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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- Random Sampling
- Reliability and Validity
- Research Design
- Research Techniques
- Sampling Methods
- Scatter Plots
- Scientific Method
- Standardization and Norms
- Statistical Significance
- Stratified Sampling
- Body Senses
- Chemical Senses
- Gestalt Principles of Perception
- Gustatory System
- Influences on Perception
- Kinesthesis
- Olfactory System
- Sensory Adaptation
- Sensory Processing Disorders
- Sensory Threshold
- Sensory and Perceptual Processing
- Skin Senses
- The Five Senses
- Vestibular Sense
- Vision Psychology
- Visual Anatomy
- Visual Perception
- Activation Synthesis Theory
- Addiction Treatment
- Adornos Theory
- Altered States of Consciousness
- An introduction to mental health
- Anger Management Programmes
- Antidepressant Medications
- Asch Conformity Experiments
- Autonomic Nervous System
- Bickman Obedience Study
- Biological Explanation of Depression
- Body Language
- Brain During Sleep
- Brain Structure
- Brain and Neuropsychology
- Bystander Effect
- Caspi et al 2003
- Characteristics of Addiction
- Characteristics of Mental Health
- Clinical Depression
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Collective Behaviour
- Community Sentencing
- Concepts of the Self
- Crime Punishment
- Crime and Culture
- Criminal Psychology
- Depression Treatment
- Depression VS Sadness
- Dispositional Factors
- Drug Abuse vs Addiction
- Erikson's Stages Of Development
- Ethical Issues in Social Influence Research
- Eye Contact
- Fight-or-Flight Response
- Flow States
- Freud Wolfman Study
- Freud's Theory of Dreaming
- Functions of Sleep
- Hebbs Theory
- How Crime is Measured
- Human Language and Animal Communication
- Humanistic Theory of Self
- Identity and Free Will
- Improving Sleep
- Language and Thought
- Language, Thought And Communication
- Lateralisation
- Localisation of Brain Function
- Majority and Minority Influence
- Management of Insomnia
- Milgrams Agency Theory
- Nervous System
- Neuroimaging Techniques
- Neurological Damage on Behaviour
- Neuropsychology
- Non Verbal Communication
- Non-Verbal Behaviour
- Penfield's Study of The Interpretive Cortex
- Personal Space
- Personality Scales
- Personality Types
- Piaget vs Vygotsky
- Prosocial Behaviour
- Psychological Problems
- Rehabilitation
- Restorative Justice
- Self Report
- Self-Management Psychology
- Siffre Cave Study Psychology
- Sleep Hygiene
- Sleep and Dreaming
- Sleep and Zeitgebers
- Social Effects
- Stages of Sleep
- Studying the brain
- Symptoms of Schizophrenia
- The James Lange Theory
- Theories of Depression
- Theories of Schizophrenia
- Theories of addiction
- Trait Theory of Personality
- Tulving's Gold Memory Study
- Types of crime
- Understanding Crime
- Altruism Psychology
- Attitudes and Behavior
- Attribution Theory
- Attributions
- Cognitive Dissonance Theory
- Cultural Differences in Relationships
- Diffusion of Responsibility
- Discrimination
- Gender Roles in Society
- Group Behavior
- Group Dynamics
- Human Factors in Psychology
- Individual Behavior and Group Behavior
- Industrial-Organizational Psychology
- Interpersonal Attraction
- Organizational Psychology
- Person Perception
- Personnel Psychology
- Psychology at Work
- Self-Concept and Behavior
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Social Diversity
- Social Power Structures
- Social Psychology Experiments
- Daily Hassles
- Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal System
- Illness Caused by Stress
- Individual Differences in Stress
- Measuring Stress
- Physiology of Stress
- Self Report Scales
- Sources of Stress
- Stress Management
- Sympathomedullary Pathway
- The Social Readjustment Rating Scale
- Workplace Stress
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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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Site search, sign in access, breadcrumbs, writing a scientific report.
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.
Research Reporting Guidelines and Initiatives: By Organization
In spring 2021, the national library of medicine (nlm) pubmed® special query on this page will no longer be curated by nlm. if you have questions, please contact nlm customer support at https://support.nlm.nih.gov/.
This chart lists the major biomedical research reporting guidelines that provide advice for reporting research methods and findings. They usually "specify a minimum set of items required for a clear and transparent account of what was done and what was found in a research study, reflecting, in particular, issues that might introduce bias into the research" (Adapted from the EQUATOR Network Resource Centre ). The chart also includes editorial style guides for writing research reports or other publications.
