Session 3: Report Writing

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 Report Writing
• The writing process consists of five primary
stages:
1. Planning to write
2. Organizing your information
3. Determine an appropriate medium
4. Writing the draft
5. Revising

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 Writing process
• Gather →Organize→ Focus→ Draft→ Edit
Gather
• Articles, Books, Financial Statement,
Interviews, Databases, Information from world
wide Web, Brain Storming, personal Notes,
and others.
Organize
• Strategic order, batching or grouping ideas,
Heading, introduction, Body and conclusion.

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 Writing process (cont.)
Focus
• “Skim only technique”, ”Nutshell”, “teach” your
ideas, elevator techniques, and others.
Draft
• Organize and focus first, Compose in any order,
avoid editing, get a typed copy and leave a time
gap before editing.
Edit
• Edit for strategy, for macro issues, for micro
issues and edit for correctness.
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 Characteristics of a Good Report
 Precision
 The accuracy of facts
 Relevance
 Conciseness
 Render-orientation
 Simple language
 Grammatical accuracy
 Unbiased recommendation
 Clarity
 Attractive
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The 7C’s for Report writing

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The 7C’s for report writing … cont’d

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4S’s for report writing

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 Importance of Reports
• Some of the reasons we write reports are to:
1. Inform
2. Make proposals or recommendations for
change
3. Analyze and solve problems
4. Present the findings of an investigation or
project
5. Record progress

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 Know Your Reader
• At the most basic level, report writing seeks to
convince the reader that what is being said is true.
• Some reports will try to persuade the reader to take an
action or think about something in a certain way.
• Before you write, ask yourself these questions about
your reader:
1. How interested or involved in the subject is my
reader?
2. How knowledgeable is he or she on the subject?
3. What is my reader’s purpose for reading? To make
a decision? To be better informed?
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 Know Your Reader… cont’d
4. Does my reader have special concerns or
strong views about the subject? What are they?
5. How does my reader regard me personally and
professionally?
Types of Readers
 There are two general types of business
readers: skimmers and skeptics.
 Your documents will be most effective if you
write for both types of readers.

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 Know Your Reader … cont’d

• Skimmers are readers that are typically very busy.

• Pressed for time, they often skim documents in a rather
short period of time.
• The documents you prepare for skimmers should:

1. State the main point clearly and up front

2. Place the most important information at the beginning
or ending of paragraphs
3. Highlight key dates or figures.
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 Know Your Reader … cont’d
 The second type of reader is skeptic. A skeptic is a
reader that is cautious and doubtful.
 Skeptical readers will tend to read a document
carefully, questioning its validity and the writer’s
claims.
 In order to meet the needs of the skeptical reader, it
is necessary to support your statements with
sufficient details and evidence.
 Provide specific examples, numbers, dates, names,
and percentages to meet the needs of the skeptical
reader.
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 Readers’ Expectations
• Three of the most common expectations are that your
writing will:
1. Keep it simple
2. Avoid long confusing sentences
3. Use clear sentences

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 The outline

• An outline has much the same use to the technical writer that a
map has to the serious traveler.
• You also need a route in order to get where you are going in
your writing.
• The route you take is your method of development. The actual
physical map that you will use is your outline.
• Like a map, your outline will help you in a number of different
ways:
1. It forces parallel structure of your ideas.
2. It allows for easy evaluation of your organization and
development.
3. It shows you completeness.
4. It save you time.
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1. Outlining forces parallel structure of your ideas
• This simply means that ideas of equal importance get equal
emphasis.
• Ideas of lesser importance are always subordinate to some idea
of greater importance and related to that idea.
• The very act of outlining forces this.
I. First Main Idea
A First subtopic subordinate to I
B. Second subtopic subordinate to I
II. Second Main Idea

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2. Outlining allows for easy evaluation of your
organization and development
Has a dual advantage:
1. evaluate your approach to your writing
assignment,
2. anyone who must pass approval on the writing
project can give preliminary approval.
• This has tremendous value in speeding up the
process of revising, correcting, and rewriting.

