IMRaD Structure: A Complete Worked Example

CASRAI’s IMRaD Structure dictionary entry defines what belongs in each of the four sections — Introduction, Methods, Results, and Discussion — and the most common ways authors misplace content between them. This guide takes the next step: it walks through a single illustrative paper, start to finish, showing what a complete IMRaD outline with representative section content actually looks like in practice, so a first-time author can see the shape rather than infer it from a definition alone.

Why a worked example, not just definitions

Knowing that “Methods describes what you did” and “Results reports what you found” is necessary but not sufficient — the failure mode most first-time authors hit isn’t misunderstanding the definitions, it’s not seeing how a specific claim, sentence, or piece of data actually gets assigned to one section and not another when it’s genuinely ambiguous which section it “belongs” to. A worked example makes that assignment visible. The outline below is deliberately modest in scope — a single-study, single-method paper — because the goal is to show the mechanics of the structure clearly, not to model every possible variation covered in CASRAI’s IMRaD Structure entry (structured abstracts, multi-study Results/Discussion pairs, field-specific naming like “Materials and Methods”).

The illustrative paper: setup

Working title: “A Brief Mindfulness Intervention and Self-Reported Stress Among First-Year Graduate Students: A Pilot Study” (illustrative only).

Premise: A researcher wants to know whether a short, structured mindfulness exercise, done daily for two weeks, is associated with a change in first-year graduate students’ self-reported stress, measured with a standard validated stress scale before and after the intervention period.

Section-by-section outline with representative content

Title and abstract

The title names the intervention, the outcome, and the population — no results are previewed. The abstract (structured or unstructured, per the journal’s house style — see CASRAI’s structured abstract format guide) restates purpose, method, principal result, and conclusion in miniature, positioned before the Introduction and outside the four core IMRaD sections proper.

1. Introduction

Representative content, in order:

• Broad context: One or two sentences establishing that graduate-student mental health and stress are an active area of concern in higher education, citing prior survey or prevalence literature (real citations would go here — omitted in this illustrative outline).
• Narrowing to the gap: A sentence identifying what prior work has and hasn’t established — e.g., that brief, low-cost mindfulness interventions have shown promise in other populations, but evidence specific to first-year graduate students transitioning into a new program is limited.
• The specific aim: A single explicit sentence stating the study’s objective or hypothesis — e.g., “This pilot study tested whether a two-week, ten-minute daily guided mindfulness exercise is associated with a reduction in self-reported stress among first-year graduate students, measured using [a named, validated stress scale].”

What does NOT belong here: any statement of what the study found. “We found that stress scores decreased” is a Results/Discussion sentence — in the Introduction, the closest permissible framing is only the stated hypothesis or expectation, not the outcome.

2. Methods

Representative content, in order:

• Participants: Who was studied, how they were recruited, and eligibility criteria — e.g., “Participants were first-year students (n = [illustrative figure]) enrolled in [illustrative department], recruited via a program-wide email in the first week of the term.”
• Materials/instrument: The validated stress scale used, with a citation to the instrument’s source and any reported reliability statistic from that source — not from this study’s own data (that would be a Results item).
• Procedure: Exactly what participants did and when — baseline survey administration, the daily mindfulness exercise (format, duration, delivery mechanism), the follow-up survey timing.
• Analysis plan: The statistical test used to compare pre- and post-intervention scores, stated as a plan, not a result — e.g., “Paired scores were compared using [named test].”

What does NOT belong here: the outcome of running that test. A common misplacement is writing “…compared using [named test], which showed a significant decrease” — the test result belongs in Results; Methods states only that the test was planned and run.

3. Results

Representative content, in order:

• Sample description: Who actually completed the study — e.g., final n, any attrition between baseline and follow-up, basic descriptive statistics of the sample.
• Primary finding, stated neutrally: “Mean self-reported stress scores were [illustrative baseline value] at baseline and [illustrative follow-up value] at follow-up, a difference of [illustrative effect size] ([test statistic], p = [illustrative value]).” No adjective characterizing the finding as meaningful, surprising, or consistent with prior work — that framing belongs in the Discussion.
• Secondary/exploratory observations, if any: stated with the same neutrality — e.g., a subgroup pattern noted but not yet interpreted.
• Typically organized around the paper’s tables and figures, referenced in text (e.g., “as shown in Table 1”).

What does NOT belong here: interpretation. “This suggests the intervention was effective” or “this is consistent with [prior study]” are Discussion-section sentences; the single most common IMRaD misplacement error, per CASRAI’s IMRaD Structure entry, is exactly this — interpretive language leaking into Results.

