Reports
Research reports
Body of the report
Introduction (RR)
The introduction performs a number of functions by informing the reader about the:
- Purpose of your report
- Background context of your report
- Significance of your research topic
- The key terms or concepts (this might also involve an outline of your conceptual framework)
- The limits of your discussion and the intellectual boundaries of your report.
Literature review (RR)
A literature review is an analytical survey of the sources relevant for your subject area. Depending upon the nature of your research project, such sources might include books, journal articles (including review articles), government documents, archival material, privately held personal papers, company records, newspapers and so forth.
At the postgraduate level, literature reviews will be expected to be extensive, thorough and detailed.
The point of a literature review is to enable you to find out what has been published (and by whom) in your research field. This will then help you to:
- Identify unresolved questions or under-researched areas
- Situate your own research in relation to the work of others
- Avoid 'reinventing the wheel' by pursuing research questions that others have already done in abundance
- Identify the research methods most appropriate for your project
- Be alerted to thinking on your subject of which you were unaware
- Relate your research results to previous studies.
As a result, you will be able to place your project within the appropriate theoretical and historical context.
Your literature review should be organised by themes and topics so that you can identify how each relates to your own research question. A literature review is not a series of abstracts about your sources that you link together with phrases like 'X says that …', 'on the other hand Y says …', and 'Z says …'. This sort of writing is boring. More importantly it is uninformative because it does not enable you to make clear thematic links about the issues that most concern your research - namely the relationships between previous studies and those studies and your research question.
Method (RR)
In this section of your report you are describing what you did and how you did it.
Qualitatively based research will probably not require much discussion, as much of it will be library or archive based. However, qualitative research can also involve interviews, formal questionnaires and so on. Consequently, you must provide details about how you obtained the data. This will be similar to the discussion provided in Method (LR) for quantitatively based research.
Results (RR)
In short reports you will probably not separate your results from your discussion. However, in longer reports it will make your report clearer if the two are kept as separate sections.
Your results should be presented in a logical sequence. Usually this will mean that your presentation will follow the same sequence as detailed in your section on method.
Results from quantitative research should be presented as outlined in Laboratory reports. For qualitative research most of your results will appear as textual summaries. These should be kept short, succinct and clearly written. Where appropriate, tables and diagrams should be used. Transcripts of interviews and so on can be included as a part of your Appendices.
Discussion (RR)
This is the main focus of your report. It is where the relevant data and results are analysed, and the various principles underpinning the main findings are identified and discussed. The discussion of the results should also be linked to the previous discussion presented in the literature review. Competing arguments, interpretations and solutions should be discussed and their relative merits evaluated.
Most importantly, your discussion should analyse how your findings relate to your research objectives.
Your discussion should be organised in a logical manner. Your points should be presented in (increasing) importance, beginning with the least important and working towards the most important. Each paragraph should state and develop a main point. The aim of your discussion is to explain the significance of your research to the reader.
Conclusion (RR)
Your conclusion should provide a summary of the main points that you developed in detail in your discussion. Your conclusions should be directly related to your research objectives or hypotheses.