Lab Report Analysis

Laura Lentz

The City College of New York

 Writing for Engineering: ENGL 21007

Professor Jacobson

October 20, 2022

Lab reports follow a traditional format to ensure an educational and well structured report. There are eight elements that take part in forming a strong lab report. These eight elements include a title, abstract, introduction, materials and method, results, discussion, conclusion, and references. Each of these elements play a key role in the development of a credible report. While these steps are the traditional style of a lab report, the author has the control to dictate which elements they feel will benefit the writing. The author has the authority to leave out certain elements if they feel it will not help the development of the report. To understand the relevance, as well as the importance of each of these eight elements, two lab reports will be annotated. After annotation, they will be compared to determine if any elements were excluded in specific reports as well as the structure of each report. The first article that will be annotated and compared is The Impact of Energy Production on Farmland Markets: Evidence from New York’s 2008 Hydraulic Fracturing Moratorium. This report was written by two authors, Jennifer Ifft as well as Ao Yu. The other writing, that will be used to compare these elements, is titled Marketing Small Schools in New York City: A Critique of Neoliberal School Reform, written by Jessica Shiller. These two articles regarding the topic of marketing in New York will be used to compare the eight elements of a lab report. 

The first article, The Impact of Energy Production on Farmland Markets: Evidence from New York’s 2008 Hydraulic Fracturing Moratorium, includes each of the eight elements. The authors saw it fitting that each of these elements play a valuable role in the development of the report. Beginning with the title, the authors gave an inclusive and educational title to allow the reader to be knowledgeable of the article’s topic immediately. It shows that the article will go more in depth on the impact that production has on farm markets in New York. The report then begins with an abstract, which is a summary of the report as a whole. An abstract accomplishes the goal of explaining each element for lab reports. The abstract begins with the following sentence “Future conventional and renewable energy production will predominantly occur on farmland, resulting in economic gains as well as potential negative externalities for farmland owners and rural communities.” This statement summarizes the article into one sentence and allows readers to have a concept  of the meaning beyond the title. As well in the abstract, it mentions the results through the statement of  “We find that the moratorium led to net economic losses for rural landowners in New York’s Southern tier, as reflected in farmland values declining approximately $1,400/acre.” This shows that the author is following a typical lab report structure, including the elements as mentioned previously. Following the abstract, the author transitions into the introduction, this allows the author to establish the value of their work. In the introduction, the hypothesis is stated and the author begins to add information and details on the topic at hand. “This study estimates the net valuation of future SGD, as reflected in farmland values, using farmland transactions data from New York state from before and after a moratorium was unexpectedly imposed on SGD in 2008.” The authors here are supporting their hypothesis and the data that they have collected to again show the audience the importance of their report and study. The authors then proceeded to the next section that was titled EMPIRICAL MODEL, otherwise known as the materials and method section. This section is used to convince the reader that the approach the author took was appropriate as well as to show their credibility. The first line in this section reads “We use a hedonic price model, a standard approach in the farmland valuation literature (Nickerson and Zhang, 2014), to model New York state farmland transactions.” The author implemented this to give readers access to how they received their information to gain credibility. Following the methods section, the authors transition into the data, also known as, the results portion. In this section, there are graphs including statistics to support their statements and findings. The author included multiple tables and graphs to show their research. Through these visual aids, the audience can see the impact of the data the authors are attempting to showcase in their report. The next element of a lab report is the discussion, also known as the analysis, which has the purpose to interpret the results found in the previous section. In this section they discussed the report as well as aspects that they found room for improvements if the experiment would ever be duplicated. “In this section, we consider potential issues with our methodology and data that could influence our results,” here the authors are discussing an area where they feel they could have made improvements. Following this section the authors then move back into the materials and method section. By relooping back to this section, it ties in knowledge and credibility for the audience. After the discussion portion, there is a conclusion. Here the author summarizes what was discussed and shown in the report. The purpose of a conclusion is to summarize the main points of your essay. It is the last opportunity to share with the reader the intent and the results of their report. Ending the report the author has listed their references of where they received their data. 

