A lab report is a written form of communication that presents the data and analysis of a research or experiment conducted. The authors tend to follow a specific format when creating this document which consists of eight elements: Title, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References. Although all lab reports tend to follow this format as the base structure, each author presents their research and data in their own manner, which leads to a clear view of structural differences. An example of this are the lab reports, “Whether your name is Manuel or Maria Matters: gender biases in recommendations to study engineering” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020), and “Study on Socioemotional aspects of Engineering Girl Students” (Bhave et al. 2020).  These lab reports share a common theme of women in the engineering field and the usual format including the eight elements, but also differentiate some aspects of presenting that structure. The lab report titled “Whether your name is Manuel or Maria Matters: gender biases in recommendations to study engineering” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020) would be referred to as Lab #1 and “Study on Socioemotional aspects of Engineering Girl Students” (Bhave et al. 2020) would be Lab #2 for the purpose of this analysis. 

When it comes to the titles of lab reports, they hold a tremendous weight in the draw of attention of an audience. A title should be informative enough for someone to know if they have interest in the topic discussed or not. The title of Lab #1 was a statement followed by the topic discussed. The statement was “Whether your name is Manuel or Maria Matters” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020) which is an interesting affirmation due to the controversy regarding certain privileges that people get based on their gender. This was used as the hook to attract more interest in the topic of the research. The topic was then stated after a colon which stated, “gender biases in recommendations to study engineering” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020). The author could have used the topic sentence as the title as it is simple and clear to understand, but by adding the first statement it added a greater spark of interest for the audience. On the other hand, Lab #2 includes the topic sentence alone written as, “Study on Socioemotional aspects of Engineering Girl Students” (Bhave et al. 2020) without the addition of any statements. The author preferred a short and concise title as shown with the addition of the word “Study” (Bhave et al. 2020). This was due to the background setting of the research and its publisher. Lab #2 was published by the Association of Adolescent and Child Care in India which could mean that they don’t have the need to add additional statements in order to attract a larger audience compared to Lab#1 which was published by a set of universities. 

The abstract is the next section after the title, and its purpose is to give a brief summary of the entire report including the findings. This should be informative and organized for the audience to be able to read it and get a general idea of what they are about to inform themselves about. In addition, it should be short and straightforward in order for readers to see if it’s worth their time. Lab #1 contains an abstract consisting of one short paragraph that summarizes the sections of the report such as the background, methods, results and discussion in just a sentence each. However, Lab #2 did not present the abstract as a short paragraph, instead it consisted of highlighted subheadings for the main focuses such as Background, Aim, Methods, Results and Conclusion. Each small section contained a couple sentences, and the results section even included the stats. This abstract was longer, better organized, and provided the audience with a greater layout. Since Lab #2 came from the Association of Adolescent and Child Care in India I believe that this section layout is adequate for the abstract as it is easier to follow compared to the one in Lab #1 which is a paragraph.

The introduction section is written in order to provide broader context regarding the purpose of the research as well as give details for readers to understand how the study contributes new information in a specific field. Lab #1 contains a short introduction section labeled as “introduction” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020) where it begins by sharing statistical data regarding how women remain underrepresented in the engineering field in Spain. The author then provides details about past research regarding this topic and then proceeds to state the focus followed by the purpose of the study. To conclude, the introduction ends with the findings and what they have contributed to in the STEM field. This would make up for a good introduction section as it has provided the reader with the necessary tools to introduce them into the matter discussed and get a better general understanding apart from the abstract. In addition, the author included small subsections where he discusses different themes present in the study. These sections are labeled: “Stereotypes and social role theory, Double standards, status characteristics theory and the measurement of gender biases, Mathematical ability as a mediating variable, and lastly, hypotheses” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020). Usually, it would be ideal to combine all these smaller sections into the bigger section of “Introduction”, but the author chose to separate them instead. This was done in order to give the study better organization for the readers to understand the different themes and their unique relation to the bigger picture. The last section before the methods was the “hypotheses” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020) where each hypothesis is described numerically to not get them mixed up and risk getting the readers confused. 

