The premise of this report is discussing the importance of what is required to make lab reports proper in terms of the elements they contain. Each lab report should have an abstract, introduction, material and methods, title, discussion, results, conclusion and references. Having these elements helps to break down the procedure and procedure of a lab report and allows the reader an easier time to process information as well as know what the piece is about before doing any reading. Most lab reports contain this structure for the most part but some may contain some degree of variance. I will compare and contrast 2 different lab reports in there structure from each other as well if they fundamentally follow the guideline in containing the 8 elements. The 2 articles that will be discussed are Cognitive Effects of Nicotine: Recent Progress by Gerald Valentine and The Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies in Problem Gaming Among Adolescents: A Nationally Representative Survey Study by Natália Kocsel.
Before reading a lab report the first thing the reader looks at is the title. The title should give the reader an idea of what the report is about. It is usually a few words or line that introduces the article before the actual introduction. It should be simple and quick to the point but most importantly informative and straight to the point. In Cognitive Effects of Nicotine: Recent Progress by Gerald Valentine I as a reader interpret it as the effects of nicotine on the brain and that the report is using current data and information to construct his report not using data from long ago since this topic is widely researched and spoken about for some time. I
personally find the title to be vague. It doesn’t address any age group whether it’s in adolescence, adults or the elderly. It does not address the population group whether in male or female or both.

Also, it does not mention if they are taking into account people with pre-existing health conditions whether mental or physical. The report The Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies in Problem Gaming Among Adolescents: A Nationally Representative Survey Study by Natália Kocsel is much more detailed. It addresses the age group that being adolescents. It also for some talks about the kind of study approach used that being survey study. There are many different ways lab reports are conducted whether it is meta-analysis, case study and many more so putting this in the title lets the reader the research approach taken to conduct this report.
The abstract functions as an introduction before the introduction. It touches on the premise of the article and gives background information on some of the ideas, terminology and gives a quick summary about the topic and the report. In valentine’s report, it is just like the abstract which is vague. Valentine just gives some background information about the topic. It is short, quick to the point but lacks key information such some information found and statistics which is expected to be in an abstract. In Koscel’s report, the abstract contains a lot more information. She goes into depth by providing background information regarding the topic to give the reader almost a “starter” to show context and put them on the same page as the author. She uses statistics to support her claims and is much more detailed when presenting her ideas as well as terminology that isn’t as common to many. She also provides some of her findings giving us some information before diving deeper into the rest of the report.
The introduction should give previous information of the reader whether its past reports or information. Valentine does a very good job at this by giving statistics to illustrate it. Also,
Valentine breaks downs his ideas and puts numbers next to them to refer to his graphs

throughout the paper. However, Valentine’s introduction is extremely lengthy and makes up the majority of the report. He breaks down his introduction into different sections and sub sections and gives a lot more information than necessary. I assume that this is intended for people with no background or prior information regarding the information needed to know to fully understand the premise of his report. Koscel’s introduction is what one would typically expect from one. Koscel is similar to Valentine in the sense that they use numbers next to ideas and statistics to make it easier for the reader as well as show that their claims are supported. The introduction isn’t too lengthy and unlike Valentine, Koscel doesn’t have a graph in the introduction which is usually the correct way as graphs should be found later on.
Methods and materials is used to show how the research report was approached and conducted. It gives the reader insight on the formatting of the research aspect and assists in whether the reader thinks the approach was proper. In Valentine’s paper, his method is very short. His method was providing an overview of the main topics discussed in the paper and was vague about the how or why the topics where chose or discussed. No information was given regarding how he will approach these topics and how he plans to use the information and why he did to support his paper. Koscel methods and material on the other hand is well written and easy to follow. She splits the methods and material into three sections. The sections are participants and procedure, measures and statistical analysis. It makes it easier for the reader to digest as well as breakdown the main points so the reader knows where to look for and what to look for as well.
The results section is data used to support claims, hypothesis, any information found while conducting the report or old information and anything used to help prove or even unprove

