make sense to the reader. When you explain something to someone face-to-face, you have instant feedback; you can quickly tell if the person you’re talking to understands what it is you’re saying––they provide verbal or non-verbal feedback. You don’t have that luxury with writing. You have one chance.
And, of course, the first step in being logical is in the creation of an outline before you begin writing. Keep in mind, it’s easy to create an outline; the difficult part is stepping back from it to make certain it’s in a naturally logical order, with coordinate and subordinate ideas. This is the step that takes the greatest investment of time. And, if you don’t know this already, you should remember it: Every paragraph should have one topic sentence, not two or three. All sentences in a paragraph should support or elaborate upon what your topic sentence says you plan to discuss. You should be able to provide a rationale for why each sentence is placed where it is in each paragraph. All of your paragraphs should be logically organized around your section headings or sub-headings. You should have a rationale for where each paragraph is placed. You must maintain a natural logic that is accessible to the reader.
In general, good writers:
- Use effective transitions between sections, paragraphs, sentences, and within sentences.
- Use strong verbs and concrete nouns. Don’t start sentences with weak phrases like, “There are . . .“ or “In order to determine,” instead of “To determine.”
- Always strive to make the implicit explicit. Just because you know what you meant to say does not mean your audience does.
One other suggestion: After you’ve written a section, step away from it for a day and return with a fresh eye. This will help you view your writing from the reader’s perspective.
GC: Why is it important to write well?
If you can’t clearly, concisely, and logically communicate how you collected and analyzed your data, it doesn’t matter how groundbreaking your research is. Readers won’t understand it and will justifiably question your results. However, if you can clearly explain your work, it will be understood by more people.
GC: What resources are available to help with graduate students' writing?
There are many great books on writing for academics. One book I like to recommend is Academic Writing for Graduate Students .
Another great resource is the university’s Writing Center . They are available to work with all students at the university, including graduate students, so don’t hesitate to seek them out if you would like help with your writing.
You can also form a writing group with other graduate students. Having someone else read and respond to your writing will help you catch places where the meaning is unclear. Also, revising and reviewing other people’s work can sometimes make you even better at identifying mistakes in your own work.
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1. consult with supervisors regarding instructions and guidelines, 2. anticipate the audience of the report, 3. outline the content and structure of the report, 4. draft the scientific report, 5. indicate the references and citations, 6. revise, edit, and correct as necessary, share this post on your network, you may also like these articles, 28+ sample behavior incident reports in pdf | ms word.
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Writing up the results from an experiment can be difficult, as the nature of scientific research requires rigorous testing techniques and accurate recordings of data. The scientific report allows researchers to record their findings and publish them out into the world, expanding on the area of expertise. So, what comprises a scientific report?
- We are going to establish and explore scientific reports in psychological research.
- We will start by looking at scientific reports in psychology and how scientific report writing should be conducted.
- Then we will explore the scientific report structure, including the introduction, method, results, scientific report conclusion and discussion.
- Finally, we will delve into scientific report examples.
Scientific Reports: Psychology
Research can be identified as primary or secondary research; whether the researcher collects the data used for analysis or uses previously published findings determines this. The different types of research produce different types of scientific reports, such as:
Primary research is data collected from the researcher, e.g., when carrying out an experiment.
For example, a laboratory produces a primary scientific psychology report.
On the other hand, secondary research is carried out using previously published research.
For example, a meta-analysis uses statistical means to combine and analyse data from similar studies.
Or, a systematic review uses a systematic approach (clearly defining variables and creating extensive inclusion and exclusion criteria to find research in databases) to gather empirical data to answer a research question.
Scientific Report: Importance
The reason why research should follow the APA recommendations for writing up psychological scientific research is that:
- It ensures the researcher adds enough information to replicate and peer-review the study.
- It makes it easier to read and find relevant information.
- It ensures the report is written to a good standard.
- It ensures any secondary research used acknowledges and credits the original author.
Scientfic Report: Writing
When conducting scientific report writing, several things must be kept in mind. A scientific report aims to help readers understand the study's procedure, findings and what this means for psychology. A scientific report should be clear and logical to make it easier to understand the research.
The American Psychological Association (APA) has created guidelines on how a scientific report should be written, including the scientific report structure and format.
APA suggests several headings for use in psychology reports. The scientific report structure and details included in the report will vary based on the researcher's experiment. However, a general framework is used as a template for research.
Scientific Report Structure
Psychology research should always start with an abstract. This section briefly summarises the whole study, typically 150-200 words. The crucial details the abstract should give include an overview of the hypothesis, sample, procedure, results, details regarding data analysis, and the conclusions drawn.
This section allows readers to read the summary and decide if the research is relevant to them.
The purpose of the introduction is to justify why the research is carried out. This is usually done by writing a literature review of relevant information to the phenomena and showing that your study will fill a gap in research.
The information described in the literature review must show how the researcher it was used to formulate and derived the hypothesis investigated.
The literature review will reflect research supporting and negating the hypothesis.
In this section, the investigated hypotheses should be reported.
The introduction should consist of a third of the psychology research report.
Scientific Report Structure: Method
The method consists of multiple subsections to ensure the report covers enough details to replicate the research. It is important to replicate investigations to identify if it is reliable. The details included in the methodology are important for peer-reviewing the quality of the study.
It allows the person peer-reviewing it to determine if the research is scientific, reliable, and valid and if it should be published in a psychological journal.
The subsections written in the methods section of a scientific report are:
State the experimental design.
State all of the (operationalised) variables investigated.
If multiple conditions are investigated, e.g., people treated for one, two, and four weeks, researchers should report it.
It is also important to note how researchers allocated participants into groups and whether they used counterbalancing methods.
The research design used, e.g., correlational research.
Counterbalancing is used to combat order effects. In some designs, participants repeat the same experiment counterbalancing techniques deal with these.
Sample/ Participants
The sampling method should be noted, e.g., opportunity.
Researchers should state the number of participants and the number of males and females participating in the study.
They should state the demographics of the participants used in the research, e.g., age (including the mean and standard deviation), ethnicity, nationality, and any other details relevant to the investigation.
Materials/Apparatus
This section should state all the relevant equipment used in the study, i.e., equipment/materials used to measure the variables , e.g., questionnaires (researchers should include a copy of this in the appendix).
Some research does not use this subsection if it does not use any specialised materials, e.g., researchers do not need to state if participants used pens or a stopwatch.
- This section should describe what researchers did in the research in the order they conducted it.
They should include details about standardised instruction, informed consent, and debriefing.
This section should be concise but provide enough details so it is replicable.
This section states which ethical committee reviewed and granted the research.
It should state any ethical issues that could have occurred in the research and how researchers dealt with them.
Scientific Report Conclusion and Results
The results section is where you state your findings. This section only states what you have found and does not discuss or explain it. You can present the data found through numerical values, tables, and figures. However, there are specific guidelines on reporting data per APA guidelines when reporting or adding these.
Researchers should not use the raw data collected. Instead, it should be analysed first. The results should start with descriptive data followed by inferential statistics (the type of statistical test used to identify whether a hypothesis should be accepted or rejected).
These statistics should include effect size and significance level (p).
Researchers should report data regardless of whether it is significant or not. They should report the p-value to three decimal places but everything else to two.
After the results, the scientific report conclusion should be reported; this summarises what was found in the study.
- The scientific report conclusion provides a less detailed summary of the study's results which is built on in the discussion section.
