3.3a background information and reporting and evaluating experimental design

Question 1

What should scientific reports contain?

Answer 1

• an explanatory title
• an abstract including aims and findings
• an introduction explaining the purpose and context of the study including the use of several sources
• supporting statements
• citations
• references

Question 2

What should background information be?

Answer 2

clear, relevant and unambiguous

Question 3

What should a title be?

Answer 3

it should provide a succient explanation of the study

Question 4

What should an abstract do?

Answer 4

outline the aims and findings of the study

Question 5

What must an aim do?

Answer 5

link the independent and dependent variables

Question 6

What should an introduction do?

Answer 6

• provide any information required to support: choices of method, results and discussion
• it should explain why the study has been carried out and place the study in the context of existing understanding
• key points should be summarised and supporting and contradictory information identified
• several sources should be selected to support statements, and citations and references should be in the standard form
• Decisions regarding basic selection if study methods and organisms should now be covered, as should the aims and hypothesis

Question 7

What should a method section contain?

Answer 7

sufficient information to allow another investigator to repeat the work

Question 8

What should the experimental design address and why?

Answer 8

the intended aim and the hypothesis
the validity and reliability of the experimental design should be evaluated

an experimental design that does not address the intended aim or hypothesis is invalid

Question 9

What should treatment effects be compared to?

Answer 9

controls

Question 10

What should be taken into account or standardised across treatments?

Answer 10

any confounding variables

Question 11

When may the validity of an experiment be compromised?

Answer 11

when factors other than the independent variable influence the value of the dependent variable

Question 12

What is selection bias?

Answer 12

the selection of a sample in a non-random way, so that the sample is not representative of the whole population

Question 13

What may prevent a representative sample being selected?

Answer 13

selection bias

Question 14

When may it be impossible to avoid selection bias?

Answer 14

sample size may not be sufficient to decide without bias whether the change to the independent variable has caused an effect in the dependent variable