What is “research report writing” and the best way to write a research report?

Research report writing is regarded as a process through which data which has been previously collected by researchers is analysed. The research is mostly gathered through surveys, interviews or questionnaires. Qualitative methods are also used quite often for research purposes.

Research report writing does not usually talk about a particular subject or discipline, as it can be used in many subjects with a singular purpose. As they have a particular purpose, the audience of a research report is usually very specific. The main objective of research report writing is to inform the audience about particular details that are related to your topic that will help them look at the topic in a different way. Usually, research reports are used to convey information from the lower levels of the organisation to the management level which is responsible for making decisions. The best research reports are quite accurate and stick to the point. They employ a proper structure of formatting and sentence structure to make sure there are no gaps in information.

There are many sections of a research report which are individually responsible for the detail that is required while writing a research report. We have detailed the sections of a research report which students and researchers need to focus on:

1. Summary or abstract

This is the first part of your research report writing which needs to be taken quite seriously. Many students fail to see the importance of writing an effective abstract. The whole purpose of writing a summary/ abstract is to include summaries of the research that you have conducted in small paragraphs. You must make sure that all of the parts of your research are explained properly so the reader is fully informed about the details that will follow in the other sections.

2. Introduction

There is always a purpose behind writing a research report. It does not matter if you are trying to inform your upper management about changes in the market, or if you are a marketer trying to present data that you have uncovered from extensive research, a research report will always have a purpose. In this section, you are expected to deal with the question of writing a thesis statement and briefly answer who you intend to write about your topic. Like in the abstract at the beginning of your research paper, you should try to address some of your findings which are the most important.

3. What types of research did you use?

This can be considered as one of the most important sections of your research report as reviewers and professors are only interested in two things. The first thing is research which is extremely useful in the context of the subject and the second thing is the analysis that the writer performs on the research, to show they understand all of the depths and complexities of the subject. Let’s discuss the first part of data collection as it is the most important one. Every aspect of data collection that you have used in your report needs to be mentioned in this section as this is where the readers of your report will spend the most time reading all about what kind of research has been conducted. The type of research methodology is also very important in this section as different research methods will show different results. So you must be careful with this section as it is quite sensitive.

4. What are the results?

After you have collected all of your information and organised it properly in the last section, it is time for you to write the results from the data that you have collected. Just make sure that this section is not very long. It should be long enough to effectively portray everything that needs to be said but it should be too long and filled with data as your report will be given to the upper management of your company, and they need quick and reliable information to make good decisions.

5. What do the results tell you?

In this section, you will be tasked with writing a long analysis of the results that you mentioned in the previous section. You might be asked to compare your findings to other findings of older reports which are of a similar nature. Try not to leave anything out when you are writing this part of your report as it is a detailed analysis of your results and data.

6. Conclusion

This is the final section of your research report writing where you are required to conclude all of the other sections as briefly as possible. Although it is common knowledge, you should make sure that you do not introduce any new ideas in your conclusion as this will lead the train of thought of your reader away from the points you need them to focus on. Besides this, you will need to create a structured bibliography to give credit to all the writers whose work you took help from.

Sofia Onni is the Second year Ph.D. student, she holds an M.A. in mathematics, an M.S in the library and Information Science. She also provides her services at Online Assignment Help.