Freelance Writing and Research

Writing A Research Report

Everyone who undertakes a research project will eventually have to analyse the data which they have collected and then present their findings, analysis and recommendations or policy recommendations (depending on who the research is for) into a formal report. This article will give an overview of the generally accepted structure of such a report.

A research report should contain a number of different sections; what I propose to do here is to list the structure of a research report and then go through each section indivdiually. Most formal research reports will contain the following sections:

1. Executive Summary
2. Background or Introduction
3. Research Objectives and Method
4. Key findings and discussion
5. Conclusion and Recommendations
6. Appendices

Executive Summary

The executive summary contains all the sections (other than the appendices) that are in the main report. Each section is a brief summary of what is in the main report - other than the findings and discussion; in the executive summary this would be a summary of key findings. Local councils and other government organizations often have a facility where people who want to know what the research was about but don't want to read the full report, can download the executive summary.

At the end of the executive summary there would normally be an acknowledgements page thanking those who took part in the research and often those who funded the research or who contributed in any way to the project.

Introduction

All the sections in the main report are an extended version of what is in the executive summary.

This section gives a summary of the background to the project, some background literature and why the report was needed. The introduction should also include the current project and the project's aims.

Approach

This section details the approach that the project took to data collection and analysis. A structured, postal questionnaire and analysis would be a quantitative approach to the project and involve statistical analysis. Focus groups, unstructured or semi-structured interviews and participant observation are generally all qualitative approaches. Sometimes however, a quantitative approach may involve focus groups or semi-structured interviews. Some projects that I have worked on use both quantitative and qualitative methods, the executive summary of that report can be found here.

Method

This section is about the actual methods used e.g. a postal questionnaire was sent out to the following agencies.... out of 100 questionnaires sent out 50 were returned giving a 50% response rate. The data from the questionnaires was then entered into a statistical package for analysis. OR

Semi-structured interviews were undertaken with three project leaders and then a focus group was arranged for all those who benefitted from the project. The data from the interviews and the focus group was then examined for common themes.

You would then give an example of the questions that were asked or what the schedule was for the focus group. There would then be a section on analysis saying briefly how the data was analysed.

Key Findings and Discussion

This would give a brief summary of the findings of the research (almost identical with that found in the executive summary) under the headings that arose during analysis - for example if you were undertaking a project into women who worked from home two of your headings might be: Time management for work at home mothers and Setting up a home office.

Conclusion and Recommendations

This will be a summing up of the project and any recommendations that may have evolved from the findings and discussion, e.g. you might recommend that sustainable funding would increase the likely future success of the project if this has come up as an issue during the research.

Take a look at the report on  BME Groups and Meeting the Workforce Challenge linked to above.