Skills and Research methodology

Course: M.Phil & PhD

 Writing the Introduction… conti
Questions to address in writing an introduction:
-What is the problem?

Describe the problem under investigation.

Summarize relevant research to provide context

and concept so that your reader can
understand the experiment.
 Writing the introduction ..conti…
Why is it important?
-Review relevant research to provide
rationale(what are conflicts or un- answered
questions, un-tested hypotheses, un-tried
methods in existing research).Does your
experimentation address all these ?
- Which /what findings of others are you
challenging?
 Writing the Introduction ..conti…

What is the solution or steps towards the

solution do you propose?

- Briefly describe your experiment: hypotheses,

research question(s), general experimental
design or method you are going to adopt.
 Writing the Introduction ..conti….

Move from general to specific i.e problem in

general to your experiment.

-Engage the reader by answering:

What did you do? Why did you do?
 Writing the Introduction ..conti…
Make clear links between problem and solution,
question asked, research design, prior
research and your experiment.
Be selective not exhaustive in choosing studies
to cite and amount of detail to include.
More relevant an article is to your studies, more
space it deserves in the introduction.
 Writing Materials and methods
Purpose of materials and methods section is to
provide enough details for a competent
worker/researcher to repeat your study and
reproduce results.

- Scientific methods require that your results be

reproducible(to undergo copying) and you
provide a basis for repetition of the study by
others.
 Materials and methods ..conti

Equipment and materials available shall be

described exactly
i.e. Hitachi Spectrophotometer model 2319
Serial # 11239.
i,e name of instrument, model number and
serial number.
 Materials and methods .. conti
Source of material shall be given as there could
be variation in quality among suppliers.

If an equipment is modified for the study, it

should be precisely and carefully described.

Methods used to prepare the reagents, buffers

etc shall be described in detail.
 Materials and methods …conti
- Provide all details required to repeat the
method, if required. If the method has been
previously published in a reputable journal ,
name of the method and literature reference
is enough to give.
- Show your material and method write up to a
friend/colleague and ask if he/she would have
difficulty in repeating the experiment.
 Materials and method .. Conti…
• Question to ask:
- How did you study the problem?
Briefly explain the scientific procedure you used..
- What did you use?
Describe materials, subjects and
equipment(chemical,experimental animals,
apparatus,reagents etc) used.
- How did you proceed?
Explain the steps you took in your experimentation
including the assay.
 Materials and method …conti….

- Use past tense to describe what you did.

- Quantify where applicable i.e. Concentration

M,mM,N etc, time 24hr clock, temperature in
centigrade
 Materials and method..conti…
• What to Avoid
Do not include details of common statistical
procedures
• Do not mix results with procedures
 Results and Discussion
• Results
- Give your findings
- Present the data-solid and condensed with
important trends extracted and describe in
simple words.
• -The results provide new knowledge you are
contributing to the world.
• -It is important that your findings be clearly and
simply stated
 Results …. Conti.
• Do not say in expressing results:
• “ It is clearly evident from Fig 1 or Table 1 that
bird species richness increased with habitat
complexity” BUT say “Bird species richness
increased with habitat complexity-Ref Fig1 or
Table1
 Results…conti……
- Do not be too concise. The reader can not be expected
to extract information from the data
- Combine the use of text, tables, figures to condense
data and highlight main features.
• Use symbol~ to mean approximately equal to.
Number(figure) at the beginning of the sentence must be
spelled.
• Put a space between number and unit i.e. 75 kg.
• In case of percentage no space is given i.e.75%
• Note 0.32 is correct VS .32. Write numbers as 156 - 2,456
– 21,270 – 1,425,346