INSTRUCTIONS--DELETE BEFORE SUBMISSION

Congratulations! You are starting an exciting journey to put you body of work onto paper - think

“big lab report”. Each journal has its own specific format that is used for scholarly articles; the

format chosen here is more appropriate for a stand-alone publication opposed to a collection

(hence things like a separate title page, larger font size, table of contents, etc.)

Please be aware of the font face (times), the spacing (double), the font size (12 for plain text,

larger for headings). Especially if you copy/paste items in here, confirm that these have not

changed.

The formatting will be

Title and name

Table of Contents

Abstract

Introduction (think analogous to the “rationale” section of your research draft)

Research Question/ Engineering Goal/ Hypothesis (you do not need all three!!!)

Materials/Methods

Results

Analysis and Conclusion

References - all you have used in this paper

Appendices (this can be for bulky data, computer code, or other things that are useful to

reference, but don’t belong in the report)

Let’s begin! As always, let me know how I can be of assistance

1

[Replace this text with your approved title. Note

font face, font size, and text alignment before

adding in your title]

[Replace this text with your name. Do NOT include your school information or the date]

Table of Contents

2

Abstract 3

Introduction 4

Research Question 5

Engineering Goal(s) 5

Hypothesis 6

Materials and Equipment 6

Experimental Procedure 6Procedural Sub-heading 1 --replace with your appropriate title 7Procedural Sub-heading 2--replace with your appropriate title 7Procedural Sub-heading 3--replace with your appropriate title 7

Results 7

Analysis and Conclusion 10

References 13

Appendix 14Appendix 1: Provide your own description 14

3

Abstract

[In this section you will insert the abstract for your paper. Please note for the purposes of the

Bucks County Science Research Competition, this is a 250-word or 1800-character maximum.

To determine the number of words and characters you currently have, highlight the text of the

abstract section only and then click Tools> word count]

4

Introduction

[Please pay attention to the font fact and size and spacing before you replace this text. Here you

are going to include an updated version of your research plan’s rationale section, but you are

going to pull the hypothesis/research question/engineering goals out as separate section (in a

traditional publication, these would be integrated into the introduction). Be sure to include in-text

citations with either MLA or APA (preferred) format. Images can be included in this section if

they add valuable meaning and information for the reader. If an image is included, the figure

clearly needs to be referenced in the introduction and the source needs to be included in the

references. In addition, a Figure label and a description caption is important. For an example, see

below.

5

Please also note that the figure is embedded into the document where referenced and not just

placed at the end. You can paste the image into Insert>Drawing, and then add a textbox

underneath it and save that. However, there is no way of automatically captioning an image, so

please keep that in mind. You are not required to add images to the background section.]

Research Question

[^Please remove any of the above that are not applicable to your project and hit the refresh icon (

project (and while you’re at it, it will also update the page numbers for things you have worked

on to date. PLEASE remember to update the table of contents a final time before submitting or

printing). Unless these have changed since your research draft, they will be cut and pasted here.

Please pay attention to the font fact and size and spacing before you replace this text]

Engineering Goal(s)

[^Please remove any of the above that are not applicable to your project and hit the refresh icon

when you click on the table of contents. This will update the headings that apply to your project

(and while you’re at it, it will also update the page numbers for things you have worked on to

date. PLEASE remember to update the table of contents a final time before submitting or

printing). Unless these have changed since your research draft, they will be cut and pasted here.

Please pay attention to the font fact and size and spacing before you replace this text]

) when you click on the table of contents. This will update the headings that apply to your

6

Hypothesis

[^Please remove any of the above that are not applicable to your project and hit the refresh icon

when you click on the table of contents. This will update the headings that apply to your project

(and while you’re at it, it will also update the page numbers for things you have worked on to

date. PLEASE remember to update the table of contents a final time before submitting or

printing). Unless these have changed since your research draft, they will be cut and pasted here.

Please pay attention to the font fact and size and spacing before you replace this text]

Materials and Equipment

[Please pay attention to the font fact and size and spacing before you replace this text. In this

section you will present your materials as a bulleted list. Again, this is not the format using in

publications but what we will be doing here. My recommendation is to break the materials into

categories if it is a lengthy list, and the categories should match the headings for your procedure.]

Experimental Procedure

[Please pay attention to the font fact and size and spacing before you replace this text. This

should be a numbered list. Again, this is not the format of an actual scientific paper, but the

procedure will be presented in this manner. You will need to create sub-headings for your

7

procedures just as you have done in your research plan. I have placed three into this document, if

you need more, please see me for instructions on how to add a heading.

Procedural Sub-heading 1 --replace with your appropriate title

1. [Add in numbered list here. Please update the table of contents (TOC) after you change

the heading titles.]

Procedural Sub-heading 2--replace with your appropriate title

1. [Add in numbered list here. Please update the TOC after you change the heading titles.]

Procedural Sub-heading 3--replace with your appropriate title

1. [Add in numbered list here. Please update the TOC after you change the heading titles.]

Results

[Please pay attention to the font fact and size and spacing before you replace this text.

