The purpose of this short summary is to provide the reader with enough information on the experiment that they can see if they want or need to read the entire report. The abstract helps them determine if your research is relevant to them. Devote a sentence to describing the purpose of the project and its significance. Then, very briefly describe the materials and methods used. Follow up with a 1-2 sentence description of the results of the experiment. You might also provide a list of keywords listing subjects related to your research.
The introduction will outline what the experiment is, why it was done, and why it is important. It must provide the reader with two key pieces of information: what is the question the experiment is supposed to answer and why is answering this question important.
A research hypothesis should be a brief statement that pares down your problem that you described in your introduction into something that is testable and falsifiable. Scientists must create a hypothesis from which an experiment can reasonably be designed and carried out. A hypothesis is never proved in an experiment, only “verified” or “supported”.
For example, you might start with “Fertilizer affects how tall a plant will grow”. You could expand this idea to a clear hypothesis: “Plants grow faster and taller when they are given fertilizer”. To make it a testable hypothesis, you could add experimental details: “Plants which are given a solution with 1ml of fertilizer grow faster than plants without fertilizer because they are given more nutrients. "
The goal here is to make your procedure clear and followable. Someone should be able to repeat your experiment exactly from reading this section. [7] X Expert Source Michael Simpson, PhDRegistered Professional Biologist Expert Interview. 8 September 2021. This section is extremely crucial documentation of your methods of analysis.
For example, if you were testing how fertilizer affects plant growth, you would want to state what brand of fertilizer you used, what species of plant you used and brand of seed. Make sure you include the quantity of all objects used in the experiment.
Remember all experiments involve controls and variables. Describe these here. If you used a published laboratory method, be sure to provide a reference for the original method. Remember the goal of this section is so the reader can repeat exactly what you did in your experiment. No detail should be left out. [9] X Expert Source Michael Simpson, PhDRegistered Professional Biologist Expert Interview. 8 September 2021.
For example, if you are testing the effect of fertilizer on plant growth you would want a graph showing the average growth of plants given fertilizer vs. those without. You would also want to describe the result. For example “Plants which were given a concentration of 1ml of fertilizer grew an average of 4 cm taller than those that were not given fertilizer. " As you go along, narrate your results. Tell the reader why a result is significant to the experiment or problem. This will allow the reader to follow your thinking process. Compare your results to your original hypothesis. State whether or not your hypothesis was supported or not by your experiment. Quantitative data is anything that expressed in terms of numerical forms such as percentages or statistics. Qualitative data is derived from broad questions and is expressed in the form of word responses from study participants.
In this section, the author can address other questions such as: “why did we get an unexpected result?” or “what would happen if one aspect of the procedure was altered?”. If your results did not verify your hypothesis, explain your reasoning why.
Be sure to link back to the introduction and whether or not the experiment addressed the goals of your analysis.
You can use software such as EndNote to help you cite and build a properly referenced bibliography.
