MOL Research Reports

Last revised: 01/05/06

Research reports provide opportunities to develop purposeful counsel for leadership of organizations. The experience of writing the report facilitates moving beyond academic exercises and into professional practice. The more you address actual issues the better, including:

• Developing skills to identify problems and suggest solutions that accompany organizational leadership.
• Dealing with real world scenarios. 
• Organizing available resources (which addresses managing research process skills such as building time, budget estimates, etc.). 
• Understanding what is occurring (which addresses nomothetic or idiographic approaches of social science).
• Envisioning how to help organizational leadership address recognizable problems.

Reports come in nearly countless forms, including interviews, evaluations, reviews, proposals and more. They should convey pragmatic, viable and understandable values to decision makers—who are not professional researchers, do not wish to become researchers and will not read formalized research. The primary audience for documents of this kind is organizational leadership who will fund your time or expertise to help them make decisions. They tend not to be overly interested in "the why" of your recommendations beyond trusting you to have considered it adequately. 

Evaluation (The Research)

Uncertainty is common. Other than sea captains, few people are always presumed to know the next appropriate course of action to follow. Possibly there should be a proverb, "Leaders who follow are wise." Competent leaders must make decisions with uncertainty regardless of the type or scope of their organizations. Evaluation, the research, is to uncover part of the uncertainty that prevents leadership from  understanding which course of action they should follow. 

Engage each research report as an opportunity to build organizational leadership and experiential learning. Demonstrate a timely grasp of the decision maker's circumstance. Offer conclusions they can put into action. Do not write indecisively. Recognize that many good decisions offer 10 percent improvements and 80 percent solutions.  

Your research purpose is not to create new knowledge. It is to communicate your professional consideration of how to apply what is reasonably available to benefit the organizational leadership that assented to your participation. Consider actions such as the following to accomplish your purpose: appraise, assess, choose, compare, critique, estimate, evaluate, judge, measure, rate, revise, score, select, validate and value.

Writing (The Report)

Answer questions posed by your audience. For purposes of this curriculum your audience includes the decision makers who will receive your report. This is likely to include an organizational leader in addition to your professor. It might also include people who must translate the report conclusions into specific actions. 

Your research report must contend with organizational leadership issues. Use facts, references and biblical verses accurately and appropriately. Structure the report with section headings. Use short declarative sentences. Follow the writing guidelines. Include only the material that supports your conclusions. Place the remaining data in a labeled folder in case you need it later. 

The structure of your research reports should depend upon why and how the research is accomplished, what the audience expects and who the audience is. No perfect structure exists. Here are some useful ideas for consideration.

Title Page

Follow the writing style guidelines to format the necessary title page.  

Executive Summary

Lead the written presentation with a single paragraph that summarizes your significant thoughts, findings and conclusions. Accordingly, prepare this last. Do not restate the conclusion. Label the section with a heading so decision makers do not skip it. Often this is the only part of the report organizational leaders will read. Be convincing. 

Background

Explain briefly who the organization is that the report concerns, how they came to recognize the problem and generally what that problem is believed to be. Include enough of the environment to understand the organizational setting. Define key concepts that are necessary to understand the report if they are not common knowledge. Sometimes this section is called the Introduction.

Analysis

In this section, describe briefly what, how and why you came to your conclusions. Tell the story in professional prose. Use bullet points or other stylistic devices to make your writing easy to read and comprehend. If you decide detailed information is necessary, put it in an appendix and refer to it by title in your main text. Do not bore your reader. Tell them your determinations, but help them through the material quickly.

For some reports it is worth dividing the analysis into summary and detail sections. This is reasonable when you must balance writing to multiple audiences. The first is the organizational decision maker who wants direction that leads to actions they can take to replace the concern with planned outcomes. The second is possibly the people who must implement any adopted decisions.

Due to grading, funding or other oversight review, outsiders (to the organization) might require you explain detailed facts about the problem and its context. Recognize that they are unlikely to be familiar with how the organization is experiencing the problem, while the organizational leadership is likely intimate with it. Balance your writing to meet the needs of both. There is a satisfying middle ground.

Conclusion

Use the insight gained in your evaluation to identify solvable problem(s) confronting the decision makers in the case. State clear recommendations from your research. Affirm why. When research reports are provided directly to a client or organization for other than general knowledge, this section is called the Recommendation. 

References

Avoid plagiarism in all your academic writing and professional work. Credit your sources according to the writing style guidelines. All reference materials must support the main document and be referenced by name in its text. 

Appendices & Graphics

"Back matter" is inadequate by itself. It will not be read it unless the main document promotes sufficient interest. Appendices, graphics or other reference material should only be included in the document if they are specifically mentioned in the main document as to why they support the conclusion. There is no such thing as "nice to have" material in a professional report. 

When you do decide to include reference material in a document, it must be complete, accurate, and formatted so a casual reader can understand it. The reason is simple: It will rarely receive more than a casual reading—even by key decision makers. At the same time, a technical reader will delve into it for supportive or contradictory evidence to your conclusion.  

Appendices might include interview questions, useful research, numerical analyses, summary graphs or evidentiary images. Each appendix must start a new page and be individually titled with the name that references it in the main document. Each graphic must be clear and include a descriptive caption.