Use research papers to share your work with other experts and public health practitioners. Research articles describe projects, interventions, or experiments. Research articles are often detailed and can use specialized language. This page has tools to help you write a research paper.
Most research papers follow a similar format (IMRAD). Each section of the paper has different kinds of information.
This introduction section helps the reader understand your your project, why you did it, and why they should care about it.
Introduce your topic and explain why it is important. Provide background information on your topic. Summarize previous research and projects other people have done. (Your literature review is part of the Introduction section.) Indicate gaps in the research or conflicting findings. Explain what you wanted to learn, the results you expected (your hypotheses), and why you expected to get those results.
The methods section helps the reader understand how you got your results.
Explain what you did. State how many people or items you studied and how you collected the samples. Provide important information about the participants or samples. Specify the names of any tests, chemicals, software, or techniques that you used.
The results section tells the reader what you found. It has facts, not speculations about the meaning of your results.
Share your findings and data. Charts and graphs can be useful in this section.
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The discussion section puts your results in context.
Analyze your results. Compare your results to other people's results. Explain why your results are important. If you got different results than you had expected, share some possible reasons for that difference. State limitations of your study and suggest topics for further research.
Use these resources to learn more about each section of your paper. You may not need to include everything listed in each section.