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Advanced Skills Lecture 2

General structure of a scientific article and how to read and write effectively including the components of a research paper.How to properly write an introduction,literature review, materials and Methods, results, discussions and conclusions of research studies

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amazinggrace
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6 views

Advanced Skills Lecture 2

General structure of a scientific article and how to read and write effectively including the components of a research paper.How to properly write an introduction,literature review, materials and Methods, results, discussions and conclusions of research studies

Uploaded by

amazinggrace
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PPTX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Tables and Figures

 The tables and figures contain the story of your paper


 Each table and figure should have a clear point, and together, they should tell the story of
your manuscript
 Once you have a complete set of tables and figures, the results section falls right out of
these, so you should write the results next
 The results section just gives a high level summary of each table and figure, so it's easy to
write results if you've done the tables and figures well
 They form the foundation of your story
 Tables and figures have to be able to stand alone, they have to be self-contained. The
reader should not need to refer back to the text to make sense of them
Tables and Figures- What are the differences?
Figures
 Visual impact
 Show trends and patterns
 Tell a quick story
 Tell the whole story
 Highlight a particular result

Tables
 Give precise values
 Display many values/variables
A good table

Identify the specific topic or point of the table


Use same key words in the table, the column headings and the text of the paper
Keep it brief
Example: ‘‘Descriptive characteristics of the two treatment groups, mean SD or %
Use superscript symbols to identify footnotes,
Use footnotes to explain statistically significant differences
e.g *p
Use footnotes to explain experimental details or abbreviations
e.g EDI is the Eating Disorder Inventory
What not to do!!!
What not to do!!!
What not to do!!!
What not to do!!!
Figures
Types of figures
1. Primary evidence (Indicate data Quality, Seeing is believing)
Gels, Electrographs, slides, X-ray etc.
2. Graphs
Line graphs, Bar graphs, Scatter plots, Histograms, Box plots, Survival curves etc
3. Drawings and diagrams
Illustrate experimental setup e.g Flow charts,
Indicates flow of participants
Illustrates cause and effect relationships or cycles
Line graphs

 Used to show trends over time, age, dose etc


Bar graphs

 Used to compare groups at one time point


 They tell us a quick visual story
Scatter plots

 Used to show relationships between variables (particularly linear correlation)


Summary on Figures and tables

 Most important part of your manuscript


 Form the foundation of your story
 Should stand alone and tell a complete story. The reader should not refer back
to the main text
 Acronyms have to be defined, experimental details have to be defined
 Each figure and table should tell a clear story and there should be progress
from one figure to the next
 Do not present the same data in both a figure and a table
Results

Summarize what the data show

Point out simple relationships

Describe big-picture trends

Cite figures or tables that present supporting data

Avoid simply repeating the numbers that are already in tables and figures
Results
Example 1
Example 2
What not to do!!
Example 3 Edited Version
Tips for writing the result section

Break into subsections with headings (if needed)


Complement information that is already in tables
i) Give precise values that are not available in the figure
ii) Report the percentage change or percentage difference if absolute values
are given in the table
Repeat/highlight only the most important numbers
Tips for writing the result section

 Don’t forget to talk about negative and control results

 Reserve the ‘’significant’’ for statistically significant

 Reserve information about what you did for the methods section

 Do not discuss the rationale for statistical analysis within results section

 Reserve comments on the meaning of your results for the discussion section
What verb tense do I use in the result section?
 Use past tense for completed actions:
 We found that……..
 The average reaction time was……
 Women were more likely to……..
 Men smoked more cigarettes than……..

 Use the present tense for assertations tha continue to be true, such as what the tables show,
what you believe and what the data suggest:
 Figure 1 shows…….
 The findings confirm……
 We believe that this shows………

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