4. Discussion

Representative content, in order:

• Restate the main finding in plain language and connect it directly back to the aim stated in the Introduction — “Consistent with the study’s hypothesis, self-reported stress scores decreased over the two-week intervention period.”
• Interpretation: what the finding plausibly means, and how it relates to prior literature cited in the Introduction — where it agrees, extends, or diverges from what’s already known.
• Limitations: stated specifically, not generically — e.g., small pilot sample, no control group, self-report-only outcome measure, short follow-up window. A generic “further research is needed” without naming the actual limitation is a common weakness reviewers flag.
• Implications and future work: what a larger, controlled follow-up study would need to establish, and what (if anything) the pilot result suggests for practice in the interim.
• Conclusion: a short closing statement — sometimes a separate final heading, sometimes the Discussion’s last paragraph, depending on journal convention (see the naming-variant discussion in CASRAI’s IMRaD Structure entry).

What does NOT belong here: new data. Every number discussed in the Discussion should already have appeared in Results — the Discussion interprets, it does not introduce.

The same outline, condensed as a checklist

Common cross-section drafting mistakes, illustrated

• Result previewed in the Introduction: “Prior mindfulness interventions have shown mixed results, but as this study demonstrates, a brief intervention can meaningfully reduce graduate-student stress.” The clause after “but” belongs in the Discussion, not the Introduction — the Introduction should end at the stated hypothesis, not the outcome.
• Interpretation embedded in Methods: “Stress was measured using [scale], which is a highly sensitive instrument well suited to detecting the kind of change this study ultimately observed.” The second half assumes and states a result before Results exists — Methods should describe the instrument and procedure only.
• Interpretation embedded in Results: “Stress scores decreased significantly (p = [value]), confirming that brief mindfulness practice is an effective stress-reduction tool for graduate students.” Everything after the comma is Discussion content — Results should stop at the neutral statistical statement.
• New data introduced in the Discussion: “As discussed above, and as a follow-up analysis not shown here further confirms, the effect appears robust.” Any data supporting a claim needs to have already appeared in Results (with its own table/figure), not be introduced for the first time in the Discussion.

How this differs across paper types

This worked example is a single-study empirical pilot — the simplest case. Multi-experiment papers commonly pair a Methods/Results block per study under separate subheadings, then close with one integrated general Discussion; APA’s Publication Manual explicitly permits either that structure or a combined “Results and Discussion” heading per study, provided a comprehensive Discussion still closes the paper. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses use a related but distinct structure governed by PRISMA reporting guidelines, where “Methods” describes a search-and-screening protocol rather than an experimental procedure. See CASRAI’s IMRaD Structure entry for the fuller list of variants and where IMRaD does not apply (narrative reviews, case reports, most humanities argument essays).

Frequently asked questions

Does every empirical paper need exactly four sections in this order?

The four-part logic (why → how → what was found → what it means) is close to universal for original-research reporting in the sciences and social sciences, but exact section labels and counts vary: “Materials and Methods” is common in the life sciences, APA uses the singular “Method,” and some journals add a separate “Conclusion” heading after the Discussion. Always check the target journal’s specific author guidelines — IMRaD describes the dominant convention, not a universal mandate enforced identically everywhere.

Where does the Literature Review go in an IMRaD paper?

There typically isn’t a separate “Literature Review” section in a standard IMRaD empirical paper — the relevant prior literature is woven into the Introduction (to establish the gap the study addresses) and revisited in the Discussion (to interpret the findings against it). A standalone literature-review section is more characteristic of a narrative review article, which is not itself IMRaD-structured.

Can Results and Discussion be combined into one section?

Some journals and paper types allow or require a combined “Results and Discussion” section, particularly for multi-experiment papers reporting one study at a time. Where this is permitted, the discipline described above still applies within the combined section — each individual result should still be stated neutrally before being interpreted, even if both appear in immediate succession rather than under separate headings.

What goes in the Abstract if it summarizes all four sections?

A structured or unstructured abstract briefly restates the purpose (from the Introduction), the method (from Methods), the principal finding (from Results), and the main conclusion (from the Discussion) — see CASRAI’s structured abstract format guide for how this is organized under ICMJE, CONSORT, and PRISMA conventions specifically.

Related CASRAI resources

• Dictionary: IMRaD Structure — the operational definition, origin (ANSI Z39.16, ICMJE), and full list of naming/structural variants.
• How to write a research paper
• Research paper format
• Writing the Results section of a research paper
• How to write the Discussion section of a research paper
• Structured abstract format
• Citation styles and referencing formats