Scientific Report: Discussion
This section should discuss and conclude with the research results. The first thing researchers should write about in the discussion is whether the findings support the proposed hypothesis.
If the results support the hypothesis, researchers should compare the findings to previously published findings in the introduction that also found the same results.
You should add very little new research to the discussion section. If the hypothesis is not supported, the discussion should explain from research why this may be. Here, adding new research to present the findings is acceptable (perhaps another theory better explains it).
Critiquing this research, such as its strengths and weaknesses, how it contributed to the psychology field, and its next direction is essential. In the discussion, researchers should not add statistical values.
Scientific Report Example
An example of a scientific report includes any of those seen in studies, such as when a laboratory produces a primary scientific psychology report, or a meta-analysis which uses statistical means to combine and analyse data from similar studies.
The purpose of the reference section is to give credit to all the research used in writing the report. Researchers list this section in alphabetical order based on the author's last name – t he references listed need to be reported per the APA format.
Researchers use background information, e.g. data or theories from previous publications, to form hypotheses, support, criticise findings and learn how research should progress.
The two most common secondary sources used in scientific reports are findings from published journals or books.
Let's look at some scientific report examples of how books and journals should be referenced following APA guidelines.
Book : Author, initial (year of publication). Book title in italics. Publisher. DOI if available (digital object identifier).
Example: Comer, R. J. (2007). Abnormal psychology . New York: Worth Publishers.
Journal: Author, initial (year). Article title. Journal title in italics, volume number in italics , issue number, page range. DOI if available.
Example: Fjell, A. M., Walhovd, K. B., Fischl, B., & Reinvang, I. (2007). Cognitive function, P3a/P3b brain potentials, and cortical thickness in ageing. Human Brain Mapping, 28 (11), 1098-1116. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.20335
Scientific Report - Key takeaways
A scientific report consists of details regarding scientists reporting what their research entailed and reporting the results and conclusions drawn from the study.
- Researchers should write scientific psychology reports per the APA format to ensure the scientists report enough information. It makes the report easier to read and find relevant information and ensures that the original authors of the research are acknowledged and credited.
- The scientific report structure should use the following subheadings: abstract, introduction, method (design, participants, materials, procedure and ethics), results, discussion, references and occasionally appendix, in this order.
Frequently Asked Questions about Scientific Report
--> how do you write a scientific report in psychology.
When psychologists carry out research, an essential part of the process involves reporting what the research entails and the results and conclusions drawn from the study. The American Psychological Association (APA) provides guidelines for the correct format researchers should use when writing psychology research reports.
--> How do you write a scientific introduction to a report?
It is usually done by writing a literature review of relevant information to the phenomena and showing that your study will fill a gap in research.
--> How do you structure a scientific report?
The structure of a scientific report should use the following subheadings: abstract, introduction, method (design, participants, materials, procedure and ethics), results, discussion, references and occasionally appendix, in this order.
--> What is a scientific report?
A scientific report consists of details regarding scientists reporting what their research entailed and reporting the results and conclusions drawn from the study.
--> What are the types of a scientific report?
Scientific reports can be primary or secondary. A primary scientific report is produced when the researchers conduct the research themselves. However, secondary scientific reports such as peer reviews, meta-analyses and systematic reviews are a type of scientific report that scientists produce when the researcher answers their proposed research question using previously published findings.
Final Scientific Report Quiz
What is a scientific report?
Show answer
Show question
Why is scientific research reported per APA in psychology?
- It ensures the scientists report enough information.
- It makes the report easier to read and find relevant information.
- It ensures the original research authors are acknowledged and credited.
How should the following book be reported per APA guidelines? The book is called Abnormal psychology, Worth Publishers published it in New York in 2007. Ronald J Comer wrote the book.
Comer, R. J. (2007). Abnormal psychology . New York: Worth Publishers.
What structure should a scientific report follow?
The structure of a scientific report should use the following subheadings:
- Introduction.
- Discussion.
- References.
- Occasionally appendix.
What are potential subheadings we can find in the methods section of a scientific report?
- Participants.
Where can readers find the hypothesis of research?
In the abstract and introduction.
What is the purpose of the abstract?
The purpose of the abstract is to provide an overview of the research so that the reader can quickly identify if the research is relevant or of interest to them.
How long should an abstract be?
250-300 words.
Is the following reference reported in accordance with APA guidelines ‘Fjell, A. M., Walhovd, K. B., Fischl, B., & Reinvang, I. Cognitive function, P3a/P3b brain potentials, and cortical thickness in ageing. Human Brain Mapping, 28 (11), 1098-1116. doi:10.1002/hbm.20335’?
No, the publication year is missing.
Do researchers have to report insignificant data?
Yes, they need to report all data, whether significant or not.
What is the difference between the information that should be put in the results and discussion section?
In the results section, the researcher should insert the inferential data analysed, which could take the form of numerical numbers, graphs and figures. In this section, they should not discuss or explain the results. Instead, they should write it under the discussion heading. However, the data reported in the results section should not be repeated here.
What is a primary scientific report?
A primary scientific report is produced when the researchers conduct the research themselves.
What is a secondary scientific report?
Secondary scientific reports such as peer-reviews, meta-analysis and systematic reviews are a type of scientific report that scientists produce when the researcher answers their proposed research question using previously published findings.
What kind of details should be added in the discussion section?
- The first thing that researchers should write about in the discussion is whether the findings support the hypothesis proposed or not.
- They should then discuss and explain the results the research found.
- They should then compare the findings to previously published findings that investigated the phenomena.
- It is essential to critique this research, such as the strengths and weaknesses, how it contributed to the psychology field and its next direction.
What information should be provided in the procedure section of a scientific report?
- They should include the details about standardised instruction, informed consent, and debriefing.
Researchers need to add enough details of their study so that it can be .....
replicated.
When referring to another study the researcher should always the original .
credit, author.
Meta-analyses and systematic reports are both examples of research.
According to APA, six main headings should be included in a report, true or false?
According to APA, the way to reference a book and journal is the same, true or false?
After a paper is written, what is done?
The paper is peer-reviewed.
What does peer-reviewing ensure?
Identify if the research is scientific, reliable, and valid and if it should be published in a psychological journal.
Can researchers refer to raw data in their scientific report?
Should researchers refer to their statistical findings to back what they are saying?
No, data should not be referred to in the discussion. Instead, the researcher can describe what was found and the inferences that can be made from observed trends.
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- How to Write a Scientific Research Paper
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Scientific research is not a solitary endeavor. Rather, science is a communal effort. Scientists use findings and ideas of other scientists as the basis for their own studies, and in turn report their findings back to the scientific community. Thus, communication of findings is part of the scientific process. In fact, only by writing papers, presenting seminars, or reporting findings in some other way, does one become a full participant in the scientific or research community. In other words, a good scientist is also a good communicator.
A scientific research paper normally follows a standard outline and format (bolded below). A common problem in many scientific papers is that the author does not organize material into the appropriate sections. Thus, pay close attention to the functions of the various sections described herein.
TITLE. The title of your paper is very important. It should be a clear and concise description of the content of the paper. When creating a title, express the subject but do not try to impress the reader with technical jargon. Sometimes a clever, informed phrase can attract readers, but wittiness is not the goal. Remember, your goal is to communicate information. A simple, direct title is usually best.
ABSTRACT. The abstract summarizes the essentials of the paper. It briefly describes the purpose, any unusual methodology, and key results of the project. Abstracts are often limited to a few hundred words, so they need to be concise. The abstract is best written after a paper is completed. (For more information on writing a good abstract, see the Abstract UFI.)