information stated in the report. They are usually graphs and should make sense in the context they are being applied to. Valentine doesn’t have any graphs in the result section. They are spread throughout in the introduction. In his results he summarizes his findings based on old information and not really conducting any on his own. Koscel’s data is supported by graphs and tables which are easy to read and highlights the important information used to support her claims and ideas. The graphs are colorful which makes the data distinctive and understand just by the colors what is being implied. For example, in figure 2 there is a graph showing the relationship between other blame and online gaming by genre and the genres of games are differently colored and the lines are colored differently based on preference. They are very easy to read and “user friendly”.
The conclusion is everything summed up. It illustrates if the hypothesis if there is one is proven and summarizes how the information found supported or went against the claims. Both Valentine and Koscel did a good job with the conclusions. However, Valentine had two conclusions which made no sense but the information in it was respective to the section/element. They summarized their findings well and applied it to prove or disprove their claims. They didn’t change their claims even if some of the information disproved some aspects of it and mentioned it in the conclusion and gave context surrounding as to why it maybe. It brought everything together and showed what they concluded from there data and applied it to their results and findings.
Lastly, acknowledgments are used to give credit to other researchers that helped, articles or any information used that was done by other people, publishers and other sites where people

can go find information that was used in the research that wasn’t their own. This also helps the reader educate themselves more and research the topic if they are having hard time understanding the material or paper. A research is almost rarely conducted by a single person and this gives credit to others and doesn’t deceive the reader into thinking all the information came
from one place. This can allow the reader to actually consider whether they find the research paper credible or not. If people mentioned are not in the position to make some of the statements or information provided, it disways the reader from thinking the research paper is trustworthy and credible.
Of the 2 research papers, Koscel did a much better job than Valentine. Koscel is what you expect a research paper to be. She hit all the 8 elements as well as structured it properly. She had graphs and data all in the right sections. The information was broken down into sections making it easy for the reader to understand. Information was placed in respective to their section/element. It was informative, easy to read/follow and actually and interesting paper to follow. Valentine on the other hand was very difficult to follow and understand. The elements were not in order as he had introduction under conclusion. The majority of the paper was the introduction and many graphs were placed there rather than in the data and results. It was very vague and hard to follow. Disregarding the title, I had to constantly check what the paper was about and was trying to be proven. Overall, Koscel used all the elements as well as in order and the information was presented in respect to there section as opposed to Valentine.

Refrences:
The Role of Cognitive Emotion Regulation Strategies in Problem Gaming Among Adolescents: A Nationally Representative Survey Study. (2020, October 13). PubMed Central (PMC). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6501698/
Cognitive Effects of Nicotine: Recent Progress. (2018, May 1). PubMed Central (PMC). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6018192/

Self reflection:
Personally, I feel like I would have had a lot of trouble with this assignment if I hadn’t done this before. Even though, the format is different from I previously did, I think I had information to know what I wanted to look for when comparing and contrasting the two reports as well as how I wanted this assignment. It was quite lengthy and time consuming as compared to our other assignments and it was much more restrictive in the sense of we didn’t have any creative control over the assignment other than topics but that too I found a problem. Many of the topics I looked up on the database were not in a report format. Many were from textbooks or articles. Also, even when I did find a report I wasn’t able to have full access depending on the website. After finally finding the two articles, we had to annotate which I wasn’t a big fan. I still
have trouble understand annotating because it is done differently by students and other sources making it difficult to get the “right” way of doing it. I understand that it was supposed to make the writing process easier since we broke it down and can refer to it rather than rereading the
article multiple times, but personally I don’t think it made that much of a difference for me. I just found it to be a bit of extra work. Overall, I wasn’t a big fan of this assignments as it was tedious and technical. However, just like last assignment I find the zoom meeting split calls to be helpful. It’s easier to critique and learn from others when they share screens and can edit as well if they their paper on google docs, each student can put in their comments and edit making the feedback more efficient I would say.