Writing a Report

Report Writing:

The first thing that you need to remember is that its NOT AN ESSAY!

The information in a report is important. Need to make sure that the information I have collected or research is factual and also evidence based, its not opinions or point of view (has to be fact). A report is different from an essay be because it can be more structured by including things like bullet points, graphs and charts and also include images if appropriate. It’s easier to construct compared to an essay and it also looks more visually advertising and appealing.

Beginning the report: 

The first step should be to introduce the report and tell the reader what you were asked to carry out from the brief. Then you should also state the procedure of how you carried out the research. Things like how you went about collecting it and the methods of which you used. For example: how did you do your research? What I found worked well? Do you understand the limitations of the research? These are questions that should be answered when writing the procedure part of the introduction    

Main part:  

The main body of the report should be were you begin to put the research such as the results from questionnaires down and what the information is telling you. These can be bullet pointed or even put into graphs if this is what is appropriate to the research; this is something that is expected in a report. You should only use fact-based information. Opinions and thoughts are not really relevant (that’s more like what you would put into an essay) should use lists (bullet points) and also subheadings. Everything that needs to be should be referenced and put into appendices.

Ending the report:

Conclusion is where I need to be summarising what I have found out from the report. What the research has told me and really should be repeating the key parts of information that have helped to come to this conclusion. This can be done in bullet point form as a list. It doesn’t have to be long but needs to be to the point and answer the question that I have been asked in my brief. 

Things to remember/consider:

• A report can contain images and should always try to use them when relevant, as a report is a visual document unlike an essay. These should be referenced appropriately and be appropriate to what I am researching according to my brief.
• Appendices, these are what you can put after the report as its not part of the report itself. It’s somewhere where you can add information like the actual questionnaires or analysis sheets and can then be referenced in the main report. This is so that if you have a limit on the number of characters you can use you can refer to the appendix and it wont count in the actual word count.