INTRODUCTION. Good scientific papers explain how the specific study being described is related to other research and ideas on the same topic. Good papers not only report on the specific details of a particular project but also help illuminate larger issues of interest to readers of the discipline. The introduction is where the author helps the reader see the larger context for the specific study. This is accomplished by briefly reviewing some of the relevant literature and explaining how the current project is related to the existing body of work. Interpretations made earlier and now known to be incorrect are disqualified here as well. This is also the time to describe the goals and objectives of the study, e.g., to test certain hypotheses or answer a set of questions.
METHODOLOGY. The methodology section, sometimes called "Materials and Methods", is where the author describes how the study was conducted. The description should be complete enough so that the reader can evaluate the appropriateness of the methods to answer the questions or test the hypotheses as presented in the Introduction. If you employed some methods that others have used, you should cite the publications in which those methods are described. In many cases, it is appropriate for geologists to include a subsection (or even a separate section) in which you describe your study site. Headings often used include “Geologic Setting”, or “Location”, or (“Stratigraphic”, “Depositional” or “Structural”) “Setting”. If some statistical analyses were performed on the data, they should be described completely and accurately in the Methodology section. Another worker should be able to easily repeat your methods.
RESULTS. In the Results section, one should report, but not discuss, the primary results. In other words, "Just the facts, please". The verbal report of results is supplemented with tables of data and/or figures (graphs, diagrams, photographs, etc.). Remember, it is not the reader's job to figure out what the various tables and figures are trying to illustrate. An author needs to summarize the key findings verbally first and then refer the reader to relevant tables and figures for more a more detailed, or graphic, representation of the results. Figures and tables should each be numbered consecutively so that the reader may refer to them when intended, e.g., „The results show a strong correlation between rate of uplift and rate of erosion (Fig. 3)'. All tables should have a descriptive title, and a caption for each figure should be provided. The caption should include the subject or title of the figure and all other information that will help the reader understand or interpret what is being illustrated.
Notice that much of this discussion of “Results” is focused on Figures and Tables. This is no accident. In geological writing, it is as important (more important?) to carefully plan illustrations and tables as it is the text. Poor illustrations can negate very sound research by failing to clearly illustrate one‟s discoveries. In fact poor graphing skills can fail to demonstrate scientific relationships that are present in one‟s data. Researchers are responsible for learning how best to graph relationships and how to work with graphics to best illustrate their scientific results (see the related handout on “Preparing Scientific Posters for Geologic Conferences.”).
DISCUSSION. The discussion is the section of the paper in which the author describes what the results mean. Were the original hypotheses supported, or questions answered? How are unexpected results explained? Do findings support or contradict findings from similar studies? These are some of the sorts of questions you might address. If most of the discussion is confined to the specific results of your study, the section may be better titled “Interpretations” or “Analysis of Results”. However, it is usually appropriate to comment on the larger significance and ramifications of your findings as part of a “Discussion” of the implications of the work. This section should include thorough citation of the works of others that are involved in your discussion.
CONCLUSIONS. It is often important to extract the main conclusions from the text and summarize them as the “take home” ideas of the paper. This is frequently done with a numbered list of the points made.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. Most scientific articles include a brief, but important, section in which the authors thank various people, granting agencies and institutions who have contributed in some way to the work. These contributions could be in helping to form the original hypotheses, collecting data, aiding data analysis, providing financial resources or collecting permission, or reviewing an earlier draft.
LITERATURE CITED. This section is sometimes called “References Cited”. Here one provides full citations for all works mentioned in the body of the paper and only those works mentioned in the paper. Every research paper follows one or another bibliographic style. Check with professors (or journal editors) to learn the style, or apply a digital style editor, and use it consistently for all citations.
A FEW FINAL THOUGHTS. Contrary to what most students have been taught, there is no hard and fast rule about the use of active vs passive voice in scientific articles. Likewise, there is no standard format for citing other sources or for citation style in the Literature Cited section. This means you need to consult with the editor or professor ahead of time to find out the specific instructions for the paper you are writing. Above all strive to be direct and clear. Ultimately, you are trying to persuade the readers about the significance of your findings. Only in very rare circumstances do results speak for themselves. In most cases they need an ardent and articulate advocate- -you!
This UFI (Useful Flyer of Information) was developed and written by Mark A. Davis for the benefit of students. It has been modified by J. M. Erickson and the Geowriting class at St. Lawrence University. For other UFIs see the Geology Dept.UFI webpage
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- Introduction Sections in Scientific Research Reports (IMRaD)
The goal of the introduction in an IMRaD* report is to give the reader an overview of the literature in the field, show the motivation for your study, and share what unique perspective your research adds. To introduce readers to your material and convince them of the research value, we have some suggestions (based on Swales, 1990) to help your introduction meet the expectations of the academic community.
* IMRaD refers to reports with the structure Introduction-Method-Results-Discussion used in empirical research in natural and social sciences. Please refer to the Writing Center quick guide “Writing an IMRaD Report” for more explanations.
Generally, introductions are broken into three moves. However, depending on the discipline, journal, or purpose of the paper, they may be used in different ways. The table below details these three moves.
1 Sample language above is taken directly from the University of Manchester’s Academic Phrasebank: http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/introducing-work/.
Sample introduction
Below is an example of an introduction from a published research article. Notice how the three moves are utilized throughout the introduction.
Electronic cigarettes (also known as vapes, vaporizers, or vape pens) were introduced into the US market in 2007. They are generally battery-powered products that heat liquid into an aerosol that is inhaled by the user. These devices are designed to deliver nicotine and flavors; they also contain chemicals such as propylene glycol, glycerin, and many other constituents. Use of e-cigarettes has dramatically increased over the past 4 years, tripling among high school students from a rate of 4.5% in 2011 to 27.4% in 2014 (CDC, 2015, 2016). Further, 27.4% of adolescents in the U.S. have ever used e-cigarettes (CDC, 2015), with 30% of California youth reporting ever using an e-cigarette (California Department of Public Health, 2015)…
The literature on e-cigarette attitudes thus far has predominantly focused on harm perceptions and general acceptability of and attitudes towards e-cigarettes and cigarettes. To our knowledge, there are few studies that have more comprehensively examined adolescents' specific attitudes towards and knowledge about e-cigarettes, and/or whether such attitudes differ between those who have and have not used e-cigarettes or other tobacco...
We thus examined a broad array of adolescents' knowledge and attitudes regarding e-cigarette ingredients, addictive properties, safety, cessation, perceived prevalence, accessibility, price, and regulation. We also examined whether these attitudes differ between adolescents who have and have not used cigarettes and/or e-cigarettes. Based on the small body of literature on e-cigarette attitudes, the larger set of literature on adolescents' attitudes towards cigarettes, and the relationship between such attitudes and tobacco use (e.g., Halpern-Felsher et al., 2004; Krosnick et al., 2006; Song et al., 2009; Roditis et al., 2016), we hypothesized that: (1) adolescents will believe that a greater number of parents, siblings, and peers are using e-cigarettes compared to cigarettes; (2)...
(adapted from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743516303413 )
Italics = Establishing the research territory
Underlined = Establishing the niche
Bold = Occupying the niche
Activity to help you prepare for writing IMRaD introductions
Choose a journal in your discipline and read a few different articles, paying close attention to the Introduction sections. Identify the three moves and the ways they are expressed, and answer the following questions.
