Lab report marking guide

Personality & Social Psychology (PSYC20009)

Overview
Your assignment is to write a lab report (1500 words) on
This assignment is worth 40% of the
associations between the Big Five personality domains and
total mark for Personality & Social
the three fundamental needs associated with self-
Psychology (PSYC20009).
determination theory. Specifically, you are to choose 3
associations between Big Five factors and fundamental
Due on the day of your scheduled
needs from a larger set (see table below). You will test these
tutorial in Week 7 before 8:00 am.
associations using correlation analyses, and then write these
results up in an APA style lab report.
The MSPS Undergraduate and
In the Week 1 tutorial and the Week 2 lecture, you will be Graduate Diploma Student Manual
given some background theory and research on the Big Five (https://go.unimelb.edu.au/45pi)
and self-determination theory. Further, in the Week 1 details assessment policies and
tutorial, you will respond to a few questionnaires that will procedures. It includes information
provide the data on which the lab report will be based. You about extensions, word counts, late
will analyse this data yourselves in the tutorial in Week 3. To penalties, and submission
help get you started, you’ll find an introduction to some requirements. Please read this
background literature on the Big Five and on self- document carefully. Additionally, if you
determination theory below. Keep in mind that this is only have not already done so, visit the
an introduction to these research areas. We expect you to University academic integrity website
seek out additional research for your lab report; assignments to learn about your responsibilities in
that rely solely on the literature suggested in this document maintaining academic integrity
are very unlikely to receive a high grade. (https://go.unimelb.edu.au/8nw6).

Background
What kinds of goals do people pursue throughout their lives? Although there are many answers to this question,
self-determination theory (SDT) proposes that the goals people pursue mainly focus on the satisfaction of three
basic psychological needs – autonomy, competence and relatedness.

Autonomy refers to the feelings of volition and self-ownership; of one’s behaviours originating in the self and being
consistent with one’s values. The opposite of autonomy is the feeling that one’s actions are controlled by forces
alien to the self. Competence refers to feeling effective, at taking on and mastering challenges. Relatedness refers to
feeling connected to others and feeling a sense of belonging in groups or in one’s community. SDT suggests that to
the extent that these needs are satisfied, people will feel a sense of growth and wellbeing.

Most work in SDT has focused on how certain environments or situations help fulfil these needs. For example,
studies have shown that high school classrooms can support the three needs and thus promote students’
engagement with learning, and consequently, lead to better learning outcomes.

Despite these needs being termed ‘basic’ or ‘fundamental’, not all people experience autonomy, competence and
relatedness to the same extent. Some work has been conducted investigating cross-cultural differences in
satisfaction of these basic needs (e.g., Chen et al., 2015). Apart from the question of whether there is variation
between cultures, another question is whether there might be variation between people – individual differences –
in satisfying each of these basic needs.

Your assignment will explore how individual differences in the Big Five personality domains are associated with
different levels of satisfying the basic psychological needs of autonomy, competence and relatedness. As you will
learn in the Week 2 lecture, the Big Five framework in personality research suggests that there are five major
dimensions of psychological and behavioural variation between people. These are Openness to Experience (O),

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Conscientiousness (C), Extraversion (E), Agreeableness (A), and Neuroticism (N)(acronym: OCEAN). In your
assignment you will consider how these personality traits are associated with the basic needs from self-
determination theory.

In the first tutorial you completed a brief survey measuring the three basic needs of SDT and the Big Five (along
with some additional demographic questions). More specifically, you completed the Balanced Measure of
Psychological Needs (BMPN; Sheldon & Hilpert, 2012) to assess basic psychological needs from SDT and the Big Five
Inventory – 2 (BFI-2; Soto & John, 2017) to assess the Big Five.

Your assignment
You are to choose 3 associations from among those possible between the Big Five and the basic needs. The possible
associations are represented by the table below; there are a total of 15 associations (represented by each empty
cell) that you can select from.