Looking at the second article, the formats differ, showing the perspective and importance of the authors thoughts on the elements of lab reports. The article titled Marketing Small Schools in New York City: A Critique of Neoliberal School Reform included each element from the previous article, but was formatted in a different way. The title, parallel to the previous article, was information and attention grabbing for the audience. The article, like the previous one, did include and begin with an abstract. The abstract starts with “The objective of this article is to critically examine a school reform effort that has taken hold in New York City over the past seven years.” The author states directly the objective of the report, following the purpose of an abstract. The abstract ends with “Using neoliberalism as a conceptual framework, this article asks two main questions: (a) How do neoliberal school reform policies play out in individual schools? and (b) To what extent do neoliberal policies contribute or detract from educational equity?” By asking these questions, the author begins the thought process for the audience of what the report will be answering. Following the section is the introduction, which lays out the format of the report and gives the audience insight on the topic as well. Both articles follow similar layouts at the beginning of the report, starting with the abstract and then following that with the introduction. The author of this report took a different route when writing the materials and methods section. Opposing the previous article, the material and methods portion was sectioned into two subsections, when compared to only one section from the previous writing. These sub groups were titled, THE NEW CENTURY SCHOOLS INITIATIVE’S NEOLIBERAL SCHOOL REFORM: A REPORT FROM THE GROUND, and NCSI: A NEW KIND OF SMALL SCHOOL. This allows for the author to separate the data and research that they conducted. They separated it into sub categories to allow for an easy to follow and understand way to explore and examine the data for the reader. The first section begins with “This article presents results from a qualitative study of three Bronx-based NCSI schools that describes the experience of people working in and attending schools founded under a neoliberal model.” This allowed for the author to introduce the data that will be presented in this section.  ​​The other section can be similar to the discussion sections from the previous article. Each author determined what would be the most beneficial way to lay out their report to help the audience understand the best. Following this article’s method and discussion section, is the results that the author titled THE FALLACY OF DATA. “Despite the move to a wider market approach, choice was still limited for low-income students.” This concluding statement of the results portion shows the author summarizing the data that was just displayed and explained. After the results portion the author goes into another version of the discussion element of the lab reports. They titled this section LEAVING THEM UP TO THE MARKET: LACK OF SUPPORT FOR NCSI SCHOOLS NCSI and discussed the topic further. In doing this, the author allowed for a deeper understanding of the topic by having two discussion sections The author, similar to the previous article, followed the standard conclusion format, ending the report with this section. Here, they summarized the article and data into a short paragraph to allow the audience to understand and conclude on the lab report. The article ended with the references, as did the previous, to show credibility. 

When comparing the two articles, they are overall similar and follow the basic elements of a lab report. Both articles had an information and attention grabbing title to encourage readers to take interest in their report. Each report followed with an abstract to give the reader an opportunity to have a broad understanding of the topic. Following the abstract, both articles then transitioned into the introduction to give more information as well as a thesis on what their report would study. The reports differed when the materials and method element came into play. The first article took a more traditional route and had a section dedicated to the method alone. The second report created a mixture of the method section as well as the discussion to education and share data at the same time. Both reports included a results section which simplified the data that was shown before and allowed the reader to understand to a deeper extent. When it came to discussion portions this again was a contrast between the two articles. The first report followed a more traditional style, having a separate discussion section after the results, but the second article had an additional smaller discussion after the results. In the second article they added a few more comments to support their data, but in the methods section they had already had a large discussion section. Both articles again followed the traditional lab report by ending with a conclusion to overall summarize the articles and having references at the end of the report. 

These two articles show the importance of the eight elements of a lab report. Given the author’s thought process and education style, it is up to them how they want to format the report. These two articles show how organizing and presenting your data can affect a lab report. Both followed the traditional style with the title, abstract, introduction, results, conclusion, and references. With the material and methods as well as the discussion the two authors differed on the format. Although the format of the article is in the hand of the author, the eight elements share the same importance of conducting a credible and strong lab report. 

References

Ifft, J., & Ao Yu. (2021). The Impact of Energy Production on Farmland Markets: Evidence from 

            New York’s 2008 Hydraulic Fracturing 

Shiller, J. (2011). Marketing Small Schools in New York City: A Critique of Neoliberal School 

            Reform. Educational Studies, 47(2), 160–173. Moratorium. Energy Journal, 42(3), 133–151.  

Examples of annotations used for this lab report analysis