Page 293 - English for Writing Research Papers

280

You should provide enough quantitative information (concentration, temperature,
weight, size, length, time, duration etc.) so that other researchers can replicate what
you did.

Describe everything in a logical order to enable readers to easily follow what you
did. This will usually be chronological (but see Sect. 16.7 ), i.e. the order in which
you conducted the phases of your tests. It may also help the reader if you use sub-
headings to explain the various stages of the procedure, which you can then use

again (perhaps with modifications) in the Results.
Your experiments, sampling procedures, selection criteria etc. may have more than
one step. It helps your readers if your description of each step follows the same logi-
cal order.

Ensure that you cover every step required. Because you are very familiar with your
method, you may leave out key information either thinking that it is implicit (and
thus not worth mentioning) or simply because you forget.

16.3 What style: should I use the active or passive? What

tenses should I use?
The passive is good style in this part of a research paper because the focus is on
what was done rather than who did it. Thus you can ignore any expert advice that
tells you that the passive should always be avoided. It should be avoided ( 7.4 ), but

only where it is not necessary ( 7.3 ). In the Methods the passive is both necessary
and appropriate.

Most Methods sections are written in the past simple and/or present simple . The
choice will depend on your discipline (and whether it is applied or theoretical), your
chosen journal, and what actions you are describing.

The past simple is required when you describe actions that you did, both before and
during your experiments (in the lab, in the field, while conducting surveys etc).

Thus the past simple is likely to be used in most of this section.

Below is an example of the past simple used to describe some preliminary work:
An explorative research approach was adopted using a seven-page survey on opinions and
religious background. The fi ndings were collected using an internet questionnaire survey.
Six hundred religious institutions were selected from AMADEUS database, which were
then classifi ed into three groups based on …

Here are the methods used by an agronomist, again using the past simple: