Hints to Scientific Writing: 'Results' Section

   The Results section is the only section where data summaries and analyses are introduced to the reader.  A great deal of thought must go into the completion of an effective Results section for the author must work extremely hard to summarize the data in a way that doesn't overwhelm the reader by the presentation of impertinent and ancillary findings or writing the equivalent of a statistics manual.  Remember to keep the science as the topic of your sentences and place the statistical results in parentheses whenever possible.  Present data and SUMMARIZE--be sure to refer the reader to the appropriate figure or table.  Do not present raw data--it is the author's responsibility to summarize the data for the reader.  Be careful not to discuss the meaning of your results but simply present your summaries of the data (descriptive statistics such as means, standard errors, sample sizes, etc.) and data analyses (inferential statistics such as chi-square, t-tests, ANOVA, etc.).

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