How do I write the Background Information for my lab report?

In short, you should aim to have enough information to explain everything that is in your report, and most of the info you find will be used in the Background Information and the Conclusion sections. 

You can use the internet, or books you have at school, home or library. They could even be lent to you by someone else, or someone could share a link with you to an online source. It doesn’t matter where you find the information, as long as the words in the final version of the lab report ARE WRITTEN BY YOU, and you show where the information was found, so anyone can look for it and find it. This means, you cannot copy your friends writing (although you can use the same information), you cannot copy and paste, and you can’t include your teacher, parents, or dog as a source (because other scientists wouldn’t be able to use the same resource). So, how do you start?

Keep your search terms short and relevant

You can come across some really interesting stuff when you are busy clicking links online, however, if you want to keep your lab report short, concise and get the top marks - you only need to include information relevant to your Research Question and Control Variables. As you know, the Research Question contains the IV and DV, but it is better to base our research on the Research Question (sounds obvious when you think about it) because the IV and DV are linked, and you want to find other projects that have tried to link the two topics together. 

If your experiment is about the effect of suntan lotion sales on highschool students’ biology grades, you will be able to find lots of information about suntan lotion sales and highschool students’ biology grades, but there probably aren’t many studies that have tried to link the two things together. This doesn’t necessarily mean it is a bad investigation, but if it is a new and exciting experiment, you want to point that out in your lab report. If other people have performed the experiment and reported their findings, that’s great. You can read their method to get ideas on how to improve your own method (when planning the experiment, or if you need to write an evaluation, or both) and you can compare your results to theirs in the conclusion. These steps will really help boost your marks!

So, with your Research Question and Control variables written clearly, you can start to search for relevent terms, but:

Do not Google QUESTIONS! 

Lots of students simply copy and paste their Research Question into the search bar and copy the information from the first website without thinking about what they are reading. This technique has multiple problems:

1. When you Google questions, you find Q & A sites, where people can ask Questions, and anyone can answer them. People who answer the questions, often just like yours as students all around the world do similar lab reports at school, do not need to be experts, have qualifications, or know what they are talking about. So do you think you can trust their answers? Not always, and Yahoo Answers on your reference list won’t fill people with confidence about your sources either.

2. It’s a bad habit to get into. By not using Google efficiently, you are limiting the amount of information you will find. You might think that’s not too important for a physics lab report, right? But what about shopping online, finding reviews of products, new music, interesting places when you’re traveling, for bigger projects at university or for a future boss……. Using efficient search terms related to the topic is a good habit to develop sooner, rather than later.

3. The “copy and pasting” bits of info from the question search without thinking is not going to help you understand what you are doing (never mind why you are doing it—spoiler: it’s not because your school thinks you’ll be a scientist). One of my students once submitted a report that had sections obviously copied from a Q & A website, including the definition of “concentration”, as we were studying the concentrations and densities of different solutions in the lab. However, the student had copied and pasted the definition of concentration as “the ability to focus on the task you are currently performing”. There aren’t many ironic moments in a science lesson, but that was one.

If I don’t Google questions, what do I do?

If you are at the stage when you are writing a lab report at school, you should have practised identifying keywords by now, in Science or in language class. Pull the keywords out of what the teacher has assigned/presented to you. Imagine you have performed some experiments in the lab where you measured the rate of reaction of yeast breaking down hydrogen peroxide. What would you search for to write your Background Information?

How does temperature affect yeast and hydrogen peroxide?

You might start there, but you will waste time and end up looking at a whole load of lab reports written by other students your age, who might have got a few bits wrong. Remember, your teacher knows you and can see when your work is not your own, so don’t just copy projects like this, even if there are lots online. Also, Google doesn´t pay much attention to small, connecting words like ‘and’, so save your energy!

Correct:

“temperature yeast hydrogen peroxide” is all you need to search for. 

Search for those 4 words now, do the results look like they are from trustworthy sites? TIP: Right-click on the ones that look interesting/trustworthy/relevant and open them in a new tab, so the original search page remains open. This will also save you some time.

I have found some interesting/trustworthy/relevant information, what now?

For this bit, we assume you have found your information online, rather than running down to the library. This next bit, however, is the bit that students don’t like, because it requires a little bit more energy. You have to put a bit more effort in now, but in the long run it saves time and energy in the long run. 

1. Open a new document that will list all your References and start a numbered list.

2. Open your notebook

3. Write down the information in bullet points. 

• This does not have to be sentences, or even in English. (In fact, it’s better if it’s not - see below)

• Leave lots of space, you’ll see why.

4. Make sure you have written down next to the bullet points which number reference this was.

5. Continue for the other references.

6. Review your notes, can you cross out any bullet points that are not relevant (keep referring to the Research Question).

7. Are there any bullet points that say the same thing? 

Write down the other Reference number next to that bullet point.

8. Use colours or symbols to group together bullet points that are similar. These will form the paragraphs in the Background Information.

This can start to get messy, but that’s what note books are for!

9. Type the grouped bullet points out in complete sentences (changing to English if you need to). Keep grouped sentences together, or move them to new paragraphs if you think you need to, but make sure they stay attached to the reference number! 

10. Group similar paragraphs together (using ctrl+x, and ctrl-c as keyboard ‘cut and paste’ shortcuts) and include extra sentences to introduce/conclude paragraphs so your writing flows.

You don’t have to write a lot in a lab report! Keep referring to the Research Question and only include relevant information. If you feel you need more later, you can include it, but as long as someone can read your Background Information and there’s enough there to understand everything that follows in your lab report, that’s enough. Besides, you (or your critical friend) will be using the mark scheme to check it’s all there to give you the top marks!

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