- How closely do these introductions mirror the structure laid out above? If they deviate, do you think this was a good decision on the authors’ part? Why or why not?
- How is each move expressed? What language helped you identify these moves?
- Are there some features of these introductions that you would use in your own paper? Any you would not?
- How are the citations laid out across the different introductions? In which moves are citations predominantly used? How can you explain this use?
Exercise adapted from Swales, J. M., & Feak, C. B. (2004). Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills . Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press.
Last updated 4/26/2018
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How to Write a Report: A Guide
A report is a nonfiction account that presents and/or summarizes the facts about a particular event, topic, or issue. The idea is that people who are unfamiliar with the subject can find everything they need to know from a good report.
Reports make it easy to catch someone up to speed on a subject, but actually writing a report is anything but easy. So to help you understand what to do, below we present a little report of our own, all about report writing.
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What is a report?
In technical terms, the definition of a report is pretty vague: any account, spoken or written, of the matters concerning a particular topic. This could refer to anything from a courtroom testimony to a grade schooler’s book report.
Really, when people talk about “reports,” they’re usually referring to official documents outlining the facts of a topic, typically written by an expert on the subject or someone assigned to investigate it. There are different types of reports, explained in the next section, but they mostly fit this description.
What kind of information is shared in reports? Although all facts are welcome, reports, in particular, tend to feature these types of content:
- Details of an event or situation
- The consequences or ongoing effect of an event or situation
- Evaluation of statistical data or analytics
- Interpretations from the information in the report
- Predictions or recommendations based on the information in the report
- How the information relates to other events or reports
Reports are closely related to essay writing , although there are some clear distinctions. While both rely on facts, essays add the personal opinions and arguments of the authors. Reports typically stick only to the facts, although they may include some of the author’s interpretation of these facts, most likely in the conclusion.
Moreover, reports are heavily organized, commonly with tables of contents and copious headings and subheadings. This makes it easier for readers to scan reports for the information they’re looking for. Essays, on the other hand, are meant to be read start to finish, not browsed for specific insights.
Types of reports
There are a few different types of reports, depending on the purpose and to whom you present your report. Here’s a quick list of the common types of reports:
- Academic report: Tests a student’s comprehension of the subject matter, such as book reports, reports on historical events, and biographies
- Business reports: Identifies information useful in business strategy, such as marketing reports, internal memos, SWOT analysis, and feasibility reports
- Scientific reports: Shares research findings, such as research papers and case studies, typically in science journals
Reports can be further divided into categories based on how they are written. For example, a report could be formal or informal, short or long, and internal or external. In business, a vertical report shares information with people on different levels of the hierarchy (i.e., people who work above you and below you), while a lateral report is for people on the author’s same level, but in different departments.
There are as many types of reports as there are writing styles, but in this guide, we focus on academic reports, which tend to be formal and informational.
>>Read More: What Is Academic Writing?
What is the structure of a report?
The structure of a report depends on the type of report and the requirements of the assignment. While reports can use their own unique structure, most follow this basic template:
- Executive summary: Just like an abstract in an academic paper, an executive summary is a standalone section that summarizes the findings in your report so readers know what to expect. These are mostly for official reports and less so for school reports.
- Introduction: Setting up the body of the report, your introduction explains the overall topic that you’re about to discuss, with your thesis statement and any need-to-know background information before you get into your own findings.
- Body: The body of the report explains all your major discoveries, broken up into headings and subheadings. The body makes up the majority of the entire report; whereas the introduction and conclusion are just a few paragraphs each, the body can go on for pages.
- Conclusion: The conclusion is where you bring together all the information in your report and come to a definitive interpretation or judgment. This is usually where the author inputs their own personal opinions or inferences.
If you’re familiar with how to write a research paper , you’ll notice that report writing follows the same introduction-body-conclusion structure, sometimes adding an executive summary. Reports usually have their own additional requirements as well, such as title pages and tables of content, which we explain in the next section.
What should be included in a report?
There are no firm requirements for what’s included in a report. Every school, company, laboratory, task manager, and teacher can make their own format, depending on their unique needs. In general, though, be on the lookout for these particular requirements—they tend to crop up a lot:
- Title page: Official reports often use a title page to keep things organized; if a person has to read multiple reports, title pages make them easier to keep track of.
- Table of contents: Just like in books, the table of contents helps readers go directly to the section they’re interested in, allowing for faster browsing.
- Page numbering: A common courtesy if you’re writing a longer report, page numbering makes sure the pages are in order in the case of mix-ups or misprints.
- Headings and subheadings: Reports are typically broken up into sections, divided by headings and subheadings, to facilitate browsing and scanning.
- Citations: If you’re citing information from another source, the citations guidelines tell you the recommended format.
- Works cited page: A bibliography at the end of the report lists credits and the legal information for the other sources you got information from.
As always, refer to the assignment for the specific guidelines on each of these. The people who read the report should tell you which style guides or formatting they require.
How to write a report in 7 steps
Now let’s get into the specifics of how to write a report. Follow the seven steps on report writing below to take you from an idea to a completed paper.
1 Choose a topic based on the assignment
Before you start writing, you need to pick the topic of your report. Often, the topic is assigned for you, as with most business reports, or predetermined by the nature of your work, as with scientific reports. If that’s the case, you can ignore this step and move on.
If you’re in charge of choosing your own topic, as with a lot of academic reports, then this is one of the most important steps in the whole writing process. Try to pick a topic that fits these two criteria:
- There’s adequate information: Choose a topic that’s not too general but not too specific, with enough information to fill your report without padding, but not too much that you can’t cover everything.
- It’s something you’re interested in: Although this isn’t a strict requirement, it does help the quality of a report if you’re engaged by the subject matter.
Of course, don’t forget the instructions of the assignment, including length, so keep those in the back of your head when deciding.
2 Conduct research
With business and scientific reports, the research is usually your own or provided by the company—although there’s still plenty of digging for external sources in both.
For academic papers, you’re largely on your own for research, unless you’re required to use class materials. That’s one of the reasons why choosing the right topic is so crucial; you won’t go far if the topic you picked doesn’t have enough available research.
The key is to search only for reputable sources: official documents, other reports, research papers, case studies, books from respected authors, etc. Feel free to use research cited in other similar reports. You can often find a lot of information online through search engines, but a quick trip to the library can also help in a pinch.
3 Write a thesis statement
Before you go any further, write a thesis statement to help you conceptualize the main theme of your report. Just like the topic sentence of a paragraph, the thesis statement summarizes the main point of your writing, in this case, the report.
Once you’ve collected enough research, you should notice some trends and patterns in the information. If these patterns all infer or lead up to a bigger, overarching point, that’s your thesis statement.
For example, if you were writing a report on the wages of fast-food employees, your thesis might be something like, “Although wages used to be commensurate with living expenses, after years of stagnation they are no longer adequate.” From there, the rest of your report will elaborate on that thesis, with ample evidence and supporting arguments.
It’s good to include your thesis statement in both the executive summary and introduction of your report, but you still want to figure it out early so you know which direction to go when you work on your outline next.
4 Prepare an outline
Writing an outline is recommended for all kinds of writing, but it’s especially useful for reports given their emphasis on organization. Because reports are often separated by headings and subheadings, a solid outline makes sure you stay on track while writing without missing anything.
Really, you should start thinking about your outline during the research phase, when you start to notice patterns and trends. If you’re stuck, try making a list of all the key points, details, and evidence you want to mention. See if you can fit them into general and specific categories, which you can turn into headings and subheadings respectively.
