4-1
Writing the Methods and Results Sections
Methods Section
The Methods section is the second major section of a scientific article:
Introduction: Why did you do the study?
What was your hypothesis or purpose?
Methods:
What did you do?
Results:
What did you find?
Discussion: What do your findings mean?
Topics to be covered include:
▪ Purpose, content, and suggested structure of the Methods section
▪
How to write the Methods section
▪ Tailoring the Methods section to a particular journal
▪
Verb tense
Purpose, Content, and Suggested Structure of the Methods Section
The purpose of the Methods section is to explain precisely what you did to answer your research question.
In the Methods section, you should provide enough detail that a reader in your field could repeat your study. One of the most common problems in Methods sections is lack of sufficient detail. For example, authors will forget to explain how the patients in a retrospective review were selected or forget to specify the total number of mice used in a set of experiments.
Writing and Publishing Scientific Articles Research Medical Library
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