How to Write a Research Report. Part 2

Subjective Element

Obviously, ideas of every scientist are subjective to a certain extent. Therefore, it will be a good idea to clarify some background biographical information of a person who carries out the research. Why do we need this? This will be a good intention to show potential sources of prejudices and bias and give a reader the understanding of how to evaluate the received results.

The qualitative surveys usually require a psychological and moral test for the writer, so it will be fair to specify how the researcher’s methodology and outlook change in the process of the investigation. One should describe key responders, people from the every-day life, with their routine, cooperation, symbols, values, connections, etc.

However, indicate how you followed the ethical requirements to the study. To do this, review the ethical code of scientists and a few publications on scientific ethics to show that you are aware of the limitations and took them into account while carrying out your survey. This will show your professionalism and responsibility as a scientist. If you are not sure that you can cope with that, you can always ask for help on paper4college.com.

Practical Recommendations

Specify who and why would need your research outcomes, what audience may be interested in them. Try to give as realistic and specific recommendations as possible.

Basically, you tell what the purpose of your work is. You surely need to define it, and we hope you do not write papers just to add dozens of new pages to the archive of science. You are making a contribution, you want to make this world better somehow, so here it comes: that is how you explain why you do this.  

The Closing Part

So, what? You need to summarize what you did and understand (as well as make others understand) what all that was about and for.

Evaluate the efforts you put into the empirical study. Tell what exactly you managed to do. To provide the relevant conclusions, you should review the tasks set and respond to each of them one by one.

The well-organized results are the core of the study. Do not copy and paste the conclusions from your previously mentioned parts, but paraphrase them, and add considerations that will insert your outcomes into wider context or deepen the understanding of the phenomenon.

What is the main idea of your work? What significant scientific outcomes did you get? What new tasks were set based on the investigation you conducted? Try to formulate your conclusions in the way to show the empirical and practical novelty of your findings.

Describe the limits of your study: what were you not able to observe, discover, cover in the course of your work? Subsequently, offer the further ways to research on the issue, show the perspectives, ways to elaborate on the topic, forms and methods of the next studies, as well as specific tasks that should better be set by scientists working on the issue after you.

List of Sources

To make your list of sources look efficient, add not less than 15 sources to it. There should be different types of sources, such as books, journals, scientific articles, dissertations, etc. However, all of them should be somehow relevant to your particular study, and thus cited in-text (showing that they really were used).

Make sure that all of your sources are academic. Wikipedia will not work for sure. Blogs and doubtful web resources are not good enough too unless they are the materials to be analyzed.

Remember that if you have problems with making a list of sources, you can contact our experts. They will advise you on all nuances of such an assignment.

Appendices

The data from your appendices should be cited in-text. Otherwise, the real need for them is quite doubtful, since you managed to deliver the main idea of the research without using them as your arguments.

What can be added to appendices?

• Tables and diagrams with statistical data which help you provide arguments for actuality of your topic;
• Schemes and dendrograms showing the meanings and links of the main concepts;
• Determination of features for survey data (list of respondents with the relevant characteristic features), the time and place of the surveys carried out;
• Questionnaires, guides, thematic plans, interviews, observations;
• List of materials from mass media or other documents that have been analyzed;
• Tables and diagrams showing the outcomes of processed quantitative data received from interviews, content-analysis, etc.;
• Results of processing qualitative data: codes, mental diagrams, analytical tables of observations, fragments of transcripts, etc.;
• Systematized and annotated selection of visual materials;
• Outcomes of analysis of the visual materials.

After You Finish

Not all scientists, even the most prominent ones, can write a good scientific report at once. Usually one needs to work with literature and do a number of other tasks, based on the specifics of his/her particular study. After the report is finished, take some time to rest and then reread and edit it: your brain needs some time to process and analyze what you produced.

Sometimes scientists may complain about feeling of rejection concerning their papers. This must be the result of general tiredness, which should be overcome by switching activity, such as going for a walk or just sleeping the desired 8 hours (yes, now you can do this!).

It is crucial to work on papers diligently because every next paper will be better. With time you will develop your personal scientific writing style, your specific approaches to completion of scientific papers. To achieve such results, it is a must to effectively cooperate with your scientific advisor and colleagues, who would be able to review your writing outcomes, criticize them and advise on the improvement of the form and content. However, one more thing you may face is an anonymous review. Such critics may be tough, but they always give professional advice on how to improve.