5 Write a rough draft
Actually writing the rough draft , or first draft, is usually the most time-consuming step. Here’s where you take all the information from your research and put it into words. To avoid getting overwhelmed, simply follow your outline step by step to make sure you don’t accidentally leave out anything.
Don’t be afraid to make mistakes; that’s the number one rule for writing a rough draft. Expecting your first draft to be perfect adds a lot of pressure. Instead, write in a natural and relaxed way, and worry about the specific details like word choice and correcting mistakes later. That’s what the last two steps are for, anyway.
6 Revise and edit your report
Once your rough draft is finished, it’s time to go back and start fixing the mistakes you ignored the first time around. (Before you dive right back in, though, it helps to sleep on it to start editing fresh, or at least take a small break to unwind from writing the rough draft.)
We recommend first rereading your report for any major issues, such as cutting or moving around entire sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes you’ll find your data doesn’t line up, or that you misinterpreted a key piece of evidence. This is the right time to fix the “big picture” mistakes and rewrite any longer sections as needed.
If you’re unfamiliar with what to look for when editing, you can read our previous guide with some more advanced self-editing tips .
7 Proofread and check for mistakes
Last, it pays to go over your report one final time, just to optimize your wording and check for grammatical or spelling mistakes. In the previous step you checked for “big picture” mistakes, but here you’re looking for specific, even nitpicky problems.
A writing assistant like Grammarly flags those issues for you. Grammarly’s free version points out any spelling and grammatical mistakes while you write, with suggestions to improve your writing that you can apply with just one click. The Premium version offers even more advanced features, such as tone adjustments and word choice recommendations for taking your writing to the next level.
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A scientific report is a document that describes the process, progress, and or results of technical or scientific research or the state of a technical or scientific research problem. It might also include recommendations and conclusion of the research.
In this guide:
Elements of a scientific report, scientific reports for employers or clients.
- References Used for this Guide
Table of Contents
Introduction, materials and methods (experimental).
The title page will include the following:
- Usually 4-12 words in length.
- Should be short, specific and descriptive, containing the keywords of the report.
- Always publish under the same name.
- Include author addresses.
- Indicate the corresponding author and their contact details.
- The date when the paper was submitted.
A Table of Contents is only required for length reports (usually 6 pages or more).
The Abstract is a self-contained synopsis of the report - an informative summary of what you did and what you found out.
The Abstract should include the following:
- Objectives (as outlined in the Introduction) and scope of the investigation.
- A brief reference to the Materials and Methods.
- A summary of the results and conclusions - a brief but thorough statement of the outcome/s of the experiment.
If there is a hypothesis, you may state what it is and whether it was supported or refuted.
The following should not be included in the Abstract:
- Literature citations.
- Formulae and abbreviations, references to tables.
Although the Abstract comes first in a report, it is best to write it last, after you have the results and conclusions.
This provides a summary of the analysis to be undertaken. The purpose of the Introduction is to put the reader in the picture and place the research/experiment within a context.
The following may be included in the Introduction:
- Background about the analysis to be carried out.
- A brief review of previous research (relevant literature) to give a background - paraphrase relevant facts from the scientific literature, citing the sources to support each statement.
- Reason/s why the research was undertaken.
- Statement of the hypothesis (an idea or concept that can be tested by experimentation) if there is one.
- An explanation of the different techniques and why they are used.
- A statement of the objective/s - what you hope to achieve.
The Introduction is the what and why of the experiment, and should answer the following questions:
- What was the purpose or objective of the experiment/research?
- Why was the experiment/research conducted in a particular manner?
- Why was it important in a broader context?
The Introduction should not include any results or conclusions.
The Materials and Methods, sometimes called Experimental, is a description of the materials and procedures used - what was done and how. Describe the process of preparation of the sample, specifications of the instruments used and techniques employed.
The Method should include such things as sample size, apparatus or equipment used, experimental conditions, concentrations, times, controls etc.
While the Method does not need to include minute details (e.g. if you followed a set of written instructions, you may not need to write out the full procedure - state briefly what was done and cite the manual), there needs to be enough detail so that someone could repeat the work.
Do not keep using the word "then" - the reader will understand that the steps were carried out in the order in which they are written.
The Method must be written in the past tense and the passive voice.
This section states what you found.
The following will be included in your Results:
- Pictures and spectra.
- Tables and graphs whenever practical.
- Brief statements of the results in the text (without repeating the data in the graphs and tables). When writing about each picture, graph or table, refer to it parenthetically e.g. (Figure 1).
- If possible give a section of related results and then comment on them rather than presenting many pages of unrelated results and then discussing them at the end. Subheadings can be used to divide this section so that it is easier to understand.
Massive quantities of data or raw data (not refined statistically) can be presented in appendices.
Include only your own observed results in this section.
The following should not be included in your results:
- What you expected to find or what you were supposed to have observed.
- References to other works (published data or statements of theory).
Use the Discussion section of the report for these.
The Results section should be written in the past tense and passive voice, avoiding the use of "I" and "we".
State your interpretation of your findings, perhaps comparing or contrasting them with the literature. Reflect on your actual data and observations.
Explain or rationalise errant data or describe possible sources of error and how they may have affected the outcome.
The Discussion must answer the question "What do the results mean?" It is an argument based on the results.
This is the summing up of your argument or experiment/research, and should relate back to the Introduction.
The Conclusion should only consist of a few sentences, and should reiterate the findings of your experiment/research.
If appropriate, suggest how to improve the procedure, and what additional experiments or research would be helpful.
Cite any references that you have used, ensuring that each item in the reference list has an in-text citation, and every in-text citation has a full reference in the reference list at the end of your paper.
Ensure that the references are formatted according to the style required by the journal (or your lecturer/supervisor), and be careful with spelling (the author whose name you misspell may be asked to review the paper!)
If a scientific report is being prepared for an employer or client, the following additional elements may be included:
Covering Letter or Memo
A formal covering letter (if the the report is for someone outside your organisation) or memo (if the report is for someone within your organisation) which accompanies the report will include the following:
- Identification of the report topic.
- Identification of the person authorising the report, and date of authorisation.
- Key findings.
- Acknowledgement of any assistance received.
Executive Summary
This would be situated at the beginning of the report (before the Abstract).
The Executive Summary will
- explain the purpose of the report.
- describe the methods used in the investigation.
- give the main conclusions and recommendations (if applicable).
Because the readers of the report will not necessarily be scientists, the Executive Summary should be in simple language, avoiding the use of technical jargon.
Recommendations
If the report is of an investigative nature, the final section (after Conclusion) will be any recommendations that you make on the basis of the scientific results.
Acknowledgements
If other people or organisations assisted in any way with the experiments/research (e.g. funding, facilities, guidance etc.), they should be thanked at the end of the document (after Conclusion and Recommendations).
References used for this guide
Dintzner, M. R.; Niedziela, R. F. Elements of laboratory report writing. http://chemistry.che.depaul.edu/LabReport/ (accessed August 2004).
Emerson, L.; Hampton, J. Writing Guidelines for Science and Applied Science Students , 2nd ed.; Thomson/Dunmore Press: Southbank, Vic., 2005.
Lobban, C. S.; Schefter, M. Successful Lab Reports: A Manual for Science Students ; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1992.
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Learn how to prepare, write and structure a science report.
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The purpose of a scientific report is to talk the reader through an experiment or piece of research you’ve done where you’ve generated some data, the decisions you made, what you found and what it means.
