Writing Lab Reports

http://online.mun.ca/content/enforced/81825-81329.201003/Getting_Started/04_Writing_Lab_Reports...

Writing Lab Reports Introduction

Students are required to prepare and submit lab reports, one for each of the prescribed lab assignments. Due dates are noted in the Schedule. The lab report is a concise paper that answers the question(s) posed for the assignment, and supports these answer(s) with statistical analyses and reasoning. It may include tables and graphs, but unless these are the focus of the question (e.g., What is the shape of the distribution of scores?), they should be used mainly to support your response to the question and must be referred to in the text of your response. Computer printouts, tables, and graphs cannot simply stand alone as a response. This is where it is advantageous to know and use a word processor, such as MSWord or WordPerfect (or another word processor), as it is possible, and often desirable, to copy a table or graph directly from SPSS into the word processing file of your report. The style and format of the report should be APA (American Psychological Association) style (see the References page). Students are advised to become familiar with this style generally as it is used widely in educational research literature and is often the style recommended for theses and reports.

Word Processing Lab Reports

Students should use a word processor to produce their lab reports. You may wish to spend some time in learning how to copy information from an SPSS output file to your word processing file. We suggest that you use MSWord or WordPerfect as these are very commonly used, and should be readily available in schools and other institutions. We can provide assistance with these particular word processing applicators.

Making Statistical Statements / Using SPSS Output

Lab reports should consist of clear and concise responses to the questions posed in the lab assignments. Responses should normally consist of written statements, rather than computer output. The computer output should support your responses, but not usually be the direct response. If the question asks you to determine measures of central tendency and variability, these can be obtained readily using SPSS. SPSS produces descriptive statistics and writes them in the output file. You can copy some or all of these results to a word processing file; this is what we would recommend that you do if you use a word processor. Copying the SPSS output gives the opportunity to take only the information that is necessary for the question, the statistics that pertain directly to the question at hand, and you can do this without risk of making transcription errors. However, when you produce your response to the lab question, it should not be just the SPSS output. Rather, you should use the SPSS output to make statements that respond to the question posed, and, where necessary, to produce tables that provide succinct summaries of the relevant results. The statements could look like this for example: The median of the combined scores for students is 74.0, and the mean is 68.5. The range of scores is 34.2, and the standard deviation is 12.8 (see Table 1 below for results on each assignment). We have expanded on this example under the heading Writing a Response to a Lab Question. Also, in the Sample Response and Table you will find an example of a table, the one that is referred to in the statement above (Table 1).

Using Tables in Lab Reports

A lab assignment response would not normally consist of only a table. A table should be preceded by text that addresses the question and that refers to the table by number, as is done on the preceding page. The table should be placed immediately following the paragraph in which it is first addressed insofar as this is possible since the table should appear in its entirety on one page. Comments on the results presented in the table should address the highlights and indicate to the reader certain important points. However, the commentary should not repeat all or even a major portion of the information in the table. The text and table should complement one another. A table should provide enough information for the reader to interpret the table without reading the text, and, conversely, the text should also stand on its own. Both in text and tables the symbol for a statistic is always italicized (or underlined). In this form it is acceptable to use in a report. If we were to report central tendency and variability for four different variables, as could be the case for the first lab exercise, the table could look like the sample table provided in the Sample Response and Table section. NOTE: The table must have a title that describes clearly what the table contains, and it should have headings (spanners) that identify the information in the rows and columns. You could use the sample table as a model of how to set up tables of your own.

1 of 3

11-05-16 8:36 PM

Writing Lab Reports

http://online.mun.ca/content/enforced/81825-81329.201003/Getting_Started/04_Writing_Lab_Reports...

