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Materials and Methods

This section provides the reader with all the details of how you conducted your study. You should:

  • Materials and Methods
  • Use subheadings to separate different methodologies
  • Describe what you did in the past tense
  • Describe new methods in enough detail that another researcher can reproduce your experiment
  • Describe established methods briefly, and simply cite a reference where readers can find more detail
  • State all statistical tests and parameters

Example:

Article title: Referred pain from myofascial trigger points in head and neck–shoulder muscles reproduces head pain features in children with chronic tension type headache

Source: The Journal of Headache and Pain 2011, 12(1):35–43, DOI: 10.1007/s10194-011-0316-6


Materials and methods
Subjects [CLEAR SUBHEADING]


Consecutive children diagnosed with CTTH by an experienced paediatric neurologist from the Pediatric Neurology Department of the General Hospital Quirón were screened for eligibility criteria. In all children headache features, temporal profile of the headache, and family history were assessed. To be included children had to describe all the characteristics typical of CTTH according to the ICHD-II criteria [26] …


Self-reported measures [CLEAR SUBHEADING]
Children completed a headache diary for 4 weeks …


Muscle trigger point examination [CLEAR SUBHEADING]
Muscle TrPs were bilaterally explored … diagnosis in these muscles was done following the criteria as described by Simons et al. [18] and by Gerwin et al. [29] … [ESTABLISHED METHODS]


Assessment of referred pain area and quality [CLEAR SUBHEADING]
pain was defined as …


Statistical analysis [CLEAR SUBHEADING]


Data were analysed with the SPSS statistical package (16.0 Version). Results are expressed as mean, standard deviation (SD) or 95% confidence interval (95% CI). The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test was used to analyse the normal distribution of the variables (P > 0.05). Quantitative data without a normal distribution (i.e., pain history, headache intensity, headache frequency, headache duration, and number of active muscle TrPs) were analysed with non-parametric tests, and data with a normal distribution (referred pain areas) were analysed with parametric tests. Differences in the number of active TrPs between groups were assessed with the non-parametric Mann–Whitney U test. The Chi-square (χ2) test was used to assess the differences in the size of distribution of TrPs for each muscle on either side within both study groups. A 3-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to compare the areas of referred pain (arbitrary units) between sides (dominant/non dominant) and muscles (i.e., temporalis, masseter, superior oblique, upper trapezius, and sternocleidomastoid) as within-subject factors and group (patients, controls) as between-subject factor. A similar 2-way ANOVA was used for the referred pain areas from the suboccipital muscles but without side as factor. The Bonferroni test was used for post-hoc analyses. The Spearman’s rho (r s) test was used to analyse the association between the number of TrPs, the referred pain areas and clinical variables of the headache. The statistical analysis was conducted at 95% confidence level. A P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. [STATISTICAL TESTS AND PARAMETERS]


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Check the ‘Instructions for Authors’ for your target journal to see how manuscripts should present the Materials and Methods. Also, as another guide, look at sample reports published online by the journal.
Formatting your manuscript

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