Table 1. Possible associations between Big Five traits and SDT Needs

Autonomy Relatedness Competence

Openness to Experience

Conscientiousness

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Neuroticism

You may, for example, choose to focus on one of the Big Five domains (say, Neuroticism) and explore how it relates
to each of the three fundamental needs. Or, you may want to focus on one of the needs (Autonomy, for example),
and consider how a subset of three of the Big Five traits relate to it.

In choosing your associations, be sure to choose a set of three that you can integrate into a coherent overall
“story.” In writing your introduction, be sure to explicitly derive hypotheses about your 3 chosen associations from
the background literature. For example, you may choose to focus on, among others, the association between
neuroticism and competence. From your reading of the background literature, what do you expect the association
to be – positive or negative? In other words, do you hypothesize neuroticism to be positively correlated with
competence? Or do you hypothesize it to be negatively correlated with competence? For the purposes of this
assignment, do not choose correlations that you expect to be zero. We do not want you proposing a null
hypothesis (that there will be no relationship) as one of your three assignment hypotheses. We only want
hypotheses where you expect to see some type of relationship between your two variables.

Be sure to choose your associations before your Week 3 lab class, as you will be testing your hypotheses in that
class. In doing your data analyses, you will be doing significance tests of correlations. You will also need to report
reliability coefficients for the measures you use in your assignment. You will be given plenty of instruction on how
to do reliability and correlation analyses in the Week 3 tutorial.

Lab reports require a particular style of writing, so read short report articles in the leading journals (e.g., Journal of
Experimental Social Psychology) to get a feel for the writing style. All laboratory reports must be typed rather than
hand-written. The report should also conform to the format specified by the American Psychological Association, in
the APA Publication Manual (7th edition).

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The following broad guidelines may help you write your report (see also the marking/feedback scheme as well as
other resources on Canvas):

Your report should contain 6 sections (with an optional 7th): Abstract, Introduction, Method, Results, Discussion,
References, (and Appendices, if required). In addition, you should give your report an appropriate title that
describes what the report covers (for some guidance, look at some psychology journal articles). This title should be
no longer than about 15 words.

• The Abstract should be no more than 150 words and should provide a complete, self-contained summary
of the report. This should include the research question you are investigating, the method, the nature of the
participants tested, the results, and conclusions.

• The Introduction begins with the general area under consideration, then moves on to provide a review of
the major research findings and theories that are relevant to the study. The introduction should end with the
hypotheses that you have tested. In the introduction you are to derive the hypotheses from background research
and theory. That is, the hypotheses should follow clearly and logically from the literature you review in the
introduction. There is no minimum or maximum number of references required; you should include as many as you
need to make your arguments.

• The Method section should give no more and no less information than is needed to replicate the
experiment. As you are describing what you did, the past tense should be used. The method should be divided into
subsections that describe the Participants, Materials, and Procedure. In the Participants subsection describe who
the participants were, including the number of participants, the numbers of different genders, the mean age, the
age standard deviation, and the range. The Materials subsection includes a description of those measures used in
collecting the data (including reliability coefficients). This should include the nature of any questions that were
asked and how these were responded to. The Procedure subsection should contain a chronological account of
what happened during the study.

• The Results section should provide a description of what data you analysed, how you did it, and what the
results were. This should be related to the hypotheses that you presented in the Introduction. Do not include any
discussion of the results in this section (i.e., do not explain the results). You may find the inclusion of Tables that
present descriptive statistics, for example, means or standard deviations, useful. If you include a Table, it should be
appropriately labelled (including a number) and its contents must be described in the text (see APA style guide for
formatting requirements for Tables).

For your assignment, hypotheses are stated in terms of predicted correlations. Thus, you need to conduct
significance tests of correlations to test your hypotheses.

• The crucial function of the Discussion section of the report is to review your findings and to show how they
relate to the relevant literature, including the theories or models you are testing. Typically, the discussion begins
with a reminder of the aim of the study, a summary of the hypotheses and a statement of whether the hypotheses
were supported or not. In the rest of the discussion, you should consider what implications your findings have for
extant theories, any limitations of your results (due, for example, to methodological limitations), and future
directions for research.

• The References section should include a full reference to each citation in your report. These should be
listed alphabetically in APA format.

