Results

Types of Data

• Raw data: actual number found
• Summarized data: e.g., mean +- the standard deviation
• Transformed data: percentage of control

Orgnization

Oganizing Principles: Report results only pertinent to the research question(s). Include the most important data.

Order of Results: Consistent with the order in the Methods

For the whole Results —

• Chronological order

• By the types of the information

Within each subsection —

• Most important — least important results.

Technical Details

Tenses: Mostly past tense. exception: present tense for presenting results in tables or figures

Guiding principles

Be clear

• main results in text, data in tables and/or illustrations.

Be brief

• data should be kept to a minimum in the text.

Highlighting the most important message

• important results first
• avoid using a figure legend or a table title as a topic sentence.

Stock phrases

Stock phrases to describe significant differences:

• There were no significance differences between …

• No significant difference was found among …

• … differ significantly

• was significantly lower than

• was significantly higher compared with …

• was significantly higher … versus …

• was not significantly different from …

Stock phrases to describe increase/decrease:

• were increased/decreased

• there was an increase/ a decrease in …

• increased/decreased from … to …

• An increase was found/observed.

Tables and illustrations

• When to use them?

• The rule: be informative

• In either ONE way: text, table, figure, NO REFETITION

Tables

• When to use?

• ONLY when repetitive data must be presented

Principles for arranging tabular material

• Three horizontal lines but no vertical lines

• Like elements read down, not across

• Words in a column are lined up on the left, numbers on the right

Checklist

• Tables are numbered in the order that are cited in the text.

• Data in the table are consistent with the pertinent text.

• The format of the table follows the “instruction to authors.”

• The format of the table matches the format of the tables published in your target journal.

Effective illustrations

When to use ?

• For accurate data, TABLE.

• For pronounced trends, GRAPH.

What is illustration?

• An image or graphic portrayal of methods or data in a scientific paper. Types of illustrations include graphs, diagrams, flow charts, photographs, radiographs

Three common figure types

Bar graph, Line graph, Photograph, Bar Graph, Line graph, Consists of lines, words, and symbols but no photograph.