Construct Explanations
Construct Explanations from Evidence
Now that you have finished analyzing your data, it's time to finalize what you learned from your results. When you're documenting your conclusions, you should clearly state:
- The question(s) you investigated
- How you conducted the investigation
- You results and discoveries
Investigated Question(s)
Your research questions might have changed during the course of your investigation. In your conclusion, only include the final research questions your experiment or study is meant to answer. However, you can talk about how your original questions changed over time in the body of your research report if you choose to write one.
Investigation Proceedings
A cornerstone of quality scientific research is it's replicability, or the ability for another researcher to reproduce your findings by using the same methods. That's why it's so crucial to provide clear and thorough descriptions of how you conducted your original research. Essentially, this section should provide a quick summary of everything you did to arrive at your stated results. Your investigation proceedings summary should answer the following questions:
- What measurements you took?
- When, where, and how did you take these measurements?
- Did you use any supplemental data, and if so, where did you obtain it from?
- What calculations did you perform on any of the data included in your research?
Results & Discoveries
When you're explaining the results of your analysis, make sure to describe your scientific reasoning and how you came to your conclusions. This explanation of the thought process that you went through to get from the data to the conclusions is an important part of communicating your findings and clarifying areas of possible confusion. To help with this clarification, you should show visual examples of the data you used, like graphs, tables, or maps.
Remember, research is an on-going process. Be sure to share your thoughts about how this investigation could be improved, other approaches that could be taken given more time/resources, and state any new research questions you thought of during your investigation that can build off of your current results.
Write a Report
One way to document your work is through writing a research report. The report should follow a well-structured format used by science fairs that clearly conveys the details of your research project. You can find examples of sample reports below:
When you're finished writing, you can ask your teacher to submit your research report for publication on the GLOBE website using the upload tool on the Student Research Report page.