• Appendices are included only if necessary. For laboratory reports these may be used to present copies of
any questionnaires that were used. For this lab-report, they are not necessary. If these are included, they must be
referred to in the text of the report.

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If you need more guidance, be sure to see the resources posted under the Assessment Information module, and also
the "How to Write a Lab Report" module on Canvas. Here you will find detailed instructions and recommendations on
how to write a lab report.

Measurement and variables

Demographics

Age: Participant age in years

Gender: Coded: 1 = male; 2 = female; 3 = non-binary, 4 = self-identify

The Gender variable will be given to you in summary form. This is because we have an ethical duty to ensure that
the data is completely anonymised, and that everyone with access to the file will not be able to identify individual
respondents on the basis of their gender data. In the lab report, you simply need to report this summary data in
describing your participants.

Balanced Measure of Psychological Needs (BMPN; Sheldon & Hilpert, 2012).

This measure contains 3 subscales: relatedness, competence and autonomy. Items relate to these subscales as
noted below:

As you will note, even items are worded negatively (i.e., agreement indicates low levels of the assessed constructs).
These have been reversed-scored in the assignment dataset. These items are labelled BMPN_REL_1 …
BMPN_AUT_18rc. The use of REL/COMP/AUT is so that you can identify the subscale that each item belongs to.
Items that have been reverse coded are followed by ‘rc’ e.g., BMPN_REL_2rc.

Here are the subscale items:

Relatedness

1. I felt a sense of contact with people who care for me, and whom I care for.
2. I was lonely.
3. I felt close and connected with other people who are important to me.
4. I felt unappreciated by one or more important people.
5. I felt a strong sense of intimacy with the people I spent time with.
6. I had disagreements or conflicts with people I usually get along with.

Competence

7. I was successfully completing difficult tasks and projects.

8. I experienced some kind of failure, or was unable to do well at something.
9. I took on and mastered hard challenges.
10. I did something stupid, that made me feel incompetent.
11. I did well even at the hard things.
12. I struggled doing something I should be good at.

Autonomy

13. I was free to do things my own way.

14. I had a lot of pressures I could do without.
15. My choices expressed my ‘‘true self.’’

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16. There were people telling me what I had to do.
17. I was really doing what interests me.
18. I had to do things against my will.

Composites, formed by averaging the sub-scale relevant items, have been computed and are labelled:

Psych_Needs_Relatedness (Relatedness; average of items 1 – 6)

Psych_Needs_Comptenece (Competence; average of items 7 – 12)

Psych_Needs_Autonomy (Autonomy; average of items 13 – 18)

These can be found at the far-right of the data file.

More information about this scale can be found in

Sheldon, K. M., & Hippert, J. C. (2012). The balanced measure of psychological needs (BMPN) scale: An alternative
domain general measure of need satisfaction. Motivation and Emotion, 36, 439-451.

Big Five Inventory-2 (BFI 2; Soto & John, 2017)

This measure contains 5 domain-level sub-scales (corresponding to the Big Five) and 15 facet-level subscales (3
nested within each domain) corresponding to finer-grained dimensions in the trait hierarchy. For the purposes of
this assignment we will be working with the 5 domain-level scales. As with the BMPN, some items are worded
negatively (such that agreement indicates lower levels of the trait). These have been reversed-scored in the
assignment dataset. These items are labelled Big5_E_1 …. Big5_O_60 in the Assignment dataset, with the letter
representing the Big 5 subscale the item belongs to. Reverse-scored items are followed by ‘rc’ (e.g., Big5_E_11rc).

Composites, formed by averaging the sub-scale relevant items (see just above), have been computed and are
labelled:

Big5_Extraversion (Extraversion)

Big5_Agreeableness (Agreeableness)

Big5_Conscientiousness (Conscientiousness)

Big5_Neuroticism (Neuroticism/Negative Emotionality)

Big5_Openness (Open-Mindedness)

These can be found at the far-right of the data file.

More information about this scale can be found in

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model
with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
113, 117-143.

Items and their relation to the domain subscales can be seen below.