Writing a Response to a Lab Question

Assume the question in Lab Assignment #1 asked for descriptive statistics on the raw and percentage scores for students in primary and elementary programs versus those in secondary programs, and for a commentary on the results. This lab contains data for two assignments and a test, and thus there would be many numbers to report, particularly if we were to report the summary statistics for primary and elementary students separate from those for secondary students. It is cumbersome to report more than a few statistics in text, and probably more difficult for the reader to make sense of them in text format, so a table is preferable. The response could go something like the sample response given in the Sample Response and Table section. We have tried to give several ways of integrating the statistics into the text as part of the commentary on the differences between the two groups. We are assuming that the sample sizes are reasonable, which is clearly not so particularly for the secondary group. Obviously, this example of a table given in the Sample Response and Table section is more than what is asked for in Lab Assignment #1, but hopefully it gives you some idea of how to create a table that has a variety of types of information in it. We chose to limit the number of decimal places to one as further decimal places would not add to the discussion they would simply give a false impression of precision. We could make a number of additional comments about the results, such as the apparent increase of scores for secondary students from the assignments to the test. Of course, one should be very cautious about making comments about observed differences from such a small sample of students. Weve done this merely to demonstrate how a researcher could go about presenting statistics on data and commenting on them. It may seem redundant to include the means and medians in the remarks on the results if there is a table containing the statistics, and surely we would not repeat all of what is in the table. But, if we wanted to discuss differences between primary/elementary and secondary students, we should indicate on what statistics we are basing our conclusions. This is how statistical information is presented and discussed in texts, in journal articles, and other documents. Gravetter and Wallnau give some suggestions as well on how to report statistical results. There are no hard and fast rules regarding how many decimals to report, but generally a descriptive statistic should be reported with two more decimal places than the original scores had (APA recommendation), and certainly no more than that (one more decimal place is often enough, particularly if there are not very many scores). Percentage scores for individuals would not normally have any decimal places, and could be stated in this manner: The student achieved a score of 91%. However, the mean of percentage scores would have one or two decimal places: The mean of test scores for secondary students was 80.6%. We cannot give you all the style and format procedures to follow since they are voluminous. But it is worth while to develop this throughout the course. We will not be downgrading responses to lab questions on stylistic grounds, but will try to point out how responses could be formatted in our responses to your lab assignments.

Sample Response and Table

Summary statistics for the students assignments and test, both as raw scores and as percentages, are given in Table 1 below for students in primary and elementary programs combined and for students in secondary programs. The assignments appeared to favour primary and elementary students, their means were higher (means of 67.5% and 70.7% for the two assignments) than those of the secondary students (means of 58.9% and 59.6%). These differences are half a standard deviation in size or larger. This difference is even more apparent from the medians. However, the average test score of students in primary and elementary programs (M = 65.5%) is lower than that for students in secondary programs (M = 80.6%), a difference that is more than half the standard deviation.

Table 1 Average and Variability for Raw and Percentage Scores for Students in a University Course

Assign #1 Score Percent

Assign #2 Score Percent Score

Test Percent

Combined Score (Maximun 100)

Students in Primary and Elementary Programs n M Mdn range s 20.3 21.5 15 5.3 8 67.5% 71.7 50.0 17.5 36.8 39.5 25 8.3 8 70.7% 76.0 48.1 15.9 7.9 8.0 8 2.5

7a 65.5% 66.7 66.7 21.2

7a 68.5 74.0 34.2 12.8

Students in Secondary Programs

2 of 3

11-05-16 8:36 PM

Writing Lab Reports

http://online.mun.ca/content/enforced/81825-81329.201003/Getting_Started/04_Writing_Lab_Reports...

n M Mdn range s 17.7 15.5 8 4.6

3 58.9% 50.0 26.7 15.4 31.0 31.0 8 4.0

3 59.6% 59.6 15.4 7.7 9.7 10.0 3 1.5

3 80.6% 83.3 25.0 12.7

3 63.5 68.1 34.2 9.4

One student was absent for the test and was given an Incomplete, rather than a 0. This was not included in the calculations.

The scores were combined by weighting the assignments 40% each and the test 20%. On the combined score the difference between groups is less pronounced: primary and elementary students performed slightly better than their secondary counterparts (for the two groups respectively, M = 68.5 and M = 63.5). This less pronounced difference is to be expected since the primary/elementary group performed better on the assignments and poorer on the test, the effect of this would be to cancel some of the difference . . . . (etc., etc.)

Education 2900: Introduction to Statistics in Education Memorial University of Newfoundland, Henry Schulz, & Gerry White, 2008. All rights reserved.

3 of 3

11-05-16 8:36 PM