Lab reports are written descriptions of a study or an experiment step by step. They usually follow a standard format that shows every part of the study. This format can be found in chapter 19 of Mike Markel’s Technical Communication eBook. The purpose of this rhetorical analysis is to compare and contrast two lab reports and see how if they follow the guidelines explored in the book. The studies to be analyzed are, #1: “Development of a Soft Robotic Wearable Device to Assist Infant Reaching” by Elena Kokkoni, Zhichao Liu and Konstantinos Karydis, as well as #2: “A Pilot Study to Detect Balance Impairment in Older Adults Using an Instrumented One-leg Stance Test” by Jennifer Bassement, Brajesh Shukla, Sandeep Yadav, Vivek Vijay, Arvind Mathur, David J Hewson. These two studies are about completely different topics but they both fall under the biomedical engineering field and could lead to mechanical engineering innovations. The way to compare these lab reports is by using the eight basic elements from the Technical Communication book, these are: title, abstract, introduction, materials and methods, results, discussion, conclusion, and references.

Elements of a lab report

Title:

 A lab report title needs to be specific and informative. It needs to be able to express precisely what the topic is in one sentence. Because of this, they tend to be long and clear. The two titles are “Development of a Soft Robotic Wearable Device to Assist Infant Reaching” and “A Pilot Study to Detect Balance Impairment in Older Adults Using an Instrumented One-leg Stance Test”, they’re both specific and informative but the second title is clearer and more detailed. It’s more effective because a broader audience understands what the topic is and is most likely to read it.

Abstract:

The purpose of the abstract is to summarize the lab report and help readers decide if it interests them or not. The abstracts in the analyzed lab reports do a good job mirroring the contents of the lab in a few sentences but they’re different styles of abstracts. The one from lab report #1 is more of a descriptive abstract, which means it focuses more on the topics than the findings of the study. Lab report #2 has an informative abstract, which highlights what the study found out and goes into the details of the results. These are both equally valid but in terms of which one is more effective, lab report #2 had a better abstract because it truly summarized everything in the lab including the findings.

Introduction:

The introduction is the place where authors explain why the study is relevant and the reason for conducting it. It should include enough background information so readers can understand how and why the study is being done. It should introduce the methods that are going to be used and the hypothesis. Both lab reports had solid introductions that effectively help the readers understand the goal or purpose of the study. Lab report #1 explains the device that is being studied and how it could have a massive impact for infants and society. It relies on how the artifact works and what needs to be tested. Lab #2 relies on data and background information regarding the tests used to identify balance impairment. It gives an explanation on why the new method could be beneficial to society. Both introductions are equally effective but lab #1 appeals more the technical factors, while lab #2 focused on the human and medical factors.

Materials and Methods:

The materials and methods section is where authors need to prove their credibility by making sure the procedures are done correctly. It’s also important for the methods to be clear and easy to follow so other researchers can conduct similar experiments. Separating the materials and methods section with subheadings is useful because the information will be more accessible to readers and it will make the lab report looks more organized. Lab report #1 uses a lot of subheadings to organize and separate the information making it more effective than lab report #2 because even though it also has some subheadings, the information looks messier and not specific enough.

Results:

This section is where authors show the findings of the study. In here all the evidence that is going to be used later must be introduced. Normally, the data will be either in number or graphs, the point of having a result section is making sure that data is shown in a way that the readers could relate it to the hypothesis. In lab report #1, the result section is broken into three subheadings that were mentioned in the introduction, performance, wearability, and safety. This is useful because the findings might be useful in one category but not in others. In lab report #2 the result section wasn’t as organized but there was a lot of data that will likely be used in the following sections. Overall, each lab report effectively conveyed the results from the studies in a way readers can follow along.

 

Discussion:

The discussion part of a lab report is where the results are analyzed, and the author finally answers whether the study support or goes against the hypothesis. Whether the hypothesis was supported or not is not the important part of the discussion, but rather figuring out why this happened. From here other hypothesis might arise or be modified for future experiments. In lab report #1 there is no discussion section, instead the findings are analyzed in the result section. The author has the freedom to format the report this way, but it makes the data and the analysis aren’t as clear to the readers. Lab report #2 does have a discussion section, the author explained his findings and how it supports the hypothesis. This made it clear that lab report #2 was more effective because the author made sure to put all the analysis in its own section.

Conclusion:

This section of the report focuses on wrapping up all the previous information. The conclusion needs to be only a few paragraph long and only highlight the important information. Authors need to keep in mind that while they’re not supposed to introduce any new information, this is the last section where they can try and convince the audience. For lab report #1, the author has 5 short paragraphs where he summarizes his findings and the study in general, it’s longer than the most conclusions but it’s still effective. Lab report #2 doesn’t have a conclusion, most likely because the abstract already summarized the findings well enough.

References:

The references are the most standard section of a lab format as there are certain guidelines authors must follow when creating a reference page. This is where all the sources used in the study must be mentioned even if the text doesn’t include direct quotations. Both lab reports have a clean and properly written reference page, and both reference over 25 different sources. This is important because it gives credibility to the study and helps reader see where the background information and similar studies come from. There aren’t a lot of differences in this section as both reports followed the proper format in the study.

Overall, both the “Development of a Soft Robotic Wearable Device to Assist Infant Reaching” (lab report #1) and “A Pilot Study to Detect Balance Impairment in Older Adults Using an Instrumented One-leg Stance Test” (lab report #2) effectively followed the basic formatting of lab reports from Markel’s book. And even though they had different topics, they both could be easily compared because of the similar elements. Personally, I was more interested in lab report #1 because it was closer to my field of study and it seemed more organized, however, lab report #2 was extremely detailed and had a lot of background information that helped non-experts understand the study. It also had a much better abstract that summarized the entire study in a few sentences, as well as explained the data better than lab report #1. The authors for both studies did a great job following the lab report elements as both successfully achieve the intended goal and created an effective report for both experts and casual readers.

References

Kokkoni, E., Liu, Z., and Karydis, K. (March 19, 2020). “Development of a Soft Robotic Wearable Device to Assist Infant Reaching.” ASME. ASME J of Medical Diagnostics. May 2020; 3(2): 021109. https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4046397

Bassement, J., Shukla, B., Yadav, S., Vijay, V., Mathur, A., and Hewson, D. J. (March 12, 2020). “A Pilot Study to Detect Balance Impairment in Older Adults Using an Instrumented One-Leg Stance Test.” ASME. J Biomech Eng. doi: https://doi.org/10.1115/1.4046636

Markel, M. H. (2015). Technical communication.