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Literature
Here are some (other) references to get you started on thinking about how the Big Five might relate to the basic
needs outlined in SDT; you will be expected to go beyond these in writing your lab report.

Big Five

These articles will give you a good general introduction to the Big Five framework (you will also get a further intro to
this framework in the Week 2 lecture):

Anglim, J., & O’Connor, P. (2019). Measurement and research using the Big Five, HEXACO, and narrow traits: A
primer for researchers and practitioners. Australian Journal of Psychology, 71(1), 16-25.

John, O.P. and Srivastava, S. (1999). The Big Five Trait Taxonomy: History, measurement, and theoretical
perspectives. In Pervin, L.A. and John, O.P. Eds., Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, Vol. 2, Guilford
Press, New York, 102–138.

This article will give you a sense of the kinds of things that the Big Five domains are associated with. This will help
you think through which associations you might choose to examine in your assignment:

Roberts, B. W., Kuncel, N. R., Shiner, R., Caspi, A. & Goldberg, L. R. (2007). The Power of Personality: The
Comparative Validity of Personality Traits, Socioeconomic Status, and Cognitive Ability for Predicting Important
Life Outcomes. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2(4), 313–345.

This article will give you some more information about the particular measure of the Big Five we’ll be using in the
assignment: the BFI-2:

Soto, C. J., & John, O. P. (2017). The next Big Five Inventory (BFI-2): Developing and assessing a hierarchical model
with 15 facets to enhance bandwidth, fidelity, and predictive power. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology,
113, 117–143.

Self-determination theory (SDT) is a complex theory consisting of multiple lower-level, more specific sub-
theories. We’ll be focusing on the Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNT), which is a sub-theory of SDT.

A very good general introduction to SDT and its component sub-theories can be found on the SDT website here:
http://selfdeterminationtheory.org/theory/

For an introduction to the key ideas behind the basic psychological needs sub-theory, this article, although long
and rather complex in parts, will provide you with a good starting point:

Deci, E. L., & Ryan, R. M. (2000). The “what” and “why” of goal pursuits: Human needs and the self-determination of
behavior. Psychological Inquiry, 11, 227–268.

This paper provides an elaboration of the BPNT and a description of the measure we’ll be using in the assignment:

Sheldon, K. M., & Hippert, J. C. (2012). The balanced measure of psychological needs (BMPN) scale: An alternative
domain general measure of need satisfaction. Motivation and Emotion, 36, 439–451.

Best of luck!

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Assessment criteria
A. Title and Abstract Weight
A1. Title Content  Clearly and concisely outlines the main topic of the research, 2%
including the relationship between key variables.
A2. Abstract Content  Provides a brief, comprehensive summary of the paper in a 8%
paragraph of no more than 150 words. This summary includes a
concise description of:
- the problem under investigation (i.e., the research topic)
- key study characteristics (e.g., number of participants,
study design, main outcome measures, data-gathering
and analysis procedures)
- the main findings
 the implications of the findings for the problem under
investigation
Weight A 10%
B. Introduction Weight
B1. Opening  Opens by introducing the problem under investigation and 5%
outlining its importance.
B2. Literature Review  Provides a succinct and focused review of literature relevant to 8%
(Relevance and the problem.
Understanding)  Summarises key background information accurately and in
appropriate detail.
B3. Literature Review  Develops a cogent rationale by critically evaluating the literature 7%
(Rationale) and arguing how prior research informs the current hypotheses.
B4. Aims and Hypotheses  Outlines the purpose and scope of the study and generates 5%
specific hypotheses for testing.
Weight B 25%
C. Method Weight
C1. Participants  Describes the participants involved in the research. In most cases, 2%
this includes:
- number of participants in total and in relevant subgroups
- descriptive statistics for years of age
- gender composition of the sample
- other major demographic characteristics as warranted by
the study
- eligibility and exclusion criteria
C2. Materials and  Describes all outcome measures, and the materials used to derive 2%
Measures them, with sufficient detail to facilitate reproducibility.
C3. Procedure and  Describes the procedures that were carried out in the study, 1%
Design including a detailed outline of how participants were allocated to
groups or conditions and the specific steps involved in collecting
and analysing data.
Weight C 5%
D. Results Weight
D1. Statistical  Presents all relevant statistical information accurately and 5%
Information completely.

