Report format for HE courses

Report Format • 1. Follow the generally accepted format for a report: Summary, Introduction, Main Body, Conclusions, Recommendations and Appendices. • 2. Organise your information in each section in a logical fashion with the reader in mind, usually putting things in order of priority - most important first.

Preliminaries •Title Page

•Acknowledgments The names of people and organisations that contributed in any way to your research and analysis should be mentioned here. This would ordinarily not include participants who were part of your research.

•Table of contents This lists everything contained in the report excluding the title page and the table of contents page itself. Page numbers must be included for every section listed. Short research reports of less than six pages (that is about 2000 words) would usually not include a table of contents. However, you should check with your lecturer before submitting your final draft for assessment.

•List of illustrations Lists of illustrations, diagrams or tables of figures are provided after the Table of Contents on a separate page with the heading 'List of Tables' or 'List of Figures' or similar.

•Executive summary A summary of the scope and purpose of your report, your methodology, main findings or results and the significance of these. The executive summary is written last after you have finalised your main findings.

Body of the report •Introduction This sets the context for the report. State what you plan to do in this report and why you have done this research (aim/purpose/your research question(s), important background information, key terms, and scope of the report. •Findings This is the bulk of the report. It is where the relevant data is analysed, and the main findings of the report are examined. The layout of the findings should be logically organised with each section and sub-section clearly labelled. Competing arguments, interpretations and solutions should be discussed and their relative merits evaluated. •Analysis This section may not always be necessary. But include this if you want to draw aspects of your findings together and present an explicit argument which will provide a firm basis for the conclusions and recommendations.

The Ending •Conclusion This section is quite brief and covers the significance of the findings and implications for future research or practice. It might also mention alternative research tools or research questions to follow on from this topic. •Recommendations These are included if your research was investigative and your aim to make recommendations. These are based on the findings and analyses. Recommendations can be numbered and placed in priority order. With longer reports, in addition to providing a separate list of recommendations, some writers also prefer to place their recommendations at the end of the relevant sections within the body of the report.

Supporting materials •Appendices Include materials which support your research such as raw data, details of surveys or questionnaires.

•Reference List This should include books, journal articles or other texts that you have referred to in your report. Check the referencing style required by your lecturer.

•Glossary If your report uses terminology that is specialised then it will be necessary to provide a list of these terms and their meanings in a glossary.

•Abbreviations If you use a number of abbreviated terms for names of organisations, programs etcetera in your report, you should provide a list of abbreviations which make it easy for the reader to keep track of what these mean.

Conclusion • In conclusion, remember that readers expect certain information to be in certain places.

They do not expect to hunt for what they want and the harder you make it for them the more likely they are to toss you report to one side and ignore it. So what should you do?