Report Writing
You should have completed your project before you start to write about it. Gather your information and group it into categories. Find the key points you will want to report on that are relevant to your reader.
Consider the following questions when analysing your information:
- What facts and/or evidence do you have to support your key points?
- What are your conclusions?
- Are there any limitations or flaws in your findings?
- Is any of your evidence inconsistent or contradicting one another?
Analysing and grouping your work first will help you find an order to your information. You may already start to see sections of your report emerging.
Report sections
As we’ve seen in comparison to an essay, reports have specific requirements when it comes to structure. However, these requirements can vary across different courses and assignments. For example, a business related study may be asked to include an executive summary. Be sure to read your assignment criteria carefully to know how you should structure your report.
A longer report may also include a table of contents, a table of figures/illustrations and acknowledgements all before the abstract/executive summary. Refer to your assignment criteria to know which sections you’ll need to include in your report.
Click on each of the report sections below for more information.
- What is your report about?
- What are the key aims/objectives?
- What are the main findings?
- What are your recommendations as a result of your study?
- What is the background of your study?
- What are your aims and objectives?
- What did you do?
- How did you do it?
- Why did you do it that way?
- What were the strengths/limitations to your study?
- What did you find out from your study?
- Can you show this visually e.g. in a graph, table or image ?
- What was your project aiming to present or argue?
- Has this been achieved?
- How accurate are your findings?
- How have you interpreted your findings and why is this important?
- How do your findings compare or differ to findings in previous studies?
- What are the outcomes of your study?
- What further actions or research could be taken?
Give the full reference list for all research cited in your report.
- Attach any additional information referred to in your report.
- See the next section in this module for how to format appendices.
Watch this video for more information about each of these sections and the information they require.
Where you have been
Where you are now
Related links
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