Best Practices for Presenting Statistical Information in a Research Article

A key characteristic of scientific research is that the entire experiment (or series of experiments), including the data analyses, is reproducible. This aspect of science is increasingly emphasized. The Materials and Methods section of a scientific paper typically contains the necessary information for the research to be replicated and expanded on by other scientists. Important components are descriptions of the study design, data collection, and statistical analysis of those data, including the software used. In the Results section, statistical analyses are presented; these are usually best absorbed from figures. Model parameter estimates (including variances) and effect sizes should also be included in this section, not just results of significance tests, because they are needed for subsequent power and meta-analyses. In this article, we give key components to include in the descriptions of study design and analysis, and discuss data interpretation and presentation with examples from the horticultural sciences.