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Understanding the Different Section of Your Report

Research are generally divided up into sections. Each section has a specific purpose, and often there are specific guidelines for formatting each section. It’s always best to consult a style manual for your discipline, to talk to other people in your discipline who have written reports, and to look at similar reports that have been published in order to more fully understand the expectations for reports in your field.

Generally, a research report will include the following sections:

• Title page
• Abstract
• Table of contents
• Introduction
• Body
• Recommendations
• References
• Appendices

Title Page

The title page of the research report normally contains four mains pieces of information: the report title, the name of the person; company or organization for whom the report has been prepared; the name of the author and the company or university which originated the report; and the date the report was completed. You might also include other information on the title page such as contact number a security classification such as CONFIDENTIAL, or a copy number depending on the nature of the report you are writing.

How do I come up with a title?

It is important to take your audience into account when developing a title for your research report. It is a good idea to develop a “working title” for your project as you draft your report initially, but be open to changing your title after you finish writing to accurately reflect your project. Be sure that your title is accurate; it needs to reflect the major emphasis of your paper and prepare readers for the information you present. Also, develop a title that will be interesting to readers and that will make them want to read the rest of your report. Try to imagine what you would want to see in the title if you were searching for your paper by keywords; include the keywords in the title when possible and when they are relevant.

There are four common approaches that writers often take to writing their title. Notice how these approaches help to convey the nature of the research and introduce the topic.

1. Include the name of the problem, hypothesis, or theory that was tested or is discussed, for example, Connection and Determinism in a Syntactic Parser.
2. Include the name of the phenomenon or subject investigated, for example, The Human Brain: Conservation of the Subcortical Auditory System.
3. Name the method used to investigate a phenomenon or method developed for application, for example, A Practical EMG-Based Human-Computer Interface for Users with Motor Disabilities.
4. Provide a brief description of the results obtained, for example, The Drimolen Skull: The Most Complete Australopithecine Cranium and Mandible to Date.

Omit obvious words and phrases such as “A study on…” and “An investigation of…” whenever you can as well. These make your title unnecessarily wordy.

Abstract

“An abstract is an accurate representation of the contents of a document in an abbreviated form” (Porush 75). An abstract can be the most difficult part of the research report to write because in it you must introduce your subject matter, tell what was done, and present selected result, all in one short (about 150 words) paragraph. As a result, you should usually write the abstract last.

You will need to write an abstract when your dissertation for a higher degree (M.S. or Ph.D) is accepted, when you submit an article for publication, or when your report will be disseminated to an audience that needs a summary of its contents. You may not have to write an abstract report for reports written for a course.

An abstract serves as an important function in a research report; it communicates the scope of your paper and the topics discussed to your reader, and, in doing so, it facilitates research. Abstracts help scientists to locate materials that are relevant to their research from among published papers, and many times scientists will only read paper’s abstract in order to determine whether the paper will be relevant to them. Considering your audience and their needs will help you to determine what should be included in your abstract.

Ask yourself a few questions.

• Why would another researcher be interested in this research?
• What are the most important aspects of the research? What should a reader be sure to know about the research?
• What information will the reader have to have in order to understand the most important aspects?
• What are the main points from each section of your reports? Summarize each section in one sentence, if possible.

The most common type of abstract is the informative abstract. An informative abstract summarizes the key information from every major section in the body of the report, and provides the key facts and conclusion from the body of the report. A good way to develop an informative abstract is to devote a sentence or two of the major parts of your report. If space permits, you can provide contextual information such as background and the problem and the significances of the research, but you can also omit contextual information because the abstract is not supposed to serve as an introduction to the subject matter of the report.

Summarize rather than describe your report in an informative abstract. Phrases such as “This report discusses” or “Several solutions are considered” describe what the content of the report will be rather than actually summarize the report’s main points or solution. Someone readig your informative abstract should have a clear, albeit limited, understanding of the scope and nature of your research, as well as the conclusion you reach.

Table of Contents

Most reports will contain a table of contents that lists the report’s contents and demonstrates how the report has been organized. you should list each major section in your table of contents. Sometimes, you  may want to use additional descriptive headings throughout your report and for your table of contents. Using descriptive headings can help readers to see how your report is organized if the section heading are not clear enough. This is likely to be true especially if most of your report is contained in one long section called Body or Discussion that includes everything from the materials and methods you used to the results you found and the conclusions you draw. In this case, it might be best to include additional headings to indicate where readers can look specifically to read about your materials and methods or conclusions.

Introduction

Contents

The introduction prepares the readers for the discussion that follows by introducing the purpose, scope and background of the research. The audience for your report largely determines the length of the introduction and the amount of detail include in it. You should include enough detail so that someone knowledgeable in your field can understand the subject and your research.

