Materials and Methods

For the scientific papers, the main purpose of the Material and Methods section is to give full details of the methodology employed in the study and defend the reason for a particular method you have chosen over competing methods. This section translates the research question into a detailed recipe of operations. It is the foundation of a research paper and scientists are suggested to begin their writing with Material and Methods (Katz 54)[1]. 

The criterion for a well-written Materials and Methods section is that a reasonably knowledgeable colleague could repeat your experiment after reading the description. This is because the cornerstone of the scientific method requires your results to be reproducible. For the results to be adjudged reproducible, you must provide the basis for repetition of the experiments by others (Day 37)[2].

1. The Structure of Materials and Methods section

There is no set sequence for Material and Methods section but you can use sub-headings to make a clear layout. Since Materials and Methods is the most skimmed over section of the paper, good sub-headings ensure that the skimming is easy and fruitful. The Material and Methods sections of scientific papers normally have sub-headings such as Design of Experiment or Experimental Procedure, followed by the Materials, Analytical techniques, or statistical analysis. Some examples of Materials and Methods with well-chosen sub-headings are selected from academic journals.

Example 1: A research report on “Cinnamon and nisin in alginate-calcium coating maintain quality of fresh northern snakehead fish fillets” (Lu, Ding, Ye, & Liu, 2010, p.1332) [3].

Example 2: A research report on “Endosulfan has no adverse effect on soil respiration” (Joseph, Reed, Jayachandran, Clark-Cuadrado, & Dunn, 2010, p.182-183)[4]

Example 3: A research report on “Grazing intensity affected spatial patterns of vegetation and soil fertility in a desert steppe”(Lin, Hong, Han, Zhao, Bai, & Chang, 2010, p.283-286)[5]:

Example 4: A research report on “Rural innovation systems and networks: findings from a study of Ethiopian smallholders” (Spielman, Davis, Negash, & Ayele, 2010,)[6].  

These examples illustrate that skeletons of Materials and Methods section vary in journal articles. The ‘moves’ in this section generally involve working through a series of subsections with sub-headings, including participants, measures, and procedure(s). Normally, if no participants are involved, then the method simply describes the measures and procedure(s) (Hartley, 2008). When possible, you should construct sub-headings that match those to be used in Results.

A useful device for clarifying the research procedure or the method for the reader is to summarize it in a table or figure. For example, Figure 5.4 gives a schematic version of research procedure of study on “Gap between Tourism Planning and Implementation” by Lai, Li and Feng (2005, p.1173).

Figure 5.4: Steps of research

2.What should be written in this section?

In the Material and Methods section, you should fully and exactly describe the novel techniques or new modifications to old techniques that have is used in your research. Methods are usually best described in the order in which they were used. Unless a previously published method is generally known, the reader will appreciate being told its essential features (Katz, 2006). If the techniques have already been described by others, then it is adequate and desirable to refer to the paper where the technique was first described.

Details of factors, such as the settings of field study, the materials for the experiment, the statistical techniques, and the measurement of the results, should be fully and exactly described if they are essential to the paper. If these factors are not what the paper is about, or it is not to be used in interpreting the results, detailed description of these factors may kill[E1]  your paper (Lindsay, 1995).

It is often appropriate to describe statistical techniques, but you should feature and discuss the data, not the statistics. Only if you have performed some original mathematical gymnastics you then need to describe them. Advanced or unusual methods may require a literature citation; ordinary statistical methods should be used without comment (Day, 1998). If you merely carried out a standard procedure, like an analysis of variance, t-test, or chi-square, you do not need to give the details of the statistical techniques.

3. Grammatical feature

The Material and Methods is an introduction for all the things you have done to produce well-defined data. Most of this section should be written in the past tense. Precise use of English is a must since the Materials and Methods deals with exact and specific items, such as materials and experimental procedures of your research project. In writing this section, you should avoid ambiguous words, such as “sometimes”, “on occasion” or “maybe”, “approximately”. So don’t write:

“Measurements were taken at approximately 45 mph.”

Instead, write:

“Measurements were taken when the digital speedometer read 45 mph.”

Mistakes in grammar and punctuation are serious in Material and Methods section. Even a missing comma can produce the experiment instruction. For example: “Employing a straight platinum wire rabbit, sheep and human blood agar plates were inoculated…” This sentence was in trouble right from the start. The reader might be confused until a comma is put after “wire.”

[6] Spielman, D. J., Davis, K., Negash, M., & Ayele, G. (2010). Rural innovation systems and networks: findings from a study of Ethiopian smallholders (Publication no. 10.1007/s10460-010-9273-y).

（本文作者 王志芳）