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Writing a Research Project • Writing a scientific report may seem stressful

because it has a uniform format or structure
Report which must be strictly followed.

JA Timbuak, PhD • The report serves as a means of efficiently

communicating scientific findings to the
broad community of scientists in an
acceptable manner so that the key findings
and conclusions can be understood.

PROCESS OF DESIGNING RESEARCH :

• What--What was studied? 1. Introduction,
• What about--What aspects of Research Problems/
Objectives, &
the subject were studied? Justification
– There are different formats for reporting • What for--What is/was the
Significance
research” importance of the study?
• journal articles, technical research reports,
monographs or books, undergraduate research • What did prior lit./research say? 2. Literature Review
projects, graduate theses or dissertations etc
• What did you do--How was the 3. Methodology
study conducted? (Research sample, data
– Here, we are dealing with undergraduate collection, measurement,
data analysis)
research reports. • What was found? 4. Results & Discussion
• What now? 5. Conclusions and
Recommendations for
Future Research
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Components of a Research Report

• The components of a research report often
include: Title
• Title – Conveys the key elements of the research.
• Preliminary pages
• Certification page – It should be short and convey an idea of the
• Acknowledgements contents of the report
• Abstract
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Literature Review
– The title page also comes with the researcher’s
• Methodology name (your name)
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusions and recommendations
• References
• Appendix 5 6

Preliminary pages
Declaration page
declare the ownership and originality of the
work
Certification page
Attestation of the work done through the
signatures of the supervisor and HOD
Acknowledgements
Recognize the assistance/support of individuals
and organizations, especially funding

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Abstract
– A compact summary of the research report,
sometimes called “executive summary”
– It is a single paragraph that has between 200-300
words.

– It contains:
•The purpose or the aim of the research.
•Methods (briefly describes the research design,
methodology and how the data was analysed).
•Brief results
• Conclusion (summary of the key findings).

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Table of Contents

– It is a listing or outline of the organization of

the report.
– It shows headings, subheadings and other divisions.
It also includes lists of Tables and Figures

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Introduction Review of Literature

It provides a general background information to • This is a brief and balanced review of the related
the research and why the problem is important and literature that is available on the topic. This ensures
deserves to be researched. that you are not “reinventing the wheel”

It should contain:
It includes:
– Aim of the study – What do we know (current and previous research in
the area).
– Objectives of the study.
– Justification (why you have done it). – What we do not know (research gap).
– Significance (who will benefit)
– Hypothesis (What you expect to find) Note: only cite articles that reported specific results
– Limitations (difficulties experienced) relevant to your study.

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Proper use of citations in

literature review
When writing the introduction or literature review, When a publication has more than 2 authors
paraphrasing is encouraged but care should be taken
to avoid “plagiarism” which is taking other peoples you only include the first author’s surname
work without acknowledging them. or last name followed by “et al.” and the
date.
single author: when a publication has only one author, write
the surname/last name and the date of publication
• Altitude stressors are many and may hamper peoples’ health
(Musa 2008) eg: It has been found that memory recall
decreases with altitude (Musa et al.,
Two authors: write the surnames of the 2 authors and date
• Earlier studies have shown that response to breathing is much
2002).
difficult in higher altitudes (Musa and Mallam, 2009).
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Methodology Results
This section deals with the materials used and how the research • The result section presents the outcome of the
was carried out. It is the actual Research design analysis carried out.
It should include:
• The settings and locations It should contain:
• Subjects or participants (sampling or selection procedures) – the basic descriptive statistics (usually means and
• The inclusion and exclusion criteria standard deviations, minimum and maximum values,
• Ethical clearance and consent, range etc),
• Procedures (methods) – the inferential statistics usually the results of
– Instruments, equipment, tools etc hypothesis tests)
– Groupings • The results section simply provides a complete and
– Data collection, any experimental manipulation or unbiased reporting of the findings, just the facts,
intervention with no discussion of the findings
– and Statistical analysis
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Results
• In writing the result section, tables and figures should be Table 4.1: Diversity indices for the study’s ethnic groups
included; but they should not duplicate information that
has already been presented in text form, and they should Haplotype
Ave
Nucleotide
Ethnic Segregating pairwise Nucleotide
not be completely independent of the text. groups sites (S)
diversity
(HD)
Sd (HD)
differences diversity(π)
Sd(π) diversity (Jukes
& Cantor) (πJC)
(K)

• Each tables or figure should be placed separately on a Atyap 40 0.960 0.024 7.58 0.019 0.003 0.019
new page.
– The table number and title are displayed at the top of Bajju 68 0.992 0.010 10.47 0.026 0.002 0.027

the table.
Chawai 61 0.977 0.014 10.12 0.025 0.003 0.026

– While the figure number and title are placed at the Kagoro 45 0.990 0.012 8.13 0.020 0.001 0.021

bottom of the figure

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Discussion
• The function of the Discussion is to interpret
your results in light of what was already
known about the subject of the investigation,
and to explain our new understanding of the
problem after taking your results into
consideration.

• It requires that your research is compared to

others
Figure 4.1: mtDNA haplogroup frequencies within the different ethnic groups

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Conclusions Recommendations

– This provides the reader with a general

understanding of the research project. • It is usually a sort of advice given as to how
– It most often includes an overview of the
further studies can be formulated or
entire study, emphasizing problems, designed from the present research.
objectives, methods, procedures and results
– Conclusions summarizes the researcher’s • It also tells how the findings of the study
interpretations of the results may be utilized.

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References
A complete listing of all citations used in every
part of the report.
– Using the American Psychological Association
(APA) style:
Author’s surname, initials , year of publication, title, Name of
journal, volume, pages
– Musa M. (2009). Mitochondrial DNA and human evolution. Science 12:20-26
– Musa M and Mallam S.S., (2009). Human genetic variation in populations. Nature
Reviews Genetics. 2(2), 120-128
– Musa M, Mallam S.S., Shin QS and Min LM (2009). Human biological variation in
populations. Nature Reviews Genetics. 2(2), 120-128
Appendices
– These can be very useful, but are not always
used.
– They can be used to present material that
might disrupt the flow of thoughts in the
report (eg. too much detail) or include
information of interest to only some readers.
– eg. Mathematical proofs or derivations ,
some statistical estimations or tests
– Ethical clearance/consent forms
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