Evaluating Results & Drawing Conclusions
- Evaluating experimental results and drawing conclusions from them are two very important skills
- Evaluation of results is a different skill from evaluation of the experimental procedure used to obtain those results
- Conclusions can only be drawn from the results once they have been properly evaluated
- For example, during the planning of an experiment, potential limitations of the experimental procedure should have already been identified
- Before drawing conclusions, the impact that these limitations could theoretically have had (or may actually have had) on the data collected should be evaluated
- If this evaluation shows these potential impacts to be negligible, a conclusion can more likely be drawn from the results
- If it is decided that the limitations could have had a significant impact on the data, then it is much harder to draw a conclusion and it should be recognised that any conclusions drawn have a greater chance of being incorrect