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3. Outlining shows you completeness
• There is nothing worse than trying to write
something and getting to the end of it only to
realize that you have left something out.
• Outlining allows you to rework transitions
and make sure that what you have to move or
add fits smoothly before even writing.
• You can spot the problem quickly and make
the addition or deletion easily.

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4. Outlining saves you time
• The greatest value in outlining and, ironically,
the most overlooked.
• Writers who outline as a regular, systematic
procedure save themselves time because the
outline will point out defects clearly and allow
their repair long before they are in final prose.
• By not taking the time to write an outline, you
probably are causing yourself the
inconvenience and aggravation of time
consuming rewrites.
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• You can't outline in your mind.
• You must write it down on paper and follow it as you
write.
• There are basically three ways to format an outline:

1. Simple list
2. Academic outline
3. Engineering outline

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 Report Writing Components

Format of Technical Reports

1. Front material

2. Main Text

3. Back matter

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DATA MANAGEMENT AND DOCUMENTATION
 Presentation Agenda
• Overview of data management
• Data management checklist
• Overview….Data Vs Information
• The Data Management Cycle
• Data management
• Data Management fundamentals
• Backup, security & archiving
• Data sharing
• Factors affecting quality of data management
 Brain storming

• What is data management and documentation?

• What is the difference between data and
information?
 Overview of Data Management
• Data management is the practice of designing, collecting,
keeping, analyzing and using data securely, efficiently, and cost-
effectively
• The data management strategy should answer the following
general questions:
1. Where did the data come from (source)?
2. Will we get more of this data periodically (frequency)?
3. How will the data be used and stored (utilization and security)?
4. When does this data become irrelevant (archive, disposal)?
 Data Management Checklist
• What type of data will be produced? (routine monitoring/ annual
survey/ baseline –end line; research)
• What file formats will be used?
• Any special privacy or security requirements?
• Any sharing requirements?
• Any other donor requirements?
• What directory and file naming convention will be used?
• What project and data identifiers will be assigned?
• Which tools or software needed to create/ process/visualize the data?
• Is there a storage and backup strategy?
• Who is responsible for various data management roles?
• How long should it be retained? (project life? beyond?)
 Overview….Data Vs Information
• Data is raw, unorganized facts that need to be processed.
• Data can be text, word, or number, and, if not put into
context, means little or nothing to a human
• E.g. students’ test scores ( this number has no way of
speaking for themselves)
• Information: When data is processed, organized, structured or
presented in a given context so as to make it useful
• E.g. The average score of a class or the entire school is
information that can be derived from individual data.
 Overview….Data Vs Information….

• Data has Purpose and value

• Privacy
• Data ownership
• Liability
• Public perception
• Security
• Standards and Data Quality
The Data Management Cycle
Data management
 Data Management fundamentals
• Good data management is fundamentalFor research excellence
• For demonstrating project outcome/ accountability
• For high quality data
• For data sharing, replication and reuse
• For learning/knowledge management
• For long-term sustainability and accessibility
• For data security
• For reputational benefit
 Backup, security & archiving

• Two important requirements of data management: Backing up

your data securely
• Consideration for your archiving requirements
• Backup refers to your 'live' or 'working' data Essential to reduce
the risk of losing data through accidental deletion or hard-drive
failure
• Security refers to keeping your data safe Essential for controlling
access and avoiding corruption or misuse
 Data sharing
• Approaches vary, depending on: research environment and discipline
• Funder/donor requirements
• Multiple routes to sharing data, including: depositing with a specialist
data centre, data archive or data bank
• submitting them to a journal to support a publication
• depositing them in an local research group or institutional repository
• making them available online via a project or institutional website
• making them available informally between researchers on a peer-to-
peer basis
• Donor website (e.g. USAID has a Development Experience Clearing
House (DEC) website) to upload all project/monitoring/survey data
 Factors affecting quality of data management
• Quality of data management is affected by:
Sample design
• Sample size
• Questionnaire design
• Data collection approaches
• Data Cleaning, and storage
• Employing software
 3 things you gained

 2 things you will use in job/ work place right

away

 1 thing you want to learn more about

Thank You!

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