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Creating a Research Poster

Poster sessions at conferences and professional meetings are a way to visually convey the details of your research or conclusions. This guide will offer you the basics in design, content and printing resources.

Content

Depending on the type of research you're doing, your poster may include different elements. The elements that have been bolded are required; everything else is optional.

  • Title
  • Name
  • Academic affiliation or course number
  • Research question or hypothesis
  • Methodology
  • Data/Observations: generate charts or graphs if possible
  • Findings: What did you learn? Summarize your conclusions
  • Themes: Pull out themes in the literature and list in bullet points
  • Interesting quotes from the research
  • Limitations, recommendations, or next steps for further research
  • Citations: You can include these on a handout, a shortened link, like a bit.ly, or a QR code
  • Acknowledgments: Thank your advisor, professor, or anyone else who helped you with the research.

 

Adapted from the University of Tennessee's "Choosing Content Checklist"

Organization

Depending on the kind of research you're presenting, you'll organize your poster differently. There's no one way to organize your research, but below are a few ways to get started.

 

For social science and STEM:

  • IMRaD
    • I: Introduction
    • M: Methodology
    • R: Results, and 
    • D: Discussion

For other kinds of projects (humanities, experiences):

  • Modified IMRad
    • Research question
    • How you approached it
    • What you learned
    • Why it matters
  • Thematic: group sections into subthemes
  • Narrative: tell a story about your topic
  • Question and Answer: group research into questions

 

From UMD Center for Undergraduate Research