See the details of the search strategy. More research reporting guidelines are at the EQUATOR Network Resource Centre .
Last Reviewed: June 15, 2020
Shaping the Future of Global Journalism
Search Site
Tips for incorporating scientific research into your reporting.
Research studies, crisis reports and documents from experts are important resources for providing well-researched trends that explain complex global crises.
However, research records can often be lengthy, boring and difficult for reporters to transform into engaging stories, but this doesn’t have to be the case.
“I remember looking around the press briefing room at last year’s COP26 when a climate crisis report was unveiled. The complex graphs bore many journalists, and that’s not uncommon,” said Paul Adepoju , the community manager of the ICFJ’s Global Crisis Reporting Forum.
“Journalists are often unsure how to handle such reports beyond the executive summaries,” he acknowledged.
As a science journalist and contributor to Nature Africa , Adepoju said he learned how to translate complex and technical scientific studies into simple news stories beyond newsletter executive summaries.
Adepoju spoke with Akin Jimoh , the editor in chief for Nature Africa, during a recent ICFJ Global Crisis Reporting Forum webinar entitled “Transforming studies and reports into top news stories.” Jimoh provided tips for reporters on how they can utilize research studies to produce stories that can be easily understood by readers.
Why science reporting is important
The COVID-19 pandemic revealed that science reporting and the public’s understanding of it is essential, Jimoh noted.
As a former Knight Science Journalism fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , Jimoh gained experience translating science to the public. As a fellow, he used his journalism background to report on and incorporate scientific reports into his articles.
“Whichever way you look at it, scientific journalists are the ones who bridge the gap between those who do not understand something and making it understandable to others,” he said.
“One tool that has been useful for me is called EurekAlert, which sends alerts on scientific news, research materials or press statements to institutions that are subscribed to it. It is advisable for journalists to be on their mailing list as they also send embargoed newsletters so that one is able to plan their reporting properly,” said Adepoju.
Jimoh said that science journalism is a special kind of reporting that requires extra care. “We need to interpret the science, we are the go-between the science and the information that the public has to know and understand,” he said.
However, science reporters also have to remember that they are journalists first, and scientists second. “Sometimes having a background in science can be self-limiting because you want to obey the ethics of science, or ethics of research. [But] as a journalist you want to obey the ethics of journalism,” he said.
For example, scientific ethics might cause scientists to wait before publishing their findings to say whether something is right or wrong, while journalists have to work on what is best known at the time of writing, and clearly state that to readers.
In a recent article published in the Guardian , Professor Jonathan Wolff , head of philosophy at the University College London argued that journalists' focus on balance in their reporting has been problematically applied to coverage of scientific findings, too, helping create false notions of what is actually up for debate.
What kind of scientific research to trust
When searching for reports, be sure to use official sources such as the World Health Organization (WHO) , which is the authority when it comes to health issues, Jimoh explained.
“If it is a journal, one must look at where it was published. There are journals that we know are credible, then there are those that are more or less copycats, which just exist because of the funding they receive,” he said.
“Researchers spend a lot of their time in the laboratory, researching for 20-30 years until they find an answer. This will be a major finding and research also builds on existing work done by others,” said Jimoh.
Jimoh advised journalists to look at the funders supporting the research, “Ask if this is a commercial research, what the interests are, who is sponsoring it, which acknowledgement surrounds that particular publication. Look at the literature review, does it cover gaps? Look at the list of the references. Does the research give a new perspective? These are factors we need to constantly look at the end of the day.”
Components of a scientific research
When looking at a research report, most can be broken down into the following core components:
- Results/findings
- Discussions of results, conclusions and recommendations
- References could provide further opportunities for news features
- Acknowledgements
In these core components, the conclusions or recommendations are often the most useful for journalists . For both scientific reports and journals, your results or findings give you perspective on what the researchers found, according to Jimoh.
“The references and citations can also direct you to other work if for example you want to do a news feature and need more reports and links. Knowing how to read a report is only half of the work: the other half requires staying on top of current trends and discoveries by reading frequently and across multiple disciplines,” said Jimoh.
“We need to monitor and read widely in terms of key scientific or research issues, such as climate change, agriculture, engineering, etc. We need to create time to read because as a science journalist you need to keep reading and noting what is going on,” acknowledged Jimoh.
Jimoh concluded by saying that science journalists do not report in a vacuum, and at the end of the day their responsibility is to educate audiences on the current issues. “We are able to address policy-related issues from what we are writing. Once we make audiences aware of what is going on, that goes a long way.”
