Preparing research report

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• Preparing research report

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Preparing research report

• Preparing a research report involves other
  activities besides writing in fact, writing is
  actually the last step in the preparation
  process.
• Before writing can take place, the results of the
  research project must be fully understood and
  thought must be given to what the report will
  say.
• Thus, preparing a research report involves three
  steps understanding, organising and writing.
• The general guidelines that should be followed
  for any report or research paper are as follows

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Consider the audience

• The information resulting from the study is
  ultimately of importance to users, who will use
  the results to make decisions. Thus, the report
  has to be understood by them the report should
  not be too technical and not too much jargon
  should be used.
• This is a particular difficulty when reporting
  the results of statistical analysis where there
  is a high probability that few, if any, of the
  target audience have a grasp of statistical
  concepts. Hence, for example, there is a need to
  translate such terms as standard deviation,
  significance level, confidence interval etc. into
  everyday language. This is sometimes not an easy
  task but it may be the case that researchers who
  find it impossible do not themselves have a
  sufficiently good grasp of the statistical
  methods they have been using.

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• M 1sd (A)
• M 2sd (B)
• 1sd is 14.74
• M 115.2

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Be concise, but precise

• On the one hand, a written report should be
  complete in the sense that it stands by itself
  and that no additional clarification is needed.
  On the other hand, the report must be concise and
  must focus on the critical elements of the
  project and must exclude unimportant issues.
  There is a great temptation, on the part of
  inexperienced researchers, to seek to convey all
  that they did in order to obtain information and
  to complete the research. This is done almost as
  if the researcher is afraid that the audience
  will not other wise appreciate the time, effort
  and intellectual difficulties involved. What the
  researcher has to come to realise is that he/she
  will be judged by the contribution towards
  solving the marketing problem and not by the
  elegance or effort involved in the research
  methodology

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Understand the results and drawing conclusions

• The managers who read the report are expecting to
  see interpretive conclusions in the report. The
  researcher must therefore understand the results
  and be able to interpret these. Simply
  reiterating facts will not do, and the researcher
  must ask him/herself all the time "So what?"
  what are the implications. If the researcher is
  comparing the client's product with that of a
  competitor, for example, and reports that 60
  percent of respondents preferred brand A to brand
  B, then this is a description of the results and
  not an interpretation of them. Such a statement
  does not answer the 'So what?' question.

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CONTENTS OF RESEARCH REPORT/ARTICLE

• 1. Title
• Title of the study brief, unique, and
  interesting
• Omit obvious words and phrases such as A study
  on . . . and An investigation of . . .
  whenever you can as well.
• Authors major contributor first
• Contacts address, affiliation, email, and so on
• You might also include other information on the
  title page such as contract number, a security
  classification such as CONFIDENTIAL, or a copy
  number depending on the nature of the report you
  are writing.

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Abstract

• Abstract summarizes the whole paper
• Most frequently read by people
• Abstract should stand alone
• 200 words or so
• 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
  results, all in one short (about 150 words)
  paragraph. As a result, you should usually write
  the abstract last.

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• An abstract serves 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 a papers 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.

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• Introduction Construction sites are major
  contributors to nonpoint source (NPS) pollution.
  However, a lack of personnel to enforce
  erosion control regulations and limited
  voluntary compliance means that few developers
  apply effective erosion control.
• Research problem New approaches are needed to
  increase erosion control on construction sites
  if this source of NPS pollution is to be
  significantly reduced.
• Body This study tests whether an economic
  advantage exists for developers who use
  vegetative cover for erosion control, independent
  of advantages gained in addressing environmental
  or regulatory concerns. Improving residential lot
  appearance from muddy brown to green grass may
  increase the appeal of the lot to buyers.
• Results A market survey shows that homebuyers
  and realtors perceive vegetated lots to be worth
  more than unvegetated lots, and this increased
  value exceeds the cost of seeding.
• Conclusion Thus, developers can now be
  encouraged to invest in vegetative cover because
  of the potentially high return on the investment. 