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D2. Presentation  Describes the results of each analysis appropriately and presents 10%
statistical and mathematical information in correct APA Style
format.
 Presents results in an organised manner, following the structure
set by the study’s design and the order of the aims and
hypotheses.
 Avoids making interpretive comments that are better suited for
the Discussion (e.g., interpreting what the result means for the
hypotheses stated in the Introduction).
D3. Tables and Figures  Presents at least one table or figure which is referred to and 5%
described appropriately in text.
 Tables/figures conform to the requirements of APA Style.
 Each table/figure serves a purpose and does not merely duplicate
information contained in the text or in another table or figure.
Weight D 20%
E. Discussion Weight
E1. Hypotheses  Opens with a clear statement summarising the aims and 7%
hypotheses and indicating whether the hypotheses were
supported or not.
E2. Interpretation  Considers how the study’s findings are similar to or different from 10%
relevant prior work.
 Considers what the results mean for the problem under
investigation, particularly with regard to the specific issues raised
in the Introduction.
 Reflects on how the study advances scholarship in the field
without overstating the importance of the study and its findings.
E3. Future Directions  Suggests future directions informed by issues that remain 6%
unresolved, new questions that have arisen as a consequence of
the study’s findings, or limitations in the design of the study that
may need to be addressed in future work.
E4. Conclusions  Concludes by briefly returning to a discussion of why the problem 7%
is important and how the findings relate to the overarching issues
motivating the research.
Weight E 30%
F. Writing/Presentation Weight
F1. Written Expression  Demonstrates clarity and conciseness in written expression. 5%
 Demonstrates continuity and flow within and across all sections
of the report.
 Exhibits a professional tone suitable for academic writing.
 Word choice is appropriate and sentences are well-constructed,
with no errors in spelling, grammar, or usage.
 Contains an appropriate amount of original material.
F2. Report Formatting  Adheres to APA Style formatting requirements (e.g., with regard to 2%
page numbers, headings, line spacing, and paragraph alignment
and indentation).
F3. Referencing  Works are cited appropriately in-text and in the reference list, 3%
following the requirements of APA Style.
Weight F 10%

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Assessment and feedback Beins, B. C., & Beins, A. M. (2021). Effective writing in
Your work will be evaluated according to the psychology: Papers, posters, and presentations
assessment criteria, with the table below used as a (3rd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.
guide for marking. Your tutor will also provide
Burton, L. J. (2021). An interactive approach to writing
feedback on your report, with the aim of offering
essays and research reports in psychology (5th
practical guidance that you can use to enhance your
ed.). Wiley.
lab report writing in the future.
Kail, R. V. (2019). Scientific writing for psychology:
Grade Range Example Descriptor Lessons in clarity and style (2nd ed.). Sage.
H1 80–100 Excellent performance;
shows a high to very high Landrum, R. E. (2021). Undergraduate writing in
level of proficiency. psychology: Learning to tell the scientific story (3rd
H2A 75–79 Very good performance; ed.). American Psychological Association.
shows a high level of https://doi.org/10.1037/0000206-000
proficiency.
O’Shea, R. P., & McKenzie, W. A. (2021). Writing for
H2B 70–74 Good performance; shows psychology. (7th ed.). Cengage.
a sound level of
proficiency. Understanding the assessment criteria:
H3 65–69 Competent performance; Some pointers
shows a fair level of
proficiency. Title and abstract
P 50–64 Satisfactory performance;
The title of the report should be focused and
shows an acceptable or
succinct. Ensure that the title captures the main topic
adequate level of
by including only essential terms. Avoid using
proficiency.
abbreviations and phrases that serve little to no
N 0–49 Unsatisfactory purpose (e.g., “a study of”).
performance; shows an
inadequate level of The abstract should provide a brief, comprehensive
proficiency. summary of the report in a paragraph of no more
than 150 words. The Publication Manual suggests
Writing resources that the abstract should be no longer than 250 words;
The Publication Manual of the American Psychological however, given the total expected length of your
Association forms the basis of APA Style and provides report (1500 words), keeping the abstract 150 words
guidelines for scholarly writing in psychology and in length is appropriate.
related disciplines. You can access the manual
According to the Publication Manual, “the abstract
through the library (http://go.unimelb.edu.au/a9qj).
needs to be dense with information” (p. 73), meaning
The companion website (https://apastyle.apa.org/)
that each sentence needs to count and should
summarises much of the manual’s contents and
convey important details about the paper being
includes webinars, tutorials, and other resources that
summarised. Begin by summarising the problem
can help you with your writing.
under investigation in a way that establishes the
The following texts provide advice specific to lab purpose and scope of your study (i.e., what you set
reports. They offer strategies for tackling each major out to do and why). Following this, summarise key
section of the report, while also addressing other aspects of your study’s methodology, including
aspects of the research process, such as how to details such as the number of participants involved,
conduct a literature search. These texts are also the study design, the main outcome measures, and
available through the library the data-gathering and analysis procedures used. Do
(https://library.unimelb.edu.au/). not include details that are not likely to be deemed

