RESEARCH NOTES
How to present research data?
Tong Seng Fah MMed (FamMed UKM), Aznida Firzah Abdul Aziz MMed (FamMed UKM)
Department of Family Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
Address for correspondence: Dr. Tong Seng Fah, Department of Family Medicine, Medical Faculty, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Jalan Yaacob Latif, Cheras, 56000 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Tel: 603-91733333 Ext 2831, Fax: 603-91738153, Email: tsf@mail.hukm.ukm.my
Tong SF, Aznida Firzah AA. How to present research data? Malaysian Family Physician. 2006;1(2&3):82-85INTRODUCTION
The result section of an original research paper provides answer to this question “What was found?” The amount of findings generated in a typical research project is often much more than what medical journal can accommodate in one article. So, the first thing the author needs to do is to make a selection of what is worth presenting. Having decided that, he/she will need to convey the message effectively using a mixture of text, tables and graphics. The level of details required depends a great deal on the target audience of the paper. Hence it is important to check the requirement of journal we intend to send the paper to (e.g. the Uniform Requirements for Manuscripts Submitted to Medical Journals1). This article condenses some common general rules on the presentation of research data that we find useful.
SOME GENERAL RULES
- Keep it simple. This golden rule seems obvious but authors who have immersed in their data sometime fail to realise that readers are lost in the mass of data they are a little too keen to present. Present too much information tends to cloud the most pertinent facts that we wish to convey.
- First general, then specific. Start with response rate and description of research participants (these information give the readers an idea of the representativeness of the research data), then the key findings and relevant statistical analyses.
- Data should answer the research questions identified earlier.
- Leave the process of data collection to the methods section. Do not include any discussion. These errors are surprising quite common.
- Always use past tense in describing results.
TEXT
Consider these two lines:
- Mean baseline HbA1c of 73 diabetic patients before intervention was 8.9% and mean HbA1c after intervention was 7.8%.
- Mean HbA1c of 73 of diabetic patients decreased from 8.9% to 7.8% after an intervention.
In line 1, the author presents only the data (i.e. what exactly was found in a study) but the reader is forced to analyse and draw their own conclusion (“mean HbA1c decreased”) thus making the result more difficult to read. In line 2, the preferred way of writing, the data was presented together with its interpretation.
- Data, which often are numbers and figures, are better presented in tables and graphics, while the interpretation are better stated in text. By doing so, we do not need to repeat the values of HbA1c in the text (which will be illustrated in tables or graphics), and we can interpret the data for the readers. However, if there are too few variables, the data can be easily described in a simple sentence including its interpretation. For example, the majority of diabetic patients enrolled in the study were male (80%) compare to female (20%).
- Using qualitative words to attract the readers’ attention is not helpful. Such words like “remarkably” decreased, “extremely” different and “obviously” higher are redundant. The exact values in the data will show just how remarkable, how extreme and how obvious the findings are.
Example:
“It is clearly evident from Figure 1B that there was significant different (p=0.001) in HbA1c level at 6, 12 and 18 months after diabetic self-management program between 96 patients in intervention group and 101 patients in control group, but no difference seen from 24 months onwards.” [Too wordy]