Lab or experimental reports in the Sciences have a very specific structure, which is often known as IMRAD :
- I ntroduction
- R esults and
- D iscussion.
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Whether it’s a shorter lab report or a longer research project or dissertation, science writing of this kind tends to be structured into those sections (or chapters, if it’s a long project or thesis). Empirical research in the Social Sciences which is based on data collection might also use this structure. You’ll probably recognise it too in many of the journal articles you’re reading. There are sometimes variations from this pattern – sometimes results and discussion are combined into one section, sometimes in a longer research project there is a separate literature review in addition to the introduction, or there might be a conclusion as well as the discussion. Social sciences reports might have a theory section too. Always look at the brief for the assignment you have been set, or ask your lecturer or supervisor if you aren’t sure.
As there is a conventional set structure to follow for scientific reports, the main issue tends to be not how to structure it, but knowing what to write in each section, and making sure the right things are in the right places. Each section is clearly marked out with subheadings with a distinct purpose and role in the report, and the reader will expect to find particular things in each part. To help you follow this structure and know which of your points goes where, it might be useful to think about what question each section answers for your reader, and also what type of writing is characteristic of that section – more descriptive (factual), or more analytical (interpretation).
Introduction
The introduction answers two questions, and is mostly descriptive, with more analysis if you’re writing up a research project rather than a lab report:
“What’s the issue here? What do we know about it?” DESCRIPTIVE
The introduction is usually around 15-20% of the report. It offers the reader some context and background information about the issue you’re exploring or the principle you’re verifying, to establish what we’re talking about and to outline what is known about the topic. In a shorter lab report, this is where you might use references to scientific literature, to show you have read about the subject and what you’re basing your understanding on. Keep this part as tightly focussed as you can and don’t be tempted to include lots of detail or go too broad. Think about what the reader needs to know to follow your report, rather than showing everything you’ve learned about the topic. The kind of writing you’re doing here is descriptive – mostly factual statements, backed up with references, to demonstrate your understanding of the background of your experiment or research.
“What are you trying to do and why?” ANALYTICAL
The introduction quickly moves on to the nature of the problem you’re trying to solve, hypothesis you are testing or research question you’re trying to answer. Again, you might want to make reference to other people’s research to demonstrate why this is a problem, what the debate might be or what exactly we don’t know. This kind of writing is higher level, as you’re analysing a problem and evaluating why this research needs to be done. In a research project, this is a very important section, as it’s the justification for your research, but in a lab experiment, you are demonstrating that you understand why this activity has been set rather than just following instructions. You would also state briefly what model, theory, approach or method you have chosen to take and why, what kind of research this is, but not in any detail yet.
Literature review
“What is the current state of knowledge and what don’t we know?” ANALYTICAL
If you are writing up a longer research project or dissertation, you will be doing far more reading with much more critical analysis of existing research and discussion of why yours needs to be undertaken. The introduction might therefore contain so much reference to the literature and so much more analysis that it’s better to add it as a separate section in its own right – the literature review. In a shorter lab report, the references to the literature are integrated within the introduction and tend to be more descriptive -what the literature says rather than what you think about it. In a social sciences report, the literature review might also contain a discussion of the theory you’re using.
“How did you do the research?” DESCRIPTIVE
The methods section really is a pretty straightforward description of what you did to perform the experiment, or collect and process the data. It is often relatively short, about 15-20% of the report, and because it describes what you did, it is written in the past tense, whereas the rest of the report is in the present tense. In a lab resport, it might even be largely based on the experiment brief you were given. Its purpose is to allow your research to be replicated, so it needs to be clear and detailed enough to let another researcher follow it and reproduce what you did, like a recipe. This allows the reader to know exactly how you gathered and processed your data and judge whether your method was appropriate, or if it has any limitations or flaws. The methods section describes what you actually did rather than what you ideally intended to do, so it also includes any places where you departed from your planned approach and things might have gone a bit wrong or unexpectedly. This will help you explain any unusual elements in your results. Depending on the kind of research you are doing, a methods section might list equipment or software used, describe a set up or process, list steps you took, detail models, theories or parameters you employed, describe experiment design, outline survey questions or explain how you chose the sample you studied.
In a longer research project, you might include some more analytical discussion of why you chose those methods over alternative options, perhaps with some references to other studies which have used those approaches, but this would be part of your introduction or literature review.
“What did you find? What do the findings say?” DESCRIPTIVE
This section is where you present your findings, or data. This could take a number of forms, depending on the kind of research you’re doing -it could be text, but very often the data is presented as graphs, tables, images, or other kinds of figure. You might choose to include representative data, rather than all of the results. The results section is a meaty one, perhaps 30-40% of the report in terms of space and importance, but it is dense rather than long and wordy, as figures are often richer and more concise than words. How you represent your data is up to you, and depends on the observations you want to draw out of it.
The results section is one which many people find confusing to write. Its purpose is to present the data, but in a form which is easy for the reader to digest. The results section therefore has some explanation, so the reader knows what they are looking at. For example, it isn’t enough simply to give them a graph or table; there needs to be an explanation of what the figure is, what it contains and how to read it (for example, what the image is of and its scale, what the graph axes are or what the columns and rows in the table represent). You might also draw the reader’s attention to the main features of the data that you want them to notice, such as trends, patterns, correlations, noteworthy aspects or significant areas. However, the results section is mostly descriptive – it’s a slightly digested form of your raw data. It says what the findings are, what the data says, but it doesn’t tell the reader what the results mean – that’s the job of the discussion.
“What do the findings mean?” ANALYSIS
Results in themselves aren’t the full story. Two people can look at the same data, see two different things and interpret it in two different ways. The discussion is where you explain what you think the data means and what it proves. In doing so, you are making an argument, explaining the reasons why you think your interpretation of the data is correct, so this section is very analytical and therefore substantial, about 15-20%. In a discussion, you might be arguing that something is significant, or that it shows a connection, or is due to particular causes. You could comment on the impact of any limitations, how far the findings support your hypothesis, or what further work needs to be done and speculate on what it might find. You might also bring some references to the literature in here, to help support your arguments, explain your findings or show how they are consistent with other studies. The discussion section is likely to be one of the longer ones, as this is where your main argument is.
In some reports, the results and discussion sections are combined, but in general, resist the temptation to comment on your results as you present them, and save this for the later discussion section. Keep the factual results and the more subjective interpretation separate. If you are writing up a longer project, dissertation or thesis, you might have more than one results or discussion chapter to cover different aspects of your research.
“What’s the overall point you’re making? So what?” ANALYTICAL
If you have been asked to write a conclusion separately to the discussion, this is where you take a big step back from the detailed analysis of the data in your discussion, and summarise overall what you think your research has shown. You might comment on its significance or implications for our understanding of the topic you outlined in the introduction, or where it agrees or disagrees with other literature. You are making a judgement statement about the validity, quality and significance of your study and how it fits with existing knowledge. Some reports combine this with the discussion though. The conclusion is fairly short, about 5%, as you’re not adding new information, just summing it all up into your main overall message. It is analytical though, so although you are restating the points you’ve already made, you are synthesising it in a new way so your reader understands what the research has demonstrated and what has been learned from it.
Other elements
If you are writing a longer research project, dissertation or thesis, you would include an abstract at the beginning, summarising the whole report for the reader. The abstract is read separately from the report itself, as it helps the reader get a sense of what it contains and whether they want to read the whole thing.