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important to understanding the findings. For
example, a statement like “Data were analysed in
RStudio” may be pertinent in the Method section, but
probably does not warrant inclusion in the abstract.
Finally, report the main findings of the study and
briefly summarise your interpretation of them (i.e.,
the implications of the findings for the problem
under investigation).
On a new line immediately below the abstract,
include three to five relevant keywords that capture
important aspects of the study.
Introduction
Opening
The opening should give the reader an understanding
of the broader context for the research topic, setting
the stage for the more detailed review that follows. In
this paragraph, you will attempt to capture the
reader’s interest by outlining the importance of the
problem under investigation.
Literature review
There are two aspects to the literature review that
your readers (and assessors) will be paying attention
to. The first aspect focuses on whether you have
selected relevant literature for your review, whether
that literature is discussed in appropriate detail, and
whether you understand the key ideas under
consideration.
The second aspect is the rationale, which is central to
the purpose of the Introduction. Your task is not
merely to describe what has come before, but to
evaluate it and to build an argument for your
hypotheses. Assessors will have this question in mind
when reading through your Introduction: Is it clear
how previous studies inform the expected results of
the current investigation and how the current
investigation will be valuable in advancing our
understanding of the problem?
Building a compelling rationale can be tricky and
there is no single recipe for how to do it; it depends
on the study and on the problem that study seeks to
address. One very common approach is to identify a
gap in current knowledge and to explain how your
study will help in addressing this gap. Importantly,
the rationale should guide the reader toward the
specific hypotheses of your study. Thus, to develop a
cogent rationale you will need to think carefully
about how your study fits with prior research and
how previous research informs the expected
outcomes of your current study as you work through
your literature review.
Aims and hypotheses
The Introduction ends with a statement of your
study’s aims and hypotheses. These should follow
logically from the rationale, meaning that by the end
of the Introduction, it should be clear to the reader
how your aims and hypotheses were derived. Your
hypotheses must also be specific and testable,
meaning that you need to articulate clear
expectations for the results of your study.
Method
In the Method section, you should describe the
participants involved in your research, the materials
you used as part of the study, and the steps taken in
collecting and analysing the data. It is usually best to
organise this information in separate subsections,
with the first subsection focusing on the participants.
Here you will provide pertinent information about
those who participated in your study, such as how
many participants there were (in total and in relevant
subgroups) and major demographic characteristics
(e.g., gender identity and age). You should also
describe any eligibility and exclusion criteria and
indicate how the participants were recruited into
your study.
In the next subsection, you will describe the
materials you used (e.g., recording equipment,
questionnaires, checklists, stimuli). You should
describe all materials with sufficient detail to
facilitate reproducibility. Doing so ensures that other
researchers will be in a better position to repeat the
study using the same materials.
In the final subsection, you will describe the
procedures carried out in your study, including the
specific steps involved in collecting and analysing the
data. This means you will describe what the
participants did, what the researchers did, and how
this yielded the data used in the analysis. In this
subsection, you should also describe the design of
your study. For example, if your study used a
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repeated measures design, you would note that in
this subsection.
Results
There are three criteria for the Results section. The
first criterion focuses on the accuracy and
completeness of the statistical information (i.e.,
whether you have reported the correct values from
the statistical analyses). The second criterion
considers how well each result has been described,
whether formatting conventions have been applied
correctly, and whether the results have been
presented in an organised manner.
