Reporting And Critical Evaluation Of Biological Research- General Format

Question 1

What is the general format of a scientific report?

Answer 1

-Title
-Abstract
-Introduction
-Materials and method
-Results
-Discussion
-References
-Acknowledgements

Question 2

What is the title?

Answer 2

It tells us the topic of the authors’ investigation and the overall outcome. A research paper is usually the work of a team of scientists

Question 3

What is the abstract?

Answer 3

In this section the scientists briefly summarise all the key points of their investigation

Question 4

What is the introduction?

Answer 4

The scientists describe the background to their research. They will say what is already known about the topic they are investigating and make references to the experiments that have established this

Question 5

What is the materials and methods?

Answer 5

Here the scientists describe in detail how they carried out their experiments. Enough detail should be included for other research groups to replicate the study

Question 6

What are is the results?

Answer 6

In this section the scientists present the (analysed) results they obtained. These may be displayed in the form of tables of data and/or graph

Question 7

What are the discussion?

Answer 7

Here scientists make conclusions fit in with the knowledge discussed in the introduction. The scientists may also evaluate their investigation and suggest ideas for further experiments

Question 8

What is the references section?

Answer 8

The scientists provide details of all the previous work that they used in order to carry out their investigation and write their paper. References usually follow either the Harvard or the Vancouver system

Question 9

What is the acknowledgement section?

Answer 9

In this section the scientists thank other people and funding boards that have made contributions to their work