The Writer's Handbook

Writing Scientific Reports

This section describes an organizational structure commonly used to report experimental research in many scientific disciplines, the IMRAD format: Introduction, Methods, Results, And Discussion.

Although the main headings are standard for many scientific fields, details may vary; check with your instructor, or, if submitting an article to a journal, refer to the instructions to authors.

Use the menu below to find out how to write each part of a scientific report.

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Discussion Section

The table below offers some questions effective discussion sections in scientific reports address.

What do your observations mean?

Summarize the most important findings at the beginning.

What conclusions can you draw?

For each major result:

Describe the patterns, principles, relationships your results show.
Explain how your results relate to expectations and to literature cited in your Introduction. Do they agree, contradict, or are they exceptions to the rule?
Explain plausibly any agreements, contradictions, or exceptions.
Describe what additional research might resolve contradictions or explain exceptions.

How do your results fit into a broader context?

Suggest the theoretical implications of your results.
Suggest practical applications of your results?
Extend your findings to other situations or other species.
Give the big picture: do your findings help us understand a broader topic?

Additional tips:

Move from specific to general: your finding(s) --> literature, theory, practice.
Don't ignore or bury the major issue. Did the study achieve the goal (resolve the problem, answer the question, support the hypothesis) presented in the Introduction?
Make explanations complete.
- Give evidence for each conclusion.
- Discuss possible reasons for expected and unexpected findings.

What to avoid:

Don't overgeneralize.
Don't ignore deviations in your data.
Avoid speculation that cannot be tested in the foreseeable future.