Part IV: Dissecting a Scientific Research Paper — the Results

The Results section in a scientific manuscript is the place where the researchers present their findings. This section usually provides a detailed description of the research participants and their data, which may include tables, graphs, and figures. In this manuscript, there are a lot of findings, so I’ll just hit the highlights.

The Results section, like the Methods section, is often divided into sub-sections that help organize the findings. Using the example article we’ve been working through in this educational series, the first sub-section — Characteristics of the Study Participants — refers us to Table 1 and Table S2 which describes the characteristics and demographics (like age and race/ethnicity) of the study participants.

In the next sub-section — Smoking Cessation, Weight Change, and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes — we discover a number of things from the findings related to the risk of developing type 2 diabetes:

1. The average study participation time
2. The number of study participants who developed diabetes
3. Which group of participants that had a higher chance of getting diabetes
4. The time frame where people were at highest risk for developing diabetes after quitting smoking
5. The relationship between weight gain and developing diabetes

This simple diagram helps to illustrate how a ‘moderator variable’ works — weight gain affects the relationship we see between quitting smoking and risk of developing type 2 diabetes. For example, recent quitters had a higher chance for developing type 2 diabetes than current smokers, and that chance increased with the more weight they gained (p. 626). However, for those who quit smoking and did NOT gain weight, their chances of developing type 2 diabetes were similar to individuals who never smoked. So, depending on if someone recently quit smoking, whether they gained weight, and how much they gained after quitting, their risk of developing type 2 diabetes was different.

In the next sub-section — Smoking Cessation, Weight Change, and Mortality — we learn the following points related to risk of mortality (death):

1. The total number of deaths that occurred among study participants
2. Which group of participants had a lower risk of dying from cardiovascular disease or any reason, and how this changed over time

The authors also found that increases in physical activity and healthier diet were associated with less weight gain.

Though I won’t get into the details of the tables and figures that are included in the paper, I encourage you to take a look and familiarize yourself with Table 2 and Figures 1 and 2.

In my last post, I’ll review the Discussion section and the authors’ interpretations of the findings!

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Reference:

Hu Y, Zong G, Liu G, Wang M, Rosner B, Pan A, Willett WC, Manson JE, Hu FB, Sun Q. Smoking cessation, weight change, type 2 diabetes, and mortality. N Engl J Med 2018;379(7):623–632: doi: 10.1056/NEJMoa1803626.

Read the last installment of this educational series by clicking below:

Part V