2.2 Exercise: Research Report Template Sections
Getting Started
A template has been provided for you to use as you write the research report throughout this course. This activity explains the sections and what they are for.
In order to successfully complete this assignment, you should be able to:
- Identify sections and the purposes of those sections in a research report.
Resources
- File: Research Report Template Information – Workshops 1 and 2
Background Information
When asked to perform research using a data set, there are three main areas of focus. First is the background, which includes any sources to explain the data, variable definitions, research questions, and descriptive statistics in the form of graphs and central tendency statistics and variation statistics. Second is the analysis of the raw data using hypothesis testing. In this course, regression and means comparison and chi-square testing are employed. The third section is the summarization of the research results and any future research that can be beneficial.
Research Paper Template Information – Workshops 1 and 2
The purpose of this document is to review the sections of the research paper template. The research paper template is in APA7 format. It includes a title page, table of contents, List of tables, list of figures, project background, project analysis, project summary, references, and appendices. The table of contents is not automatically updated, so you will need to manually update the page numbers in the table of contents.
The project background section has sub-sections of the “Purpose of the Study”, “Significance of the Study”, and “Information and Literature Review”. The “Purpose of the Study” needs to provide the context of the problem, objectives, limitations, and assumptions of the study. The “Significance of the Study” must contain the goals of the study, why the study is significant to the write and to the readers, and broader implications for the industry and global concerns. The “Information and Literature Review” must include a brief summary of the sources used, a relevant discussion of each source to the research questions, findings from the sources, key definitions, and ethical considerations from the literature. The project background must also include descriptive statistics and graphs along with a variables list. The variable list is important due to showing the type of data or any ways the variables are used in the study.
The project analysis section will contain the three forms of analysis needed for these reports to be complete. The three types of analysis are simple linear regression, t test hypothesis testing, and chi-square hypothesis testing. Both statistics and graphs are imperative to be complete. Any tables or figures shown will need to have APA covered. Tables require a heading of the format Table #
The project summary section will have conclusions, recommendations, suggestions for future research, and ethical considerations. These comments will be based on the project background and project analysis, with the only new information being the future research that is possible. Any use of sources should include citations in APA7 format. Remember that each data set will have the three major sections of a research paper. References and Appendices will complete the paper. Remember that the page numbers in the table of contents will need to match the sections once the paper has been written.
The Project Background section would use sources that you have found to provide more definition of the problem being researched. Much of the objectives narrative would be from the writer’s point of view. Limitations would aid in knowing limits in how the data was obtained, if the data is a sample or population, does it reflect the population overall if it is a sample, and what type of limit was seen (i.e. cost, too much time to collect data, the data set was provided and not gathered by the researcher).
The significance sub-section allows for a discussion of why this analysis is important and what uses it might have for industry or global applications. The Literature Review sub-section allows for a discussion of each source used in the study, along with its relevance. If abbreviations or key definitions are presented from the sources, they need to be called out to be professional and make it easier for the reader to understand the material.
ASSESSMENT:
1. What are the 3 major sections of the report?
2. In what sub-section do descriptive graphs show up?
3. Does the title of a descriptive graph go above or below a graph?
4. Which sub-section includes key definitions of sources?
ANSWERS
1. Project Background, Project Analysis, Project Summary
2. Information and Literature Review
3. It is a caption, so it goes underneath the graph
4. Information and Literature Review