Should a Methods Section be Written in the Past Tense?
For many researchers, getting verb tense right is difficult, especially in the methods section.
Most of the advice out there states that you should use the simple past tense when writing about your methods since you’re describing actions that you completed in the past.
That’s straightforward enough.
The tricky part is knowing when not to use the past tense.
And that’s exactly what this article will show you. Specifically, it looks at five of the most common cases when you should use the present tense in your methods section.
These are:
When describing an instrument.
When explaining the nature of your procedure.
When stating a general fact about a variable.
When referring to a table or figure.
When making a general statement about previous research.
Each of these cases is described in more detail below.
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Use the present tense when describing an instrument.
This is because you’re not describing something you did; you’re simply stating a fact about a tool:
The questionnaire is divided into three sections.
This sentence means that the division of the questionnaire into three sections is a standard characteristic of the instrument.
Using the past tense would change the meaning:
The questionnaire was divided into three sections.
The above sentence suggests that the authors utilized a three-section version of the questionnaire specifically for the current study.
Use the present tense when describing the nature of your procedure.
If you’ve adopted a procedure that has standard features, it’s better to use the present tense when describing those features:
Because the procedure requires participants to fast, participants were asked not to eat for at least six hours before arriving at the laboratory.
You may have noticed that “were asked” is in the past tense in the above example. This is because the part of the sentence after the comma describes a step that was taken in the current study.
Use the present tense when describing something generally true about a variable.
When describing some aspect of a variable that applies beyond the current study’s context, it is often appropriate to use the present tense:
Sleep duration is expected to decrease as children age.
The above sentence means that people in general should expect children to sleep less as they age.
Using the past tense could also be appropriate in sentences like this:
Sleep duration was expected to decrease among participants in the experimental condition.
But the meaning is different. This example indicates only that the authors of the current work expected sleep duration to decrease within the context of their study.
Use the present tense when referring to a table or figure.
As is the case in any other section of your paper, you should refer to tables and figures using the present tense.
Correct: Figure 1 depicts the methodological framework adopted by this study.
Incorrect: Figure 1 depicted the methodological framework adopted by this study.
Use the present perfect tense when making a general statement about the literature.
When explaining what the entire body of literature on a topic says, the present perfect tense is usually appropriate:
This measurement tool has been commonly used in the literature to evaluate the short-term impacts of sleep deprivation (e.g., Author A et al., 2025; Author B et al., 2022).
If you use the past tense, some readers might take it to mean that the tool was once commonly utilized by researchers but no longer is:
This measurement tool was commonly used in the literature to evaluate the short-term impacts of sleep deprivation (e.g., Author A et al., 2025; Author B et al., 2022).
Such readers might wonder why the current study is using a measurement tool that sounds like it may be outdated.
However, if you’re referring to a specific previous study, then you should use the simple past tense since you're referring to one specific action that was done in the past:
Author A et al. (2025) used this measurement tool to evaluate the short-term impacts of sleep deprivation.