You should begin the introduction at the top of the new pages, preceded on the page only be the report’s full title. The title is followed by the word Introduction, which can be either a center or side heading. Most introductions contains three parts to provide context for the research: purpose, scope and background information. These parts often overlap one another, and sometimes one of them may be omitted simply because there is no reason for it to be included.

It is very important to consider the purpose of your research and your report in the introduction. If you do not completely understand what the purpose is, there is little chance that the reader will understand your purpose either. The following questions help you come up withe purpose of your research and your reason for writing a report:

• What did your research discover or prove?
• What kind of problem did you work out?
• Why did you work on this problem? If the problem was assigned, try to imagine why the instructor assigned this particular problem; what were you supposed to learn from working on it?
• Why are you writing this report?
• What should your reader know or understand when they finish reading this report?

Scope refers to the ground covered by the report and will outline the method of investigation used in the project. Considering the scope of your project in the introduction will help readers to understand the parameters of your research and your report. It will also help you identify limiting factors on your research and acknowledge these early in the report.

The following questions help you to think about the scope both of your research and your report:

• How did you work on the research problem?
• Why did you work on the problem the way you did?
• Were there other obvious approaches you could have taken to this problem? What were the limitations you faced that prevented your trying other approaches?
• What factors contributed to the way you worked on this problem? What factor was most important in deciding how to approach the problem?

The Body of Your Report

The body is usually the longest part of the research report, and it includes all the evidence that readers need to have in order to understand the subject. This evidence includes details, data, results of tests, facts, and conclusions. Exactly what you include in the body and how it is organized will be determined by the context in which you are writing. Be sure to check the specific guidelines under which you are working to see if your readers are expecting you to organize the body in a particular way.

Generally, the body of the research report will include three distinct sections:

1. a section on theories, models and your own hypothesis
2. a section in which you discuss the materials and methods you used in your research
3. a section in which you present and interpret the results of your research

You will usually use a heading to identify the beginning of each of these sections.

Theories, Models and Hypothesis

You may or may not need to include a section in which you discuss the theories and models upon which you research project is based. This section can be very important, especially for research articles, formal reports, or scientific papers, but sometimes it will not be required for lab reports and other homework assignments. If you do not have to include a section on theories and models, it will usually be because you are not positing an original hypothesis. This is likely to happen in a course for which you write lab reports you may be required to conduct research to practice applying the theories and models you are learning about, but you will probably be given your hypothesis and won’t need to explain in your lab report where and how the hypothesis was developed since you did not actually develop it yourself. Regardless of whether you include a section on theories and models, your research will be informed by models and theories that other researchers have developed.

If you do need to include a section on theories, models, and your hypothesis, this section does not necessarily need to come before the materials and methods section of the report’s body. Placing this discussion early in the paper does help to frame the experiment and the data you will discuss later on, but some writers prefer to save this information until the result section of the report. Other writers prefer to include their discussion of theories and models in the introduction. If you decide to introduce theories and models in an early section of your paper, you can return to them later on in the report.

Theories attempt to explain how nature works; they are accepted if they work and because they help to explain most of the evidence that is available. Theories are not scientific laws; there is no absolute confirmation that they are true. Any project you undertake will certainly be founded upon a theory or set of theories. Models generally grow out of theories. They are “precise, mechanical construction[s] of how phenomena will behave” (Porush 100). Some models evolve even through there is no theory to explain them. In either case, models provide an important guide for future research and can help you set a program of study. However, it is important to understand that models are not necessarily the phenomena that you are interested in researching.

In most cases, you will need to include information about the theories and models you inform your research because these theories and models will directly affect the hypothesis that you propose and on which you base your research. When you develop hypotheses, you predict what you will find after you conduct your research. This prediction is based on existing theories, models, evidence and logic.

How do I write about theories, models and hypotheses?

It can seem overwhelming to explain and elaborate on theories and models while also developing your hypothesis. After all, in this section of the paper you will not discuss the data you found or how you found it; instead, you will introduce the theoretical basis for your project. Such a task can be intimidating, especially if you disagree with earlier theories or models and need to explain their weakness. It can help to consider your primary goals for this section. It’s always best to talk what your professor, your advisor, or people in your workplace about what the best ways are to write reports in your field, or to consult other reports and use them as models or guides for your writing.

You may need to:

• define and explain your hypothesis and theories and models you used to develop it.
• define and explain competing hypotheses, theories and models, including their strengths and weakness.
• compare and contrast the specific points where they agree or disagree.

Prewriting on this section can also help you feel more comfortable including this information in your report and will help you to decide what needs to be included. The following questions are good ones to work through:

• What do I expect this experiment to reveal? Why?
• How does my hypothesis directly answer the question posed by the problem?
• How does the hypothesis fit in with other hypothesis or more general theory? How will my work challenge or support the work of others?
• What is the current theory to which it relates?
• What are alternative views to this theory? What are the strengths and weakness of those views?
• On what literature did I or can I base my explanation?