On the other hand, Lab #2 had a more extensive introduction that took up three pages. The author gave a much longer part to the background of the study as well as discussed the different themes present more deeply and their connection to the research. Details on past research were mentioned followed by the focus and purpose of the study. Similarly to Lab #1, it provided the necessary elements of an introduction which was complete and clear for readers. In comparison, this introduction was not laid out into different subsections to give it a greater organized aspect. The author believed that including everything related to the introduction should go inside just one extensive section. This is understandable due to the topic discussed in Lab #2 which are “Socioemotional aspects of engineering girl students” (Bhave et al. 2020). The different themes that were mentioned in the intro were: Emotional intelligence, Self-esteem, Self-regulation, and Social self-efficacy. All these themes have a greater connection to each other which directly relate to the problem and focus of the study. This gives more reason to believe why the author spoke about them in a combined section rather than separating them into smaller sections as done in Lab #1.   

The materials and methods section are used to describe the tools and approaches used during the experiment in order to get the results. These descriptions should be detailed enough for other researchers to read them and be able to conduct the same experiment without any problems. In this particular section, the authors followed a similar structure when describing their materials and methods. Lab #1 started with the methods and divided them into two sections labeled “Participants, and Design” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020). Then continued with the Methods and variables section where it divided many different subsections in which included the “Procedure” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020) and “Analytical strategy” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020) at the end. Lab #2 followed the same format when describing this section as they divided the Methods into two subsections labeled Sample and “Sample characteristics” (Bhave et al. 2020) where they discuss the participants and design of experiment like Lab #1. The “Procedure, and Statistical Analysis” (Bhave et al. 2020) is also the last parts of the tools section. The authors preferred to use this layout to report their methods because it was the best way to organize their descriptions. Each method and material deserved to be mentioned separately in order to inform readers about their unique contribution to the study and their importance.

 The results section is where all the data collected from the research is presented in a clear and organized manner. This raw data could be statistics, graphs, charts etc., and would serve to support the arguments and answers to the hypotheses in the discussion section. Lab #1 presented the results by dividing each hypothesis into their own subsection. The first hypothesis results were written under the subsection labeled as “Gender bias in recommendations to study engineering” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020) where Table 1 and a graph was used as the evidence to support the arguments. The second hypothesis results were written under the subsection labeled “Gender bias in the attribution of mathematical ability” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020), which was supported by referring to Table 1 and the figure below. Lastly, the third hypothesis results were written under the subsection labeled “Mathematical ability as a mediating variable” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020) which includes two graphs as evidence. The data was presented in this manner as they were the best way to showcase them based on the different hypotheses. For example, in order to portray the difference in scores for the woman participant (Maria) and the male participant (Manuel), a graph was used instead of a table since the graph clearly portrays the increase and difference between both scores. The choice of methods to illustrate the raw data was appropriate and it greatly contributed to the understanding of the hypotheses. On the contrary, Lab #2 did not separate the results into subsections, instead it was just one connected section that provided three tables and each of them with a title. The author did not present three hypotheses in the introduction as done in Lab #1 so there was no reason to separate the data evidence into smaller sections. As stated previously, the themes in this lab are all more connected to the main topic researched, which leads to the conclusion that the author purposely chose to merge the data gathered regarding “Emotional intelligence, Self-esteem, Social self-efficacy, Short term self-regulation, and Long-term self-regulation” (Bhave et al. 2020) in order to emphasize their contribution as a whole to the conflict of research instead of individually. Nevertheless, both lab reports did a great job in providing the readers with appropriate organization and enough visual data to comprehend the arguments discussed in the following section. 

