Guidance on producing your report

National 5 Biology

Your report must be easy to follow.

You may find that using headings will help to make your report clear.

Title

Your title must tell the reader what your report is about. This should not be a restatement of the aim.

Your aim must describe clearly the purpose of your investigation. This must be different from your title.

The biology you write about must be relevant to your aim. You need a minimum of three descriptions and/or explanations at National 5 level. Simple statements without giving depth of knowledge will not be sufficient. You must include enough information to show that you have an understanding of the biology involved.
You must use your own words as much as possible.
You can quote from extracts as long as you also give a description or explanation, in your own words, showing that you understand the biology.
Other than quoting from your extracts, you must not copy directly from them. Copying directly from your extracts would not show that you understand the biology.

You must give only a brief description of the experiment/fieldwork you carried out.
You must show that you can summarise your experimental/fieldwork procedure. You must not give a full description/set of instructions and must avoid giving too much detail. Details such as the range, number or interval of values or measurements, or information about repeats are not required.

You must include a table showing all of the measurements you recorded in your experiment/fieldwork.
Make sure you include column headings. You must also include units, where appropriate.
You must use the data from your table to carry out calculations.
You must calculate average values from your repeated measurements. These can be included in your table of results.
If you’ve used the results from your experiment to determine further values, you should show at least one sample calculation.

You must produce a graph of your experimental/fieldwork results.
The graph must: — be a line graph or a bar graph, whichever is appropriate for your data — be large enough to allow points to be read accurately — have suitable scales, labels and units on the axes — have points that are joined with a line (line graph) or clear bar tops (bar graph)
You must use graph paper or a computer graphing package.
If you are using a computer graphing package, you must include both major and minor gridlines, and use plotting symbols that are clear but not too large.

You must include data/information obtained from an internet/literature source that you can compare with the data from your experiment/fieldwork. If it is not obvious why this data is relevant to the aim, you must give supporting information or a statement to indicate the link.
You must include a reference to this source of data/information, which would allow another person to find it. For example:
- website: full URL for the page or pages
- journal: journal title, author, journal title, volume and page number
- book: title, author, page number and either edition or ISBN Analysis
You must compare your experimental/fieldwork data with the data/information from your internet/literature source.
This should include similarities and differences between them, if there are any.

You must state a conclusion that relates to your aim. The conclusion must be based on all the data/information in your report. This must not be a restatement of the results.

You must identify a factor in your experiment/fieldwork that had a significant effect on the validity, reliability or accuracy of your experiment/fieldwork.
You must then explain: — what you did to minimise the effect of this factor or — what you could have done to minimise the effect of this factor or — how you know this factor had a significant effect
You do not need to use the words validity, reliability or accuracy in your explanation but if you do use them, they must be used correctly.