Additional resources
- EurekAlert! Science News Releases
- Alpha Galileo
Specific research journals
- Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change
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Research Reports: Definition and How to Write Them
Reports are usually spread across a vast horizon of topics but are focused on communicating information about a particular topic and a niche target market. The primary motive of research reports is to convey integral details about a study for marketers to consider while designing new strategies.
Certain events, facts, and other information based on incidents need to be relayed to the people in charge, and creating research reports is the most effective communication tool. Ideal research reports are extremely accurate in the offered information with a clear objective and conclusion. These reports should have a clean and structured format to relay information effectively.
What are Research Reports?
Research reports are recorded data prepared by researchers or statisticians after analyzing the information gathered by conducting organized research, typically in the form of surveys or qualitative methods .
A research report is a reliable source to recount details about a conducted research. It is most often considered to be a true testimony of all the work done to garner specificities of research.
The various sections of a research report are:
- Background/Introduction
- Implemented Methods
- Results based on Analysis
- Deliberation
Learn more: Quantitative Research
Components of Research Reports
Research is imperative for launching a new product/service or a new feature. The markets today are extremely volatile and competitive due to new entrants every day who may or may not provide effective products. An organization needs to make the right decisions at the right time to be relevant in such a market with updated products that suffice customer demands.
The details of a research report may change with the purpose of research but the main components of a report will remain constant. The research approach of the market researcher also influences the style of writing reports. Here are seven main components of a productive research report:
- Research Report Summary: The entire objective along with the overview of research are to be included in a summary which is a couple of paragraphs in length. All the multiple components of the research are explained in brief under the report summary. It should be interesting enough to capture all the key elements of the report.
- Research Introduction: There always is a primary goal that the researcher is trying to achieve through a report. In the introduction section, he/she can cover answers related to this goal and establish a thesis which will be included to strive and answer it in detail. This section should answer an integral question: “What is the current situation of the goal?”. After the research was conducted, did the organization conclude the goal successfully or they are still a work in progress – provide such details in the introduction part of the research report.
- Research Methodology: This is the most important section of the report where all the important information lies. The readers can gain data for the topic along with analyzing the quality of provided content and the research can also be approved by other market researchers . Thus, this section needs to be highly informative with each aspect of research discussed in detail. Information needs to be expressed in chronological order according to its priority and importance. Researchers should include references in case they gained information from existing techniques.
- Research Results: A short description of the results along with calculations conducted to achieve the goal will form this section of results. Usually, the exposition after data analysis is carried out in the discussion part of the report.
Learn more: Quantitative Data
- Research Discussion: The results are discussed in extreme detail in this section along with a comparative analysis of reports that could probably exist in the same domain. Any abnormality uncovered during research will be deliberated in the discussion section. While writing research reports, the researcher will have to connect the dots on how the results will be applicable in the real world.
- Research References and Conclusion: Conclude all the research findings along with mentioning each and every author, article or any content piece from where references were taken.
Learn more: Qualitative Observation
15 Tips for Writing Research Reports
Writing research reports in the manner can lead to all the efforts going down the drain. Here are 15 tips for writing impactful research reports:
- Prepare the context before starting to write and start from the basics: This was always taught to us in school – be well-prepared before taking a plunge into new topics. The order of survey questions might not be the ideal or most effective order for writing research reports. The idea is to start with a broader topic and work towards a more specific one and focus on a conclusion or support, which a research should support with the facts. The most difficult thing to do in reporting, without a doubt is to start. Start with the title, the introduction, then document the first discoveries and continue from that. Once the marketers have the information well documented, they can write a general conclusion.
- Keep the target audience in mind while selecting a format that is clear, logical and obvious to them: Will the research reports be presented to decision makers or other researchers? What are the general perceptions around that topic? This requires more care and diligence. A researcher will need a significant amount of information to start writing the research report. Be consistent with the wording, the numbering of the annexes and so on. Follow the approved format of the company for the delivery of research reports and demonstrate the integrity of the project with the objectives of the company.
- Have a clear research objective: A researcher should read the entire proposal again, and make sure that the data they provide contributes to the objectives that were raised from the beginning. Remember that speculations are for conversations, not for research reports, if a researcher speculates, they directly question their own research.
- Establish a working model: Each study must have an internal logic, which will have to be established in the report and in the evidence. The researchers’ worst nightmare is to be required to write research reports and realize that key questions were not included.