In this section, you should describe the results of
each analysis clearly in prose. But avoid discussing
whether the findings lend support to the hypotheses
or not—such material is better placed in the
Discussion. Ensure that you follow the conventions of
APA Style with regard to rounding, leading zeros,
spacing, the proper use of statistical symbols and
abbreviations, and so on. Finally, think carefully
about how best to organise the Results section. If you
are reporting results from multiple analyses, it is
useful to closely follow the structure already laid out
in earlier sections of the report.
If you are required to include a table and/or a figure,
ensure that it serves a purpose and does not merely
duplicate information presented elsewhere. Ensure
that all tables and figures are formatted correctly and
refer to each table and figure in text by its designated
number only (e.g., Table 1). Do not refer to tables and
figures by their position relative to the text (e.g.,
“above” or “below”).
Discussion
Hypotheses
The Discussion section should begin with a clear
statement summarising the aims and hypotheses
and indicating whether the hypotheses were
supported or not. When you describe your results
here, you do not need to present any statistics (e.g., p
values), as this information should already be
contained in the Results section.
Interpretation
In the Introduction, you would have critically
engaged with relevant literature to develop a
framework for your study’s aims and hypotheses. In
the Discussion, your interpretation will involve
relating your study’s findings to that framework and
making inferences about what it all means for the
problem under investigation. This is an essential part
of the scientific process, but it can be difficult to write
about—even experienced lab report writers often
find it challenging. Here are some questions to
consider as you write this part of the Discussion: How
do your findings fit with those of relevant prior work?
Do they corroborate the general conclusions of
previous research or do they suggest the need to
revise our thinking on the topic? What are the
theoretical and practical implications?
As you try to answer these questions, keep in mind
that you are writing for a critical reader, one who will
attend to how you argue each of the points you raise.
Thus, you should ensure that your statements are
supported with evidence and that you explain the
reasoning behind your conclusions.
In a similar vein, while it is appropriate to reflect on
how your study contributes to knowledge in the area,
take care not to overstate those contributions. Your
study may build on prior work in various interesting
and important ways, but readers are not likely to be
convinced by claims that exaggerate its overall
significance.
Future directions
Having given your interpretation, you should then
consider directions for future research on the topic. It
is unlikely that that your study was perfect and that
there are no further questions to answer with regard
to the problem. Thus, in suggesting future directions,
you should think about limitations in your study’s
design, issues that remain unresolved, and new
questions that may have arisen from your findings.
Keep in mind that each point you make needs to be
argued for. For example, if you claim that a certain
aspect of the study’s methodology constitutes a
limitation, you should explain why that is the case
and how it could have affected the results. Likewise,
if you claim that future research should explore a
particular line of inquiry, you need to explain why
that would be useful and how it would help build on
your work. Importantly, the goal here is not to
discredit your study; rather, it is to show readers that
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you understand its limitations and have some notion
of the paths that future work may take.

Conclusion
The final paragraph of your report is similar to the
opening paragraph; it is broad in scope and should
give the reader an appreciation of the wider
significance of the topic your study addresses. Use
this paragraph to summarise your findings and
conclusions and to recapture the importance of the
problem. This helps to underscore the value of your
study—why it was worthwhile—and gives the reader
a renewed sense for why the topic deserves
investigation.

Writing and presentation

Throughout your report, readers will be paying
attention to how you express yourself in writing, how
you format the paper, and how you reference work
from other authors. You can find advice relevant to
these matters in the Publication Manual.

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