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Introduction

• Explain why your topic is interesting
• Summarize what other researchers have done about
  the topic or relevant topics
• Make a statement of problem (It was the purpose
  of the study to examine the relationship between
  PCSA of calf and the jump performance)
• Introduction does not have to be too technical
  and does not have to involve too field-specific
  jargons.
• Mention your hypothesis (e.g. The increased step
  length will increase the magnitude of vertical
  ground reaction force)

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Methods

• Methods present all the details of the study
  methodology
• Subject
• Equipment
• Experimental design
• Statistics

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Results

• Results present the results of the study in a
  form which conveys their meaning
• Consider the best way of presentation
• Figures figures should be self-explanatory with
  the corresponding caption units, axes, and
  legends
• Tables tables should be self-explanatory with
  the corresponding caption units
• Word descriptions

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• Results present the results of the study in a
  form which conveys their meaning
• For example, suppose you monitoring how long it
  takes to approve or disapprove a credit
  application for a customer.
• From your control charts (assume the process is
  in control), you have estimated the process
  average to be 14 working days and the standard
  deviation to be 2 days. After constructing a
  histogram on the days to approve or disapprove a
  credit application, you discover that it is
  bell-shaped.

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• Since the process is in statistical control, you
  know that about 67 of the time, it will take 12
  to 16 days to process a credit application 95
  of the time it will take 10 to 18 days and 99.7
  of the time it will take 8 to 20 days.

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Table 6 Correlation among the selected variables

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• For example, the three unique correlation
  coefficients show there is a positive correlation
  between employees' number of years of education
  and their current salary. This positive
  correlation coefficient (.661) indicates that
  there is a statistically significant (p lt .001)
  linear relationship between these two variables
  such that the more education a person has, the
  larger that person's salary is. Also observe that
  there is a statistically significant (p lt .001)
  negative correlation coefficient (-.252) for
  the association between education level and
  previous experience, indicating that the linear
  relationship between these two variables is one
  in which the values of one variable decrease as
  the other increases. The third correlation
  coefficient (-.097) also indicates a negative
  association between employee's current salaries
  and their previous work experience, although this
  correlation is fairly weak.

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Chi-square goodness of fit

• A chi-square goodness of fit test (equivalent to
  one sample t-test) allows us to test whether the
  observed proportions for a categorical variable
  differ from hypothesized proportions. 
• For example, let's suppose that we believe that
  the general population consists of 10 Indian,
  10 Thai, 10 Chinese and 70 Bumiputra.  We want
  to test whether the observed proportions from our
  sample differ significantly from these
  hypothesized proportions. 

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• These results show that racial composition in our
  sample does not differ significantly from the
  hypothesized values that we supplied (chi-square
  with three degrees of freedom 5.029, p .170).

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Table 1 Gender by Type of Schools
X2 (df1) 0.047, p .828
These results indicate that there is no
statistically significant relationship between
the type of school attended and gender
(chi-square with one degree of freedom 0.047, p
0.828).  
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Table 3 Demographic information of respondents
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Data presentation

• Easy-to-understand tables and graphics will
  greatly enhance the readability of the written
  research report. As a general rule, all tables
  and figures should contain
• 1. Identification number corresponding to the
  list of tables and the list of figures 2. A title
  that conveys the content of the table or figure,
  also corresponding to the list of tables and the
  list of figures, and
• 3. Appropriate column labels and row labels for
  tables, and figure legends defining specific
  elements in the figure.

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Conclusion and Discussion

• Summarize the findings and implications of the
  work
• Do not present specific results which should be
  mentioned in Results
• Present what can be concluded from the results
• Discussion puts into context the results of the
  study
• Highlight the key findings
• Show the interaction with other research
• Implication of findings
• Possible future research arising
• Accept or reject hypotheses

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References

• Give credits to whom they are due." This is where
  you cite formally all your sources of
  information. It is your formal manner of saying
  "Thank you." Moreover, "Fair is Fair." In
  addition, enumerating your sources of information
  offers your readers the opportunity to verify or
  redo your study.
• References is a list of all the work referred to
  within the main body of the text
• All referenced work should be listed
• Different journals specify different formats
• The reference format for a journal article is
  usually different from one for a book

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Appendices

• These are your provisions for any "excess
  baggage." Attached all relevant materials
  (tables, graphs, computations, photos, CDs, etc.)
  cited or used in the study- all those relevant
  stuff that you did not include in the body of
  your report for reasons that they would only
  clutter your presentation

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