At the end of the main report, you would include elements such as your reference list, and any appendices if you are using them. An appendix is generally used for elements which are long and detailed information, but which are not central to your points and which would disrupt the flow of the report if you included them in the main body.
Writing an IMRAD report
Although this order is the way a science report is structured, you don’t have to write it in this order. Many people begin with the more descriptive elements, the methods and results, and then write the more analytical sections around them. The method and results can be written up at an earlier stage of the research too, as you go, whereas the discussion can only be written once you’ve done the research and collected and analysed the data.
Checking your structure
When planning your writing or editing a draft, you could use this approach to help you check that you are following this structure.
- Take the question that each section poses. Is there anything in the section which does not directly answer this question? This will help you decide if there’s anything irrelevant you need to delete. Is there anything which answers the question raised by a different section? In this case, it’s in the wrong place and needs moving.
- Highlight which parts of your writing are more descriptive and factual, and which are more analytical, justifying or interpreting. Does that fit with the kind of writing expected in each section? If not, you may need to move some of your points around or change the balance of the kinds of points you’re making.
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How to Write a Research Paper | A Beginner's Guide
A research paper is a piece of academic writing that provides analysis, interpretation, and argument based on in-depth independent research.
Research papers are similar to academic essays , but they are usually longer and more detailed assignments, designed to assess not only your writing skills but also your skills in scholarly research. Writing a research paper requires you to demonstrate a strong knowledge of your topic, engage with a variety of sources, and make an original contribution to the debate.
This step-by-step guide takes you through the entire writing process, from understanding your assignment to proofreading your final draft.
Table of contents
Understand the assignment, choose a research paper topic, conduct preliminary research, develop a thesis statement, create a research paper outline, write a first draft of the research paper, write the introduction, write a compelling body of text, write the conclusion, the second draft, the revision process, research paper checklist, free lecture slides.
Completing a research paper successfully means accomplishing the specific tasks set out for you. Before you start, make sure you thoroughly understanding the assignment task sheet:
- Read it carefully, looking for anything confusing you might need to clarify with your professor.
- Identify the assignment goal, deadline, length specifications, formatting, and submission method.
- Make a bulleted list of the key points, then go back and cross completed items off as you’re writing.
Carefully consider your timeframe and word limit: be realistic, and plan enough time to research, write, and edit.
There are many ways to generate an idea for a research paper, from brainstorming with pen and paper to talking it through with a fellow student or professor.
You can try free writing, which involves taking a broad topic and writing continuously for two or three minutes to identify absolutely anything relevant that could be interesting.
You can also gain inspiration from other research. The discussion or recommendations sections of research papers often include ideas for other specific topics that require further examination.
Once you have a broad subject area, narrow it down to choose a topic that interests you, m eets the criteria of your assignment, and i s possible to research. Aim for ideas that are both original and specific:
- A paper following the chronology of World War II would not be original or specific enough.
- A paper on the experience of Danish citizens living close to the German border during World War II would be specific and could be original enough.
What can proofreading do for your paper?
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Note any discussions that seem important to the topic, and try to find an issue that you can focus your paper around. Use a variety of sources , including journals, books, and reliable websites, to ensure you do not miss anything glaring.
Do not only verify the ideas you have in mind, but look for sources that contradict your point of view.
- Is there anything people seem to overlook in the sources you research?
- Are there any heated debates you can address?
- Do you have a unique take on your topic?
- Have there been some recent developments that build on the extant research?
In this stage, you might find it helpful to formulate some research questions to help guide you. To write research questions, try to finish the following sentence: “I want to know how/what/why…”
A thesis statement is a statement of your central argument — it establishes the purpose and position of your paper. If you started with a research question, the thesis statement should answer it. It should also show what evidence and reasoning you’ll use to support that answer.
The thesis statement should be concise, contentious, and coherent. That means it should briefly summarize your argument in a sentence or two, make a claim that requires further evidence or analysis, and make a coherent point that relates to every part of the paper.
You will probably revise and refine the thesis statement as you do more research, but it can serve as a guide throughout the writing process. Every paragraph should aim to support and develop this central claim.
A research paper outline is essentially a list of the key topics, arguments, and evidence you want to include, divided into sections with headings so that you know roughly what the paper will look like before you start writing.
A structure outline can help make the writing process much more efficient, so it’s worth dedicating some time to create one.
Your first draft won’t be perfect — you can polish later on. Your priorities at this stage are as follows:
- Maintaining forward momentum — write now, perfect later.
- Paying attention to clear organization and logical ordering of paragraphs and sentences, which will help when you come to the second draft.
- Expressing your ideas as clearly as possible, so you know what you were trying to say when you come back to the text.
You do not need to start by writing the introduction. Begin where it feels most natural for you — some prefer to finish the most difficult sections first, while others choose to start with the easiest part. If you created an outline, use it as a map while you work.
Do not delete large sections of text. If you begin to dislike something you have written or find it doesn’t quite fit, move it to a different document, but don’t lose it completely — you never know if it might come in useful later.
Paragraph structure
Paragraphs are the basic building blocks of research papers. Each one should focus on a single claim or idea that helps to establish the overall argument or purpose of the paper.
Example paragraph
George Orwell’s 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” has had an enduring impact on thought about the relationship between politics and language. This impact is particularly obvious in light of the various critical review articles that have recently referenced the essay. For example, consider Mark Falcoff’s 2009 article in The National Review Online, “The Perversion of Language; or, Orwell Revisited,” in which he analyzes several common words (“activist,” “civil-rights leader,” “diversity,” and more). Falcoff’s close analysis of the ambiguity built into political language intentionally mirrors Orwell’s own point-by-point analysis of the political language of his day. Even 63 years after its publication, Orwell’s essay is emulated by contemporary thinkers.
Citing sources
It’s also important to keep track of citations at this stage to avoid accidental plagiarism . Each time you use a source, make sure to take note of where the information came from.
You can use our free citation generators to automatically create citations and save your reference list as you go.
APA Citation Generator MLA Citation Generator
The research paper introduction should address three questions: What, why, and how? After finishing the introduction, the reader should know what the paper is about, why it is worth reading, and how you’ll build your arguments.
What? Be specific about the topic of the paper, introduce the background, and define key terms or concepts.
Why? This is the most important, but also the most difficult, part of the introduction. Try to provide brief answers to the following questions: What new material or insight are you offering? What important issues does your essay help define or answer?
How? To let the reader know what to expect from the rest of the paper, the introduction should include a “map” of what will be discussed, briefly presenting the key elements of the paper in chronological order.
The major struggle faced by most writers is how to organize the information presented in the paper, which is one reason an outline is so useful. However, remember that the outline is only a guide and, when writing, you can be flexible with the order in which the information and arguments are presented.
One way to stay on track is to use your thesis statement and topic sentences . Check:
- topic sentences against the thesis statement;
- topic sentences against each other, for similarities and logical ordering;
- and each sentence against the topic sentence of that paragraph.
Be aware of paragraphs that seem to cover the same things. If two paragraphs discuss something similar, they must approach that topic in different ways. Aim to create smooth transitions between sentences, paragraphs, and sections.
The research paper conclusion is designed to help your reader out of the paper’s argument, giving them a sense of finality.
Trace the course of the paper, emphasizing how it all comes together to prove your thesis statement. Give the paper a sense of finality by making sure the reader understands how you’ve settled the issues raised in the introduction.
You might also discuss the more general consequences of the argument, outline what the paper offers to future students of the topic, and suggest any questions the paper’s argument raises but cannot or does not try to answer.