Learn more: Quantitative Observation
- Gather all the information about the research topic. Who are the competitors of our customers? Talk to other researchers who have studied the subject of research, know the language of the industry. Misuse of the terms can discourage the readers of research reports from reading further.
- Read aloud while writing. While reading the report, if the researcher hears something inappropriate, for example, if they stumble over the words when reading them, surely the reader will too. If the researcher can’t put an idea in a single sentence, then it is very long and they must change it so that the idea is clear to everyone.
- Check grammar and spelling. Without a doubt, good practices help to understand the report. Use verbs in the present tense. Consider using the present tense, which makes the results sound more immediate. Find new words and other ways of saying things. Have fun with the language whenever possible.
- Discuss only the discoveries that are significant. If some data are not really significant, do not mention them. Remember that not everything is truly important or essential within research reports.
Learn more: Qualitative Data
- Try and stick to the survey questions. For example, do not say that the people surveyed “were worried” about an issue, when there are different degrees of concern.
- The graphs must be clear enough so that they understand themselves. Do not let graphs lead the reader to make mistakes: give them a title, include the indications, the size of the sample, and the correct wording of the question.
- Be clear with messages. A researcher should always write every section of the report with an accuracy of details and language.
- Be creative with titles – Particularly in segmentation studies choose names “that give life to research”. Such names can survive for a long time after the initial investigation.
- Create an effective conclusion: The conclusion in the research reports is the most difficult to write, but it is an incredible opportunity to excel. Make a precise summary. Sometimes it helps to start the conclusion with something specific, then it describes the most important part of the study, and finally, it provides the implications of the conclusions.
- Get a couple more pair of eyes to read the report. Writers have trouble detecting their own mistakes. But they are responsible for what is presented. Ensure it has been approved by colleagues or friends before sending the find draft out.
Learn more: Market Research and Analysis
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Writing a Scientific Research Report (IMRaD)
What is an imrad report.
“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 introduction explains why this research is important or necessary or important. Begin by describing the problem or situation that motivates the research. Move to discussing the current state of research in the field; then reveal a “gap” or problem in the field. Finally, explain how the present research is a solution to that problem or gap. If the study has hypotheses, they are presented at the end of the introduction.
Methods – What did you do?
The methods section tells readers how you conducted your study. It includes information about your population, sample, methods, and equipment. The “gold standard” of the methods section is that it should enable readers to duplicate your study. Methods sections typically use subheadings; they are written in past tense, and they use a lot of passive voice. This is typically the least read section of an IMRaD report.
Results – What did you find?
In this section, you present your findings. Typically, the Results section contains only the findings, not any explanation of or commentary on the findings (see below). Results sections are usually written in the past tense. Make sure all tables and figures are labeled and numbered separately. Captions go above tables and beneath figures.
Discussion – What does it mean?
In this section, you summarize your main findings, comment on those findings (see below), and connect them to other research. You also discuss limitations of your study, and use these limitations as reasons to suggest additional, future research.
Abstract – Summarize the entire study
The abstract for the report comes at the beginning of the paper, but you should write it after you have drafted the full report. The abstract provides a very short overview of the entire paper, including a sentence or two about the report’s purpose and importance, a sentence or two about your methods, a few sentences that present the main findings, and a sentence or two about the implications of your findings. (See our handout on Writing Abstracts.)
Reporting versus Commenting on your Findings In the Results section, you simply report your findings. In the Discussion section, you comment on them.
Common problems in IMRaD drafts:
The Abstract does not provide a clear statement of the main findings.
The Introduction does not communicate clearly why the research is important.
The Methods section is not detailed enough or is disorganized.
The Results section provides comments and explanations instead of simply reporting results.
The material for this handout was drawn from Carnegie Mellon’s “Cheatsheet” on IMRAD reports.
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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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Structuring a science report.
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The scientific method, you'll probably recall, involves developing a hypothesis, testing it, and deciding whether your findings support the hypothesis. In
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A scientific report consists of details regarding scientists reporting what their research entailed and reporting the results and conclusions drawn from the
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
A formal scientific research report is a piece of professional writing addressed to other professionals who are interested in the investigation you conducted.
They usually "specify a minimum set of items required for a clear and transparent account of what was done and what was found in a research study, reflecting
Research studies, crisis reports and documents from experts are important resources for providing well-researched trends that explain
Research reports are recorded data prepared by researchers or statisticians after analyzing the information gathered by conducting organized research, typically
What is an IMRaD report? · Introduction – Make a case for your research. The introduction explains why this research is important or necessary or important.
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