Report Writing

As part of your course you may have to write reports. You may also have to write reports for other purposes which are not part of your course (car accidents, insurance claims, etc.).

This unit will

explain why you are asked to write reports as part of your course
suggest a way in which you should structure it.

Learning Outcomes
If you work through this unit you will be better able to:

understand why you have to write reports
structure your report.

Why Write Reports
Reports are usually written to record the methodology, results and conclusions of an investigation (especially those of a practical nature). They are used to enable your lecturer to assess (either summative or formative) the way you have approached your investigation, collected your data and evaluated your results.


Structuring Your Report
Your report should have sections similar to those that follow.

1. The Report Title

This should give the reader a very short but crystal clear idea about the topic of the Report. It should be no longer than one sentence although you may include colons and semi-colons. For experimental reports it is often best to use the relationship between the independent and dependent variables as the title e.g.

The Effects of Organising Information on its Recall.

The Golden Rule for titles is be accurate and concise not cryptic!

2. Abstract (Summary)

A very brief summary of the whole report's contents (but not simply the title of each section) should be included. Keep the abstract as brief as possible, about 100 words or a decent paragraph, whilst still being useful and informative.

Very often the reader will make the decision whether or not to read the whole report based on the abstract and therefore it should be sufficient for the reader to know what the report is all about, including what the investigation has found.

It is probably a good idea to write the abstract after you have written the rest of the report even though it is presented near the beginning.

3. Introduction

This gives the background to the investigation. It may include a brief review of the relevant literature (there is little point in writing a long review of literature just to prove that you have read it!).

The Introduction "sets up" the report by putting your investigation into its research context and giving the reader some idea as to the reasons for doing the piece of work. You should give enough background so that the reader can understand the value and importance of the research question. You should end this section with a clear statement about the aims of your own study and its experimental hypothesis where appropriate.

4. Method

Readers will want to know exactly what you did. It is important that the information here is sufficiently detailed to enable someone to exactly replicate the entire investigation. The method section is often sub-divided into the following sub-sections:

Design. A short section (one or two sentences) in which you make a clear and accurate statement of the principal features of your design. It is a formal statement outlining what sort of investigation was used.
Sample. You should provide a brief description of the critical features of any respondents used.
Who were the subjects of the study?

How were they selected?

How many were there?

The reader must be able to assess whether your findings can be generalised and if there are any variables which will confuse your results.

Materials/Apparatus. What sorts of materials were used? For example, experimental stimuli, tests, questionnaires, etc. If using established tests/materials, these should be fully referenced. Any apparatus used should be described accurately (use diagrams/photographs?).
Procedure. This should be a description of exactly how you carried out the investigation, i.e. what exactly happened during the investigation, from the start to the finish, in enough detail to allow replication. Remember to use third party, past tense, e.g. "The questionnaire was given to all 1st year students on the B.A. Business Studies degree at their first lecture. The day after the deadline for return of the questionnaires had passed, the answers to each question were recorded using simple tally charts."
Method of Analysis. As your analysis is part of what you did, you should include a statement of what methods of analysis were used and why they were chosen.
5. Results

You should start this section with a brief outline of you data including a reminder of what the data was (e.g. "a total of 45 questionnaires were returned", "during the 15 minute observation, the routes of 78 individuals were recorded"). This must be followed by a summary of your results including descriptive statistics. The use of tables and graphs is not sufficient, you must include some explanatory text.

N.B. Raw data should be included in an Appendix.

If you are using inferential statistics these should come next. State precisely how the data was analysed. Give the degrees of freedom, the significance levels of the results and whether you have accepted or rejected the experimental hypotheses.

A very common mistake is to confuse the boundary between the Results section and the Discussion section which follows. The Results section shows what you have found (numerical data and results of statistical analyses): the Discussion section focuses on the most reasonable explanation of the findings.


6. Discussion

This covers the interpretations of the results, evaluation of the theoretical significance of the findings and a general discussion of the investigation. It should answer questions such as

What has your investigation shown?

Why was it important?

What theory does it support or contradict?

How does it fit with other studies?

What are the most plausible explanations of your findings?

Why do these explanations make sense?

Are there any possible criticisms of the investigation?

How with hindsight could the study have been improved?

The discussion should

build on the material in the introduction
evaluate the adequacy of your methodology
suggest design features that may have affected the results
include whether the results would be different under different conditions.
Also you could comment on what new studies would be necessary in order to test the interpretations and theoretical speculations derived from the results of your present study.

7. References

Make sure references are given correctly. Some specific examples follow for referencing

A whole book
Martin, P. and Bateson, P. (1986) Measuring Behaviour: An Introductory Guide. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
An article in a Journal
Furnham, A and Kirkcaldy, B. (1996) The health beliefs and behaviour of orthodox and complementary medicine clients. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 35(1), pp 49-62.
A paper or chapter in a book containing items by a number of different authors
Arntz, A and Schmidt, J.M. (1989) Perceived Control and Experience of Pain. In Steptoe, A. and Appels, A. (Eds) Stress, Personal Control and Health. Chichester. John Wiley and Sons.
This is covered in more detail in the Citation and Referencing Unit.

8. Appendices

Do not put results here: only the raw data should be presented in an Appendix.

Some other materials may be usefully included in an Appendix (e.g. blank questionnaires, copy of written tests used, etc.).

N.B. Do not include anything in an appendix that hasn't been referred to in the text.

Summary
This unit has covered why reports are important and given guidance on how they should be structured. Your subject tutor may give you further instructions.


What Should I Do Now?
When you have to write a report, read these guidelines again to enable you to

realise the importance of the report
give your reports a consistent structure