Undergraduates' Criteria to Justify Claims Proposed after Laboratory Experiments

Table 3

Categories and subcategories of undergraduates’ justifications of scientific claims proposed in the laboratory.

Category	Subcategory	f*
(1) Empirical consistency
	(1.1) Literature value	82
	(1.2) Personal experience	31
(2) Plausibility of claims
	(2.1) Scientifically acceptable theory	81
	(2.2) Naïve theory	11
	(2.3) Theoretically calculated value	55
(3) Observation reliability
	(3.1) Careful manipulation	52
	(3.2) Personal error	397
	(3.3) Apparatus error	86
	(3.4) Method error	23

*f: frequency