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How to Write a Lab Report

a.k.a.

Report on Empirical Research

(by Sandra Lynn, Associate Professor of English)

• Question: what is it and what’s in it?

If you’re a science student, it’s called a lab report. If you’re a social sciences student, it may be called a report on empirical research. For students it is a simpler affair than its professional counterpart, which is a report on empirical research submitted to peer-reviewed journals for publication. Though student and professional reports are different species, they belong in the same genus. When you write lab reports or other kinds of empirical research reports, you are learning a skill that you can use in your career. Both kinds of reports deal with the results of experiment and observation (“empirical” means “derived from or depending upon observation and experience alone”).  Also, they are both intended to answer these questions for readers:

• Why is your research important? In what context should we view it?
• What were you trying to do?
• What methods did you use to do it?
• What happened? What were your experimental results? What did you observe?
• How do you interpret those results and observations?
• What conclusions can you draw?

These questions form the basic outline of a lab or empirical research report.

Here’s a variation on that outline for students, from Thomas A. Moore and Alma Zook’s “How to Write a Lab Report,” written for a physics course at Pomona College:

Abstract

Introduction

Theoretical Background

Experimental Design and Procedure

Analysis

Conclusions

A professional report will include additional sections, and the outline will vary somewhat according to the discipline. Here’s a standard outline for a report on empirical research based on guidelines in the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 5th edition;

Abstract

Introduction

Method

Results

Discussion

References

Appendices

Table with Basic Parts of a Lab/Empirical Research Report Defined with Tips

• Question: I’ve got to manage four things in this assignment: the procedures themselves (equipment, techniques of sampling, etc.), processing the data, interpreting the results, and putting it all into English. What am I going to be graded on?

First of all, you need to pose that question to your instructor. Only she or he can accurately answer it. But don’t stop reading just yet.

You may be wondering whether your instructor is primarily interested in how well you carry out the procedures themselves or rather in how well you can interpret what you have done. It may seem to you that the instructor is mostly concerned with your learning how to use the laboratory equipment, make measurements, handle the data statistically, or make observations. While it is true that these skills are very important, most instructors will agree that the critical thinking aspect of the lab/empirical research report is also crucial to your overall education. The instructor certainly hopes you will learn how to interpret and evaluate your data or your observations and then be able to explain your thinking.

Speaking of explaining, perhaps you are wondering how much attention you should pay to getting the writing correct. Thomas A. Moore and Alma Zook advise in their “How to Write a Lab Report,” “The days when someone in a science course could wail, ‘But this is a physics course, not an English course!’ are, thanks to the concept of writing across the curriculum long gone….Remember that the point of any report is communicating with someone else.” Thus, the quality of the writing is central.

In case you are not familiar with it, the basic concept of writing across the curriculum is simply that writing is a skill vital to success in all disciplines from anthropology to zoology. Writing in all disciplines must be appropriate for its audience and purpose, clear, and as nearly error-free as you can make it, because errors make your work look questionable and detract from the clarity.

• Question: so, how do I go about this process of writing a lab report?

Obviously, your instructor and/or your lab manual will provide you with information about what is required and how to accomplish it.

But another resource that may be very useful to you is LabWrite {link http://www.ncsu.edu/labwritehere}, produced and copyrighted by North Carolina State University, funded and sponsored by the National Science Foundation.  It is a step by step guide. One of its great strengths is that it begins just where you will need to—with preparation for the experiment or observation. It doesn’t just guide you through the writing but through the entire process from the preparation stage to the gathering and recording of information during the lab, the writing itself, and finally even the checking of your drafted report.

Links◊

◊ Writing a Laboratory Report: Notes to Student Experimenters
Adapted by D. Mowshowitz from an article in Biochemical Ed. by D. Blackman, 7: 82 (1979).

http://www.columbia.edu/cu/biology/faculty/mowshowitz/howto_guide/lab_report.html

 ◊Physics labs at Pomona College for the Six Ideas course

http://www.physics.pomona.edu/sixideas/labs/

◊ LabWrite is an online resource designed to help students take full advantage of one of the most important activities for learning in the sciences—writing good lab reports. Writing good lab reports helps students learn the science of the lab and improves their ability to think scientifically. As a lab instructor, however, you have a lot of other things for you to attend to: preparing your labs, making sure students can use lab instruments, helping students gather and manage lab data, and maintaining a safe lab environment. Given all these tasks, it may be difficult to give the necessary attention to teaching lab reports

http://www.ncsu.edu/labwrite.

◊ Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Washington University

http://geodynamics.wustl.edu/classes/eeg/labs/guidelines.html

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