Research Notebook Guidelines

The research notebook serves as a complete and exact record of a researcher’s work. The book must be bound (not spiral) with a hard cover. Everything concerning your research must be documented. In the beginning, you should record any ideas you have and information you have read about the work of others as it relates to your research. As the semester progresses, your documentation will evolve from information gathering into conducting research and gathering data. As you record in your notebook, keep in mind that any researcher should be able to read your notebook and understand exactly what you have reported.

Following are some dos and don’ts regarding the correct record keeping method.

Do

  1. Use blue or black ink only
  2. Number every page in the top right corner
  3. If you mess up, draw a single line though the mistake, initial and date the line.
  4. If you have more than three lines left at the bottom of a page, draw a diagonal line across the lines, initial and date the line.
  5. If an entire page is messed up or you accidentally skipped page, draw a diagonal across the entire page, initial and date the line.
  6. Sign and date in the bottom right hand corner of every page.
  7. The Table of Contents begins on the first three pages of the notebook. It should consist of three columns consists: title or description of what can be found on the pages, the page number(s) and date
  8. When recording helpful or relevant information from a source, cite all of the necessary info regarding author, journal, article title, etc. This will be helpful later on. Refer to APA resource every time you use a new kind of source (book, website, journal etc.) so that you know what the relevant information is.

Examples of items to include:

  1. Notes related to the background research (see #9 above)
  2. Notes from conversations about the project with teachers, professionals, and other students.
  3. The researcher’s ideas about the project.
  4. The experimental plan for the project.
  5. List of materials needed for the project.
  6. List any equipment you might need to use for data collection and any potential problems with availability or reliability
  7. Detailed descriptions of all procedures written as the experiments are done (not the next day – you will not remember all the fine details the next day).
  8. Notes about the procedure including suggestions for improvements in the future and potential sources of error.
  9. All of the raw and compiled data, graphs, charts, and so forth.
  10. Summary of the statistical analysis of the data.
  11. Conclusions and discussion.

Don’t

  1. Wait until the day before the notebook is due to record information. This is unethical. You must document everything as you do it.
  2. Skip pages
  3. Scribble out, scratch through or use white out mistakes (see proper procedure above)
  4. Write as if you are writing a diary. Grammar is not critical, but your writing needs to be clear and understandable without unnecessary flowery language.
  5. Do not write your data or other info on scrap pieces of paper so that you can later write it in the notebook. Always record directly in the notebook.