The discussion section is where the author states the interpretation of results and the major findings of the experiment conducted. The arguments made in the hypotheses are also supported with the data presented in the results, and if these findings do not match with previous studies, an explanation would also be provided throughout this segment. Lab #1 begins the discussion section with support to the hypothesis by restating what the evidence provided showed about the research. As written in the first sentence, “In the current study, we have offered casual empirical evidence about the existence of a gender bias in the recommendation to study engineering and the attribution of mathematical ability” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020). The author then proceeds to describe how the findings have contributed new knowledge to the field and how it added to previous research. These findings were described in a chronological order as shown with the inclusion of the words: “first, second, third, and finally” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020). To conclude the lab report, the author raised awareness of the disadvantages that women face in the engineering field and spoke about the importance of having gender inequality overall as it directly affects the STEM field. This was a proper format to present the analysis of the data since throughout the research a main goal that the author highlighted was to provide the audience with new findings to the field and describe each of their contributions to previous studies. By separating each finding and analyzing them in chronological order, it successfully provides a bond between the new results and previous research and gives a deeper understanding to the argument that gender biases exists. 

On the other hand, Lab #2 begins the discussion section by also giving a description of results, similarly to Lab #1. The author stated, “The results of the study revealed that emotional intelligence is positively correlated with self-esteem, social self-efficacy, and self-regulation” (Bhave et al. 2020). Then the author proceeds to give a deeper analysis of the different concepts discussed in the argument and their correlation to the main subject being emotional intelligence. In this case, it was not formatted into chronological order where descriptions of each finding are compared to previous research, but instead each finding is described separately and then connected to the main idea of the study. This resulted in the discussion section being extensively long but well organized for the reader to understand each term and their interconnection to the topic of research. Lastly, the author encouraged that further research may be done on the field and gave suggestions as to which specific focus points the new researchers can have. 

The references section is the last section of the lab report, and it exists for the authors to name all the people that contributed to the research as well as the different types of readings or previous studies that had an influence on the writing. Both lab reports included this section at the end of their research. Lab#1 besides the references section, also included another section titled “Notes on contributors” (Del Pozo-Garcia et al. 2020) which introduces the authors that took part in the research, and this helps the writing with additional ethos to appeal to the audience.

Throughout multiple accounts of analyzing and comparing the different structures used by each author of the two labs, it is shown that it’s possible to properly portray data of an experiment or research conducted in various manners. Although both authors followed the base format that creates a lab report by including the eight elements: Title, Abstract, Introduction, Materials and Methods, Results, Discussion, Conclusion, and References, they managed to shape the structure of their lab report in the best way to present the information to their intended audience. Coherence might assist the reader comprehend the data that is being introduced to them, and both authors properly arrange their information in correlation to the argument and hypothesis provided. Lab #1 may have separated their data into more subsections while Lab #2 gave the research a more continuous flow to the reading, but it was done with a purpose in mind. Lab #1 focused on highlighting the different findings and each of their contributions to the subject discussed which influenced the author to creating more separations in the writing and forming subsections. The author also described each concept and divided three different hypotheses that needed to be argued. However, the focus for Lab #2 was not to highlight the different results but instead to interconnect them to the main idea which was the reason why the reading was more compact. Authors uniquely structure their writing accordingly to the different components of the lab reports and it was shown with Lab #1 and Lab #2.

References

Bhave, S., Mardhekar, V., Mane, S., & Itkarkar, S. (2020). (rep.). Study on Socioemotional aspects of Engineering Girl Students (pp. 90–105). Pune City, Maharashtra: J.Indian Assoc. Child Adolesc. Ment. Health.

Del Pozo-Garcia, E., de la Puente Pacheco, M. A., Fernandez-Cornejo, J. A., Belope Nguema, S., & Escot , L. (2020). (rep.). (E. Rodriguez-Juarez, Ed.) Whether your name is Manuel or Maria matters: gender biases in recommendations to study engineer (NO.7 ed., Vol. 29, pp. 805–819). England, UK: Routledge.