You should not :
- Offer new arguments or essential information
- Take up any more space than necessary
- Begin with stock phrases that signal you are ending the paper (e.g. “In conclusion”)
There are four main considerations when it comes to the second draft.
- Check how your vision of the paper lines up with the first draft and, more importantly, that your paper still answers the assignment.
- Identify any assumptions that might require (more substantial) justification, keeping your reader’s perspective foremost in mind. Remove these points if you cannot substantiate them further.
- Be open to rearranging your ideas. Check whether any sections feel out of place and whether your ideas could be better organized.
- If you find that old ideas do not fit as well as you anticipated, you should cut them out or condense them. You might also find that new and well-suited ideas occurred to you during the writing of the first draft — now is the time to make them part of the paper.
The goal during the revision and proofreading process is to ensure you have completed all the necessary tasks and that the paper is as well-articulated as possible.
Global concerns
- Confirm that your paper completes every task specified in your assignment sheet.
- Check for logical organization and flow of paragraphs.
- Check paragraphs against the introduction and thesis statement.
Fine-grained details
Check the content of each paragraph, making sure that:
- each sentence helps support the topic sentence.
- no unnecessary or irrelevant information is present.
- all technical terms your audience might not know are identified.
Next, think about sentence structure , grammatical errors, and formatting . Check that you have correctly used transition words and phrases to show the connections between your ideas. Look for typos, cut unnecessary words, and check for consistency in aspects such as heading formatting and spellings .
Finally, you need to make sure your paper is correctly formatted according to the rules of the citation style you are using. For example, you might need to include an MLA heading or create an APA title page .
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Checklist: Research paper
I have followed all instructions in the assignment sheet.
My introduction presents my topic in an engaging way and provides necessary background information.
My introduction presents a clear, focused research problem and/or thesis statement .
My paper is logically organized using paragraphs and (if relevant) section headings .
Each paragraph is clearly focused on one central idea, expressed in a clear topic sentence .
Each paragraph is relevant to my research problem or thesis statement.
I have used appropriate transitions to clarify the connections between sections, paragraphs, and sentences.
My conclusion provides a concise answer to the research question or emphasizes how the thesis has been supported.
My conclusion shows how my research has contributed to knowledge or understanding of my topic.
My conclusion does not present any new points or information essential to my argument.
I have provided an in-text citation every time I refer to ideas or information from a source.
I have included a reference list at the end of my paper, consistently formatted according to a specific citation style .
I have thoroughly revised my paper and addressed any feedback from my professor or supervisor.
I have followed all formatting guidelines (page numbers, headers, spacing, etc.).
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This handout provides a general guide to writing reports about scientific research you've performed. In addition to describing the conventional rules about the format and content of a lab report, we'll also attempt to convey why these rules exist, so you'll get a clearer, more dependable idea of how to approach this writing situation.
Clear scientific writing generally follows a specific format with key sections: an introduction to a particular topic, hypotheses to be tested, a description of methods, key results, and finally, a discussion that ties these results to our broader knowledge of the topic (Day and Gastel 2012 ).
"IMRaD" format refers to a paper that is structured by four main sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion. This format is often used for lab reports as well as for reporting any planned, systematic research in the social sciences, natural sciences, or engineering and computer sciences. Introduction - Make a case for your research
The Writing Center Scientific Reports What this handout is about This handout provides a general guide to writing reports about scientific research you've performed. In addition to describing the conventional rules about the format and content of a lab report, we'll also attempt to convey why these rules exist, so you'll get a clearer, more
Scientific Research Reports and Proposals: What Goes Where Part 1: Research Reports In an effort to make our handouts more accessible, we have begun converting our PDF handouts to web pages. Download this page as a PDF: Scientific Research Reports and Proposals Return to Writing Studio Handouts Abstract
The main purpose of a lab report is to demonstrate your understanding of the scientific method by performing and evaluating a hands-on lab experiment. This type of assignment is usually shorter than a research paper. Lab reports are commonly used in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields.
A scientific report documents all aspects of an experimental investigation. This includes: A title The aim of the experiment The hypothesis An introduction to the relevant background theory The methods used The results A discussion of the results The conclusion
Scientific report/lab writing and essay writing differ in style. Compared to essay writing styles, scientific report writing styles expect the following: A lean and direct approach to the words chosen: do not use words unnecessarily, be concise, and always consider the purpose of each and every word. Each sentence must serve a purpose, so treat ...
A formal scientific research report is a piece of professional writing addressed to other professionals who are interested in the investigation you conducted. They will want to know why you did the investigation, how you did it, what you found out, and whether your findings were significant and useful.
Scientific and technical research reports generally follow a conventional format that includes a title, an abstract, a reference (or Literature Cited) section and the components of the IMRAD structure: The IMRAD structure I ntroduction answers "why?" M ethods answers "when, where, how, how much?" R esults answers "what?" A nd
Academic and Professional Writing Formatting Science Reports Formatting Science Reports This section describes an organizational structure commonly used to report experimental research in many scientific disciplines, the IMRAD format: I ntroduction, M ethods, R esults, And D iscussion. When and when not to use the IMRAD format
Scientific writing is not just writing about science; it is the technical writing that scientists do to communicate their research to others. Scientific writing is predicated on the rigors of scientific inquiry, so it must reflect the same precision as that demanded in the research process.
Most scientific research reports, irrespective of the field, parallel the method of scientific reasoning. That is: the problem is defined, a hypothesis is created, experiments are devised to test the hypothesis, experiments are conducted, and conclusions are drawn. This framework is consistent with the following organization of a research report:
A scientific research report is a document that contains all the information about experimental investigations. It describes the processes and progress of scientific research, including its results and the state of the research problem.
A scientific report consists of details regarding scientists reporting what their research entailed and reporting the results and conclusions drawn from the study. Researchers should write scientific psychology reports per the APA format to ensure the scientists report enough information.
The abstract summarizes the essentials of the paper. It briefly describes the purpose, any unusual methodology, and key results of the project. Abstracts are often limited to a few hundred words, so they need to be concise. The abstract is best written after a paper is completed.
Introduction Sections in Scientific Research Reports (IMRaD) Download this guide as a PDF; Return to all guides; The goal of the introduction in an IMRaD* report is to give the reader an overview of the literature in the field, show the motivation for your study, and share what unique perspective your research adds.
Scientific reports: Shares research findings, such as research papers and case studies, typically in science journals Reports can be further divided into categories based on how they are written. For example, a report could be formal or informal, short or long, and internal or external.
Title of the report: Usually 4-12 words in length. Should be short, specific and descriptive, containing the keywords of the report. Authorship: Always publish under the same name. Include author addresses. Indicate the corresponding author and their contact details. Date: The date when the paper was submitted.
Structuring a Science Report The purpose of a scientific report is to talk the reader through an experiment or piece of research you've done where you've generated some data, the decisions you made, what you found and what it means. Lab or experimental reports in the Sciences have a very specific structure, which is often known as IMRAD:
Writing a Research Report Writing Centre Learning Guide As a university student you may be required to write a variety of reports for assessment purposes. A research report is one type that is often used in the sciences, engineering and psychology. Here your aim is to write clearly and concisely about your research topic so that the reader can ...
Understand the assignment. Choose a research paper topic. Conduct preliminary research. Develop a thesis statement. Create a research paper outline. Write a first draft of the research paper. Write the introduction. Write a compelling body of text. Write the conclusion.