APES Lab and Field Report

Inquiry Plan
Researchable Question
- Guides your research
- If you answer these questions, you will achieve your goal

Hypothesis (if appropriate)

- Using past knowledge, make and educated prediction about what will happen

Variables
Manipulated variable: Variable that will be changed

Responding variable: Variable being analyzed

Controlled variable(s): Variable held constant to use as a standard

Materials List
- Be through so that someone could recreate your experiment

Procedure
1. You determine what needs to be done

2. Be detailed enough so that someone with very little past knowledge could do the experiment

3. Use complete thought/sentences

Data Table
- Organize your data
APES Lab and Field Report
The following are the elements of a standard lab or field report. Methods, results, and scratch
work, observations etc. should be written in your lab notebook. The final lab report will present all of
that information and also discussion, background and introduction. Please format your lab by
including all the bolded headings below. Use single spacing within a section, but use double spacing
between all sections.

Title

 Should concisely convey the nature of the investigation. It should include both the IV
(independent variable that you manipulate) and DV (dependent or responding variable you
measure). The predicted relationship should presented. Ex: "Sprinkling Foundations with
Listerine will have a negative effect on the Number of Crickets Present"

Introduction

 Describe what you plan to do and why (A sentence or two).

 State your problem in the form of a question: "To what extent does (IV) affect these (DV)?" Ex:
To what extent does sprinkling Listerine on home foundations affect the number of crickets
present? (One sentence)
 Explain why the knowledge gained by this research is of interest, not just to you necessarily but
to the world or community. Why should anyone bother to read your lab report?
 State both Alternate (HA) and Null hypotheses (HO).
 Alternate shows a positive relationship: "As the (IV) is increased the (DV) will ...." Example: As
the amount of Listerine is increased around a home foundation, the number of crickets will
decrease. (One sentence) The null shows no relations ship. Example: Increased Listerine
around home foundations will have no effect on cricket populations.
 Give any background information that has allowed you to state your hypothesis. If you are
using outside sources, please properly reference them with the author's last name and date of
publication, APA citation which can be found online. (Several paragraphs or more. Please be
thorough.)

Methods

 Materials: List all materials that were used for the procedures (include detail needed for
replication).
 Procedure: Write concise description in 3rd person past tense ("the graduated cylinder was
used to measure 100 ml of ethyl alcohol") of the procedures you used to test your hypothesis.
Write the procedure as a narrative, not in a list. Again, include enough detail so that your
procedure can be replicated. (In class procedures will be more detailed than the papers we
read. In the papers some of the basic procedures are assumed.)
APES Lab and Field Report

 Be sure to explain how you manipulated the IV, how you set up a control group or controlled
for extraneous variables, how many groups/treatments of the IV you used, and how many trials
of each treatment you made.

Results

 Data table(s): Data tables should include the raw data.

 Graph(s): If appropriate a graph should be done on Excel. Graphs should NOT show raw data.
Graphs show means or standard deviations. Axes must be labeled. It must have a title that
includes the IV & DV. The X-axis should always be the IV and include units and labels. The Y-axis
should always be the DV and include units and labels. The Y-axis must be scaled so that 2/3 or
more of the vertical space of the graph is utilized and its origin should be 0 if it is numerical. If
the X-axis is category data, the graph should be a bar graph. If the X-axis is increasing numerical
data, the graph should be a line graph.
 Statistics: Use appropriate descriptive statistics (averages, std deviation) and appropriate
inferential statistics (t-tests, chi-tests) as you are instructed. Statistics can be done in Excel and
the results put in your data book.
 There is narrative in this section. Explain to the reader what data is in your graphs and why.
Lead the reader to look at the most important data.

Discussion

What do the results mean? Please write the following 5 paragraphs:

 Did your data support your hypothesis (briefly restate your hypothesis)? Please use data
summary figures here such as group averages with units for each of the groups. Describe
differences and how significant they are between groups. Reference to the appropriate
statistics from your results section.
 Was there problems that (extraneous variables) affected the outcome and precision of your
experiment? How could you change your procedure to eliminate these errors next time?
 What are new related problems that you might study next time because of what you found out
during this lab? (no specific number, can be 1 or 100 new problems)
 What do you now know the relationship between the IV and DV to be? What other things you
learned from this research? Reference topics you are studying in class (view class as past
research).

Literature Cited

 Please list your sources. They should be in alphabetical order by the author's last name, again
use APA style.