Learning Objectives

Performance Objective

Prepare the manuscript for your research report by attending to good writing practices, organizing your writing according to the style manual required for your project (business report versus student research), using the tools described to promote organizational flexibility and increased efficiency, and incorporating suggestions for crafting each section of the report.

Enabling Objectives

  1.  Compare the qualities of good report writing (e.g., APA Chapter 3, Turabian Chapters 5–7, Booth et al. Chapters 13 and 14) with the examples provided by students and professors in each section of the chapter.
  2. Describe the organizational elements of an academic report versus a business report.
  3. Construct a title that captures the reader’s attention in one sentence using the research question, variables, and background.
  4. Create a brief summary (Abstract) of the study’s contents with at least a sentence each on the background, problem, sample and participants, design, method, procedures, results, and principal conclusions.
  5. Produce an Introduction that contains an overview of the problem, explores its importance, discusses the related literature, and states the hypotheses and how they all reflect the literature that your argument developed.
  6. Master the tools that simplify constructing your project: the Literature Synthesis Matrix (organizing literature), the CARS model (organization), and modifications to IMRAD (presentation flexibility).
  7. Compare APA’s Method section with models tailored for business studies; select the approach most consistent with course guidelines.
  8. Investigate power analysis and effect size to qualify the findings of your statistical results.
  9. Discover the value of sequencing your key results to reflect the order of your research and investigative questions and, ideally, the order of your hypotheses.
  10. Discuss why the Results section should not include interpretation of the reported findings.
  11. Organize your Discussion section to parallel the sequential organization in the Results section without restating the details of the results; divide it into a summary of findings, theoretical context and implications, practical implications, limitations of the research, and suggestions for future research.