professional lab report format

professional lab report format

Guidelines for Writing a Professional Lab Report

1. Introduction to Lab Reports

Introduction to Lab Reports

A laboratory (lab) report is used to describe the experimental investigation and the results of scientific research. All assignments for a lab class are targeted at developing skills in conducting experimental and research work, analyzing the results in a scientific context, writing, and the oral presentation of research results. Laboratory reports are based not only on the principles of MNS, but also in the scientific style and the principles of scientific research. Professional researchers should be able to conduct research and analyze results at a professional level. Your work in the lab should help you develop your technical, analytical, and scientific communication skills. At the end of each lab, you will write up a comprehensive lab report in APA format.

In following the guidelines, you will be learning the protocols of presenting research in APA style when writing a journal article. Ultimately, the skills involved will have become transparent so that writing your lab reports will test your understanding of the topic, and not the carefulness of your writing. For professional researchers, scientific research is only as valid as the written results, and consequently, it is represented by the quality of the scientific writing. The quality of every published work will be judged based on the expertise and professionalism of the author(s), and on the quality of the written work, that is its content and style. This is the standard that will be used to evaluate your laboratory reports. You should use all of the elements of report construction established in American Psychological Association (APA) format for Journal Articles as the criteria to fulfill the assignments related to scientific report writing in this class. In this report, you will see how all of the formatting and stylistic guidelines work together to produce a precise and accurate report.

2. Components of a Lab Report

Because a lab report has to follow a particular writing style, it should include several basic components. In this section, you will be introduced to and become acquainted with the roles and purposes of each part and section of a formal lab report.

Components of a Lab Report: Title: This is the name of your report. It should clearly and briefly describe the purpose of your report. Abstract: Abstracts are written for others to read so that they can decide if they are interested in your work. Your abstract will state your goal, whether you reached your goal, and what your key findings were. It is a compact summary, but still uses complete, well-constructed sentences. Your final abstract should be between 150 and 250 words. Introduction: The introduction provides a background for the scientific concepts that are the basis for your experiment. It should show some understanding of the theoretical connections and include a good description of the experiment that will be accomplished. The introduction should include a statement of what the purpose of the lab is and end with a sentence that describes what you expect to find out from this experiment. It is typical to write an introduction in paragraph form that is 5-6 sentences long. Hypothesis and Prediction: A hypothesis is a statement, not a question. It is an if-then statement that is based on the information given in the introduction. It can include the method of the lab, but not the results. Be sure that your hypothesis is testable. Choose only one independent variable to change and make a prediction about the results. Throughout the lab or project, make sure only to write in past tense.

3. Formatting and Style Guidelines

The appropriate construction for professional lab reports is similar in organization to that of a clear and concise scientific journal article. The language, tone, and level of detail are specific and geared toward producing a professional document suited to a research approach. The ACTS style should be used for a format of sections and while writing the paper. The Introduction and Conclusion sections can often be written in paragraph form.

The sections and order of the professional lab report must be written in the prescribed order: Title Page, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results and Discussion, Literature Cited, Tables, Figure Captions, and Figures. Page numbering is also specific for the professional lab report and should contain roman numerals starting with the letter “ii” for the Abstract page and continue with consecutive numbers for the rest of the required contents. The professional lab report should have a word length of at least 2,000 words (including literature cited and tables).

The professional lab report should contain proper punctuation and grammar, writing mechanics, appropriate language or tone, no jargon or slang, and must be in the third person. Past-tense passive descriptions are recommended over a bullet list or bullet form. The standard style advocates the elimination of the first person singular, “I” to make the writing more objective and apparently impartial, but in the professional lab report, this may be hard to do. Standard metrics should be used for measurements including the unit of measure, capitalizations should be correct, and boldface, italicized, or underlined words should be kept to a minimum. The tone used should not include colloquial language or phrases in a professional lab report, but scientific language should also be easy to understand. Clarity in writing will lead to comprehension.

4. Common Mistakes to Avoid

Inconsistent tense use: A major mistake is to switch between tenses within the document. You should aim to keep your report in the past tense because the experiments have been performed, but you should switch to the present tense when discussing the procedures that you followed and the conclusions you drew.

Lack of definitions: If you’re not properly defining terms and processes, your report could be very difficult to follow. A lab report is not a mystery novel, the reader needs to fully understand the meaning of every element of your work in order to properly interpret your results and discussion.

Omitting key elements: Every lab report should have a lab reference code that allows the reader to know exactly which experiment you are discussing. If you can use Harvard referencing, all the better for the reader. You should also include a title, as well as an introduction that clearly lays out your research question. You would then include an abstract that tells the reader right from the beginning everything they need to know and nothing they don’t. If applicable, your report should discuss methods and materials, including any relevant apparatus you used. You should then describe your results and statistical analyses, as well as discussing your findings, any weaknesses in your study, and the final conclusions.

Calculations and underlying data: Failing to provide all the data and calculations that inform your discussion can mean that readers and assessors are left wondering where you got your results from and how reliable they are. It also prevents the reader from being able to replicate the experiments you describe in your report and see how generalizable your findings are. All figures and tables need to have clear, descriptive titles and legends.

5. Tips for Writing an Effective Conclusion

To write an effective conclusion for your lab report, consider the following strategies:

• Remind the reader in a general way what you have done and what you have found, as well as the primary evidence generated or patterns observed. For example, antibiotic X produced a zone of inhibition measuring about 33 mm, which was much larger than the zone produced by antibiotic Y, but not quite as large as that produced by antibiotic Z.

• Interpret the results in a general manner with respect to the goals of the study. Return to the goals and/or hypothesis section of the paper. This may include summarizing/restating results in narrative rather than numerical style syntax.

• Summarize the conclusions of the experiments, including the reasons for accepting or rejecting the hypotheses. Summarize the primary flaws in the data analysis or in the experiment itself.

• Emphasize the importance of the work in this conclusion, to persuade the reader that your work is relevant and perhaps important. All great stories end with a punch line (that is, the point of the story), and your story should too. In the case of a lab report, you may need to organize the conclusion to emphasize the story; let the “punch line” be the point of the report. In other words, you may choose to organize your conclusion by admitting there is a problem as in, “Despite the strength of X, its application is limited to Y”, and indicating the potential solutions you would recommend.

When you are ready to finish writing the conclusion, return to the introduction and the goals or hypothesis section of the introduction, and add a few sentences that will help the reader to “make sense” of your paper in this new context: Why is the current study important, and what is it trying to/about to do? Then return to the end of the results where you remind the reader of what the primary goals of the study are. If they are not restated (in narrative form), do so in one or two complete sentences when returning to the conclusion section. The conclusion can be where you describe your “punch line”, where you highlight the central ideas of your lab report. You might even think of the conclusion as baking the perfect birthday cake: successful cake (experiment), followed by the perfect outcome (results), beating in a little sugar and spice, plus the “punch line!” Remember, you are the expert in your study. Rephrase your research question into a statement and justify the study before restating the hypothesis documented in the introduction. In the first part of the conclusion, emphasize the significance of the research question as an initial step in the scientific method to address a problem or question. There is a gap in the literature that has to be addressed to help us understand what your study brings to science.