OBJECTIVE: Report writing is a valuable skill to have, as almost every scientific line of work will require the writing of comprehensive, well-researched reports of some form. The aim of this assignment is to help you develop your skills at writing scientific papers. You will learn to analyse and interpret data, find relevant literature and structure a report. The skills used in writing the report will draw on many of the skill activities you have completed so far. ASSESSMENT REQUIREMENTS: The dataset is a subset of a modified dataset from an unpublished real turfgrass experiment carried out in 2014/2015 by Pieter Poot and Gausul Azam; note that for this report it is completely fine and probably better and easier if you pretend you did the research! Your report must be 1700-2000 words (excluding reference list, legends to figures and tables); please do not go over or under the world limit as otherwise a penalty will apply of 1% for each 1% over or under the word limit. Also, have a detailed look at the Scientific Report Rubric as it will give you an excellent idea of what we expect of you. It also indicates which percentage each component of the report is worth. This will help you deciding on how you can best balance the size of the individual sections for your report. A very rough guideline on how many words each section could/should contain is provided under ‘Structure of a scientific report’ below. You should be able to test your hypotheses and determine whether there are statistically significant differences between treatments as well as summarising your data, calculating means and standard errors, doing statistical tests, and producing nice graphs! STRUCTURE OF A SCIENTIFIC REPORT: Please make sure that the following components are part of your report: 1. Title (5%) – Briefly, describe the main findings of the research, not what was done. 2. Abstract (5%) – A summary of the study, the methods used, quantitative findings and implications (., Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion) (~200 words). 3. Introduction (15%) – Sets the scene for the study. Give the reader enough background information to understand the incentives and reason for the study and refer to relevant peer reviewed studies correctly. Often it is best to start broad and then zoom in on the main hypotheses that will be tested (~450 words). Make sure that the last sentences in this introduction do contain several hypotheses! 4. Materials and Methods (10%) – Describe how the data was obtained and manipulated. Your description should allow someone else to replicate your study. Note that if specific info has not been provided (. in the introductory Powerpoint presentation on LMS) you are not expected to include it in the M & M (~300 words). 5. Results (25%) – Present your summarised data for the hypotheses that you have posed in the introduction in the form of graphs, tables, figures or other evidence. In this section you should present results and relationships and indicate whether there were significant differences, but not interpret them or draw conclusions. Figures and tables should have correctly formatted legends that describe clearly what is presented. Figures and tables must be understandable without reading the main text of the report, . they need to be ‘standalone’ (~500 words). 6. Discussion (25%) – Interpret the results (don’t just simply repeat them!). Use the evidence from your results to build a case that supports or refutes the hypotheses. Describe what the results mean in the context of other studies that have been done in the research area. Identify limitations of the study and suggest potential future research (~500 words). 7. Acknowledgements – Who helped you with the research or who collected the data or gave you feedback (~50 words)? (note: this section is not really relevant as you didn’t do the research yourselves, so you don’t know who to acknowledge here!) 8. References (5%) – At least five relevant references to the primary scientific literature (peer reviewed!) should be cited in your paper. In text references and the reference list at the end of the report should be formatted according to APA 7th edition. There is no word limit for references and they do not count toward your overall word limit. In addition to the above marks (90%), you will also get an overall ‘presentation’ mark (10%) which includes things like how clear and focused the report is, your style of writing (logical concise, scientific), whether there are many grammar or spelling errors, and whether correct/appropriate referencing and formatting is used. In terms of formatting the report, please use: • 12 pt Times New Roman font • Double spacing • One column of text • Using APA 7th Edition
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