Assignment and Report Writing: Laboratory/Scientific Reports

The cover page should encompass essential information, such as the Author, title of the report and the date. The report title is a short description of the research project. Is should be clear and concise, specific and indicate the problems. No abbreviations and chemical formulations should be used.

This page is made up of main points, including findings, conclusion and recommendations of the experiment it should be short as it is the overall overview of the report. You must make sure that you include all the important /relevant information because readers’ concern might be only on summary of the report than the whole report, it also must be clear enough to someone who is not familiar with your experiment, to understand it.

• Why you conducted that experiment?
• What methods did you use for your research?
• What were the main findings and conclusions reached as a result of your research?
• Did your work lead you to make any recommendations for future actions?

The introduction should give background information. The author should describe the research problem. What specifically are you studying and why is it important? What forces you to research on that particular topic? How was it before?  Will it fill a gap in other studies? Never provide a long justification for your topic before it has been clearly identified. In addition, the author should define hypothesis and objectives of the research and outline the scope and purpose of the report.

The purpose of research is to contribute to the body of knowledge and as such it is important to consult prior research in order to identify gaps that exist. In conducting the literature research, identify past research that are pertinent to your current research and how they relate to your research problem. In the process, examine the major theories and relevant findings from credible sources. It is important to acknowledge all the sources consulted by providing citations and references.

The methodology section provides the materials, methods and procedures of data collection used. The importance of this section is to provide details by which another researcher may replicate. NB: Always write in the third person and past tense.

• E.g. the soil samples were weighed ….

The results section is where the results of study are presented / communicated to other scientists. In presenting the results: tablets, figures, charts, images can be used.

NB: The section just presents results, not explain their significance.

This is body of the report; in the section, the writer explains and interprets results and their implications. The discussion should explore or enlarge on the results, not duplicate them. It is important to link the findings to literature review

• E.g. It can be seen from Table 1 that variable 1 is not significantly different from variable 2. This conforms with the findings of Brown and Smith (2012).

NB: The discussion section can at times be combined with the results section.

The conclusion summarizes the key findings of the research and it should be short and clear. They must relate to your title as well as the aim and objectives of the study. The conclusion should follow logically from discussion. It should be noted that no new materials should be introduced in the conclusion.

It is a list of materials, e.g. books, articles that were used during the preparation of the report. There are different styles that can be used e.g. APA, MLA, Harvard system. The reference list should be in alphabetical order by authors surnames. Only cited works must be put in the reference list.