A GUIDE ON HOW TO WRITE LAB REPORTS

        Over the years, I have placed increased emphasis on lab reports.  Along with this I have expected more and better work to be done on them and I have accordingly increased the number of points they are worth.  The reason for this “evolution” is that the more time and effort you put into the reports, the more you learn.  Writing about something is often one of the best means to come to understand it.  And, the other side of the coin is that you have to understand the material in order to write a good lab report.  For this course, I would like you to seriously regard the lab reports as a means of learning about the subject and as a project about which you can be rightfully proud.  And please, if you do not have a good under­standing about either the lab or how the report should be written, be sure to come see me well in advance of the report’s due date.

        I suggest that the lab report be divided into parts.  This makes it easier for the reader to find information quickly.  It should have at least four parts: Introduction, Procedures, Results and Discussion.  You may find it useful to divide these parts up also.  Such subdividing is particularly appropriate in the Results and sometimes the Discussion section. 

       A very important point is that if you have used any information from a source other than yourself, then you must make that clear.  To do otherwise is PLAGIARISM, which is a very serious offense.  In the professional world, plagiarism can cost you your career and reputation.  In college it can cause you to fail a course or even be dismissed from school.  So, if you do use such a source, you should indicate it in the text and have a References section at the very end of the report in which you specifically cite the source.  Please refer to the material defining plagiarism.

  

       Introduction:  This section should be comprised of four components: (1) background information consisting of a brief overview of the concepts in the lab, (2) a statement of the purpose(s) of the lab,
(3) a statement of what general technique(s) were used, and (4) a statement summarizing the most important parts of the results.  These components do not have to be in this particular order.
       Do not rely exclusively on the lab manual for the background; use your textbook as another source, at least.  But be careful in your use of sources.  In particular, exercise caution in how you paraphrase sources.  Paraphrasing is putting source material in your own words; it is not changing a few words while otherwise copying the source.  Rather than copying with a few word changes (and risking plagiarism), it is better to read your source material well enough to clearly understand it.  Then, without looking at it, write the background part of the Introduction.  Work in a similar fashion for the other components.  Think about what you did during the lab exercise, decide what were the major purposes of the exercise, what were the most important methods used, and what was the overall result.  Then put these down in your own words.
       An important question is: how deeply should you go in terms of background and introductory material?  Consider to whom you are addressing this report – what level of knowledge do you expect your reader to have?  It seems best that you imagine the reader to have some basic understanding of biology, but no knowledge of the particular lab project you are describing.  In other words, imagine yourself as the reader, prior to doing the lab.  Introduce the topic of the report in sufficient depth that someone like yourself will have all the background information to understand how the results were obtained and where they fit into the overall topic.  Basically, the Introduction sets up the report so that you can use the Discussion section to bring together the results you will describe with the background material in this Introduction.

        Procedures:  There are two problems students typically face with this section.  One has to do with the style.  Should it be instructive and sound like the lab manual – “Next, do x, y, z.”, or should it be in past tense, as a factual reporting of what was done?  My suggestion is that it should be in the past tense, explaining what you actually did.  This is a report of what you have done – it is not supposed to be used as directions for others to perform the lab themselves.
       The second problem has to do with how much detail should be put into this section.  Neither extreme is good: you should not retype all the steps from the lab manual, nor should you simply say “Procedures are as described on pages · · ·.”  You need to do something in-between.  To decide how detailed you should be, let me repeat what I said for the Introduction:  think about to whom you are addressing this report; imagine yourself as the reader, prior to doing the lab.  Your description of the procedures needs to be sufficient for the reader to fully understand the Results section.  So, for example, you should certainly have concentrations, volumes, weights, times, etc., but you should not have so much detail that you talk about cleaning slides or test tubes.  So in summary, describe what was done in sufficient detail that a reader can understand how the lab was carried out and how the results were obtained. 

       Results:  Many students feel that this section can consist entirely of tables and graphs plus the statement “See Tables and Graphs”.  In some science labs this is the kind of lab report that is wanted.  Not so in Cell Biology!  While often it is best to present your data in tables and/or graphs, you need more – you need text.  The tables and graphs allow the reader to easily see the data, but if presented alone the reader is forced to guess about how you got the results.  You must explain to the reader what you have done.  The text plus the tables and graphs complement one another; they bring the procedures together with the data.  Furthermore, you must also describe the results in words.  That is not to say talk about all the results, but particularly point out trends, remarkable highs or lows, consistencies, inconsistencies, problems, etc.  Finally, make sure that you have addressed all the appropriate questions from the lab manual.  This should be done within the normal flow of the text; you should not, in any way, list them.

        Discussion:  In this section you should relate the results to the larger picture, especially some of the items mentioned in the Introduction.  Discuss the issues, questions and problems mentioned in the Introduction or practical ones that are mentioned in the Results.  Review your results, possibly part by part, explaining the reasons for them and discussing them in light of the background information given in the Introduction.  If there are any deviations from what was expected you will want to offer explanations.  Further, it might be appropriate to comment about what would be good to do as extensions of the current experiment.  Finally, you may want to answer some of the questions from the lab manual in this section, if you decide they are better suited for the Discussion section rather than the Results.

 

       A few words about your writing.  Remember, that writing counts for about half the grade on the lab reports.  When you are finished writing, go back over it.  Re-read it, asking yourself if each sentence makes sense.  Does one sentence make a logical connection to the previous one?  Similarly, when you start a new paragraph, it should not just sit there all by itself; it also must be connected in some logical manner to the previous paragraph – and the following one.  You cannot just write down whatever comes into your mind and expect it to hang together.  For most of us writing takes work; changing, deleting, adding, rearranging.

        Yes, I am asking you to do all of that.  I cannot sufficiently stress the importance of good writing.  In fact, it may be the most important skill you develop while in college, because it is through writing that so much information is communicated.  For instance, it is through your letters, resumes and reports that people first get to know you.  And, as you know, first impressions can be very influential.  If you write poorly, you give the impression to potential employers or graduate school admissions directors that you have not received a good education and they are much less likely to hire you or accept you into their program.