Research Report

Good morning everyone! We are here to discuss about research report, but first, let us define research.

According to Webster's Dictionary, research can be a "careful or diligent search," a "studious inquiry or
examination... aimed at the discovery and interpretation of facts...in the light of new facts, or practical
application of such new or revised theories or laws" or "the collecting of information about a particular
subject."

Research report can be differentiated from a research paper because a research report is a paper
reporting research that has already been conducted while research paper is the research itself. Research
report is more concerned with the second definition of research while research paper is more concerned
with the third.

Purpose of Research Report

The purpose of research report is to present the results of your research, but more importantly to
provide a persuasive argument to readers of what you have found.

Structure and Components

A research report is typically made up of three main divisions which are: (1) preliminary material, (2)
body, and (3) supplementary material.

The individual sections included in the preliminary material are the title of report, table of
contents, and abstract/synopsis.

Title of Report

The title is the concise heading indicating what the report is about. The title ought to sufficiently inform
the readers of the significant aspects of the study that can include the population, focus of the report, as
well as the unique methods. It should be as short as possible and include essential key words.
For example, a title may read, Kerochee Staff Attitudes towards the usage of mobile phones in Staff /
Team meetings.

Title Page Format:

The author's name (e.g., Mary B. Chung) should follow the title on a separate line, followed by the
author's affiliation (e.g., Department of Chemistry, Central State College, Central, AR 76123), the date, and
possibly the origin of the report (e.g., In partial fulfillment of a Senior Thesis Project under the
supervision of Professor Danielle F. Green, June, 1997).

Table of Contents

It is the list of major sections and heading with page numbers.

Abstract/Synopsis
The abstract/executive summary involves a single paragraph that contains a summary of the entire
report (Biddix, 2009). Conversely, the role of the abstract is to provide a brief impression of the report so
that the readers can instantly decide on whether they should read the complete article or not.

The abstract should concisely describe the topic, the scope, the principal findings, and the conclusions.
Since the primary objective of an abstract is to communicate to the reader the essence of the paper, it
should provide sufficient information to describe the important features of the project in the absence of
the rest of the document. The abstract would serve as a key source of indexing terms and key words to be
used in information retrieval.

Therefore, the aim ought to be on what is essential, such as the participants, in this case, the Kerochee
Staff members as well as the results, and a brief discussion on what the results portray. Conversant with
the Kerochee Staff members, the possible results indicates that most of the staff members find the usage
of mobile phones as a key issue in team meetings. Thus, the report can come to a conclusion that personal
mobile phones appear to be disruptive and ought to be switched off in meetings.

In the body, the individual sections included are the introduction, literature review, methodology,
results, discussion, conclusion, and recommendations.

Introduction

The introduction provides the rationale for the research. This rationale should address four issues:

What is the nature of the issue or problem the research investigates?

Why is this worthy of investigation?
What have previous researchers discovered about this issue or problem?
What does your research attempt to prove?

Therefore, the purpose of the introduction is to introduce the reader to the topic and discuss the
background of the issue at hand.

Literature Review

The literature review section provides the other relevant research in this area. All of the research you
completed while developing your study goes here. It is important to bring the reader up to date and lead
them into why you decided to conduct this study. You may cite research related to motivation and
success after college and argue that gaining prior work experience may delay college graduation but also
helps to improve the college experience and may ultimately further an individuals career. You may also
review research that argues against your theory. Literature review is usually included as part of the
introduction.

Methodology

The methodology sections provide exhaustive descriptions of the hypotheses, procedures, the
participants, as well as the materials, and the details used. Thus, the section explains exactly how other
individuals can replicate the researchers experiments. Hence, the details will tend to encompass the
exact procedures that a researcher followed, how the participants were selected, as well as the exact
materials that were issued out to the participants.
Therefore, according to our sample report, the method open for application involves the use of
questionnaires as well as investigating the Kerochee staff members attitudes towards the use of personal
mobile phones in team meetings. To effectively assess the social attitudes towards the use of mobile
phones, Lekert scales can be employed within the questionnaires. In addition, the issued questionnaires
also inclines to offer open ended responses to acquire more additional comments as well as ensure
anonymity by providing no personal information. Therefore, this section is essential since science is
developed on the ideology that experiments can be carried out over and over and the speculated results
will often be similar.

Results

The results section contains the information as well as the findings of a researchers study. Subsequently,
the researcher provides the demographic information to describe the participants, restates the research
questions (quantitative and qualitative) as well as the statistical findings and easy to read tables as well
as charts among others. A case in point involves the Kerochee staff with 80 percent response rates to the
questionnaire. From Table 1 below, the results are vivid proofing that mobile phones are disruptive as
well as should be switched off in meetings.

Table 1: Responses from Questionnaires

Source: RMIT, 2012

Discussions

The discussion section interprets as well as evaluates the results of the study against the existing body
and research literature. For instance, from Table 1, it is evident that 80% of the recipients consider
mobile phones to be highly disruptive as well as there is strong support for mobile phones to be switched
off in meetings. Nonetheless, authors also tend to point out the any anomalies found within the results in
the relative section (RMIT, 2012). Accordingly, the discussion section often attempts to link the results to
a bigger picture as well as illustrating how the relative results can be applied. For instance, this can be
achieved by restating the overall research question as well as describing how the outcomes, when taken
together, can answer the overall question and lastly by describing how these results can confirm and
contrast the literature reviewed.

Conclusion

The conclusion section provides the concise conclusion to the study. Thus, the conclusion should briefly
re-states how well the study design met the study aims. It should emphasize major findings and
implications of findings as addressed in the discussion section. The conclusion also briefly re-caps any
faults or limitations covered in full in the discussion section.

Recommendations
This includes suggestions for what needs to be done as a result of your findings. Recommendations are
usually listed in order of priority.

References or Bibliography

Throughout the paper and especially in the introduction section, articles from other authors are
cited. The reference section entails a list of every author as well as papers that have been cited within the
research report. Hence, any facts, ideas, as well as direct quotations that the researcher has used within
the report must be cited as well as referenced according to the American Psychological Association (APA)
(Kowalczyk, 2014).

Appendices

Appendices should include only material that is relevant and assists the reader in understanding the
current study.