The inclusion of relatively large amounts of raw data when writing up fieldwork as an 'experiment'.?

Question

At undergrad level, In order to put the analysis of it into a proper context, I feel as though I should include the raw data in the write-up. We're not talking pages and pages - one A4 page at the most, yet it'll still stand out and ruin the flow of the piece of work as a whole. Part of me's tempted to just use an appendix at the back, but I'm sure that's not right.

So the questions: Are appendices ever appropriate in this type of written work? And, if not, which is more important - the improved context by including the raw data, or the general flow and 'look' of the work by only perhaps including a sample?

Many thanks.

Answer 1

If you read through the scientific literature, you will rarely see "raw data" unless there is a very small sample size that can fit on a readable table.  You are absolutely correct that too much data will ruin the flow of the work.  Your methods should describe how you got your data and how much data you collected (that's where you get your credit for all the work you do).  Then, you use statistics or graphing to present your data in a compressed and readable fashion.  That is why statistics and charts were developed: to take a large amount of data and explain them in a brief overview.  If your data are so random that no statistics can describe them and no chart can show them, then that may be a sign of a problem in your methods.  The only case where I could imagine a huge table would be in some sort of survey or census, like a list of species that you identified, which could not be explained graphically.  But even that you could figure out a way of simplifiying: diveristy indices, grouping species into families, etc.  

Even as an undergrad, you are typically expected to try to follow the literature model.  As I said, you almost never see the raw data in a published paper if there's a lot of it, and you only see what's relevant to the results.  Typically, the author of the paper is expected to keep the raw data archived, and in many cases will give it to somebody who requests it, or may have to relinquish it in case of being audited.  Otherwise, there is no "improvement" in your paper in including exhaustive data.  Think of the poor people who are reading it.  Imagine you are reading somebody elses paper.  Most likely you are tired and you want to know what they found out.  You don't want to search through their gigantic table and try to figure out what it all means for yourself.  Unless you are the rare reader who really needs to see the raw data, and in that case, you just politely contact the author and ask for the whole shebang.  But that's 1% of the readers.  you have to write for the other 99%.