Checklist
Independent Variable
Dependent Variable
Controlled and Uncontrolled Variables
Materials and Methods
Risk Assessment and Ethical Considerations
Independent Variable
- clearly state the independent variable (IV)
- State the units and range of your IV
- explain how you will change the IV
- How many repeats will you do (if an experiment)
Dependent Variable
- dependent variable (DV) is stated
- units of DV are clear
- Any calculations you will carry out are described (and why they are necessary for your analysis)
Controlled and Uncontrolled Variables
- explain how you will control your variables
- explain how you will monitor your uncontrolled variables
Materials and Methods
- list all the materials you will use (including sizes/concentrations/quantities)
- As a rule of thumb for manipulated studies, the lower limit is five measurements of an independent variable, with three repeats for each. This will produce five data points for analysis.
- method written in 3rd person passive
- enough detail in the method for the reader to replicate the data collection
- describe why you chose this method - what makes it ideal for answering the research question
Risk Assessment and Ethical Considerations
- Safety concerns listed with precautions that will be taken (How might you or someone else be injured during the course of your data collection?)
- Refers to the animal experimentation policy if an experiment or data privacy if a survey (what steps are you going to take to make sure that you will fully respect animal life and health)
- Environmental issues explained with methods for overcoming them (how will you minimize/eliminate any negative effects?)