Everything here should be past tense, as you already collected the data and analyzed them. A

third note is that this (like everything else) should be written in the passive voice so the emphasis

remains on the work done opposed to who did the work. A common mistake that students make

is want to automatically go into interpretation mode on their data. The results section does not

cover this; is simply includes the results. As Harland (2011) suggests,

Start this section with an explanation of how you prepared the data for analysis. Tell what

mathematical computations and statistics you performed on the raw data to prepare the

8

data for analysis. The purpose of this explanation is to be transparent--sharing how you

prepared the data for analysis allows for both a critical review by others and a possible

replication and analysis in exactly the same way.

This will be your data heavy section. Please convert dates and times to “day 0, day 14, 36 hours

after the start of the experiment” because 2:12 PM or 15Jan2019 does not provide a relative

reference. This will be where all of your tables, figures, and statistical analysis go. In terms of

data, these will not be individual raw data points, but the averages of aggregates of data. You

will want to include error bars for any line graph, scatter plot or bar graph to show the spread of

your data. If data show a statistically significant difference between a control or other groups,

they should be indicated with a single asterisk or double asterisk to show p < 0.05 or p < 0.01

respectively and explained in the figure or table caption. If there were outliers, address them

plainly, but do not provide a suggestion for why they exist (that will be in the conclusion). Every

chart, graph, or figure needs a heading, and a title and should be referenced in the actual research

paper specifically (mention points; don’t just say “Figure 3 shows the data of leaves”). All axes

should have labels and appropriate units. See the example below:

9

You want this section to flow logically, just like you were writing a story for English class. If

possible, you may want headings (just like you did in the procedure) to help organize your work

and move your reader along.You probably have more than one set of data to support your

hypothesis, or more than one set to reject, or you may have conflicting sets of data. All of these

are perfectly okay! ]

10

Analysis and Conclusion

[Please pay attention to the font fact and size and spacing before you replace this text. Keep

using passive voice. NOW you can draw conclusions with your data. Try to address the

following:

- Was the hypothesis supported, rejected, or undetermined

- Qualify this with how strongly the above happened

- What are the general explanations for this finding?

- You will elaborate on each of these in their own body paragraph(s), so this first

sentence “acts like a thesis sentence in an essay” (Harland 2011).

- Make sure to have a clear sentence to start each explanation paragraph to orient the

reader

- It is fine to address previous figures and tables to draw the reader back to the data

as well

- Refrain from using “clearly”, “obviously”, or “proves”. The last is a HUGE personal pet

peeve, and all of them both insult the reader and impart severe bias (which goes against

the goal of science, which is the empirical pursuit of objective knowledge about the

natural world)

- Discuss the trends of data in general, and be sure to address any groups or individual data

points that had irregular results compared to the others (this is why it is so important to

have robust data!)

- Provide a possible explanation for “why did that happen?”

11

- Is there any possibility that the methodology you used influenced the results? This is not

a closed-ended question but needs an explanation. If there was a variable you had

difficulty controlling, what effects would you have expected to see on the data. Simply

stating that the “temperature might have been cold and it affected my data” is not

beneficial at all.

- What limitations were there to the study?

- For example (this is not a complete list!), were there variables that you could not

control, were there issues that arose during experimentation that caused problems

during data collection, the number of trials, the number of data points collected

per trial

All of the above is the “so what” part of the analysis and conclusion; now we move into the

“now what” paragraphs. There should be a minimum of three

- Connect back to the introduction. As Harland (2011) mentions,

You chose to do this study to address a general question you had. Now you need

to connect whether or not your research study provided any answers to that

original question. You may also want to discuss the possible applications and

extension of your research study. Describe possible research studies that could be

completed in the future. These suggestions might be slight modifications of your

own study or extensions that could be completed to answer new questions brought

up by your research study

12

- Apply the work to the whole scientific community. What was important about the work,

and what new questions have arose because of it

- Finally! The last paragraph!

- Summarize your analysis (think like the abstract)

- Sample sentence stem: “Based in this study, [independent variable] does

(not) influence [dependent variable]” OR “Based on the limitation of this

study, a connection or lack of connection between [independent variable]

and [dependent variable] cannot be made”

- Again, DO NOT SAY PROVE! Support is fine!

- Summarize how you were able to come to this final conclusion

- Your goal for this final paragraph is to show the connections between the

variables and why there is or isn’t a correlation between them]

13

References

[Here you will include your MLA or APA list of references. Please remember that the following

guidelines apply to both formatting styles:

- All entries are double-spaced

- There are no double-double spaces between entries

- If the entry is longer than one line…

...it uses a hanging indent for all subsequent lines

- There are at least five entries here that have been cited in the paper

- The entire list is alphabetical

A sample entry (since I did use in-text citation for this instructional document) is below

Harland, D. J. (2011). STEM student research handbook. Arlington, VA: National Science

Teachers Association. ]

14

Appendix

[In this section, you would add the following types of items that are still important but tend to be

too wordy to place inside the body of the research paper:]

Appendix 1: Provide your own description

- [Long Questionnaire given to study participants

- Written permissions needed for human participants

- Written permission needed for vertebrate studies

If you have any of these, they need their own Appendix number and need to be reference in the

research paper in the appropriate location(s).

Remove this section if not applicable and update the TOC accordingly]