During today’s class, you will want to finalize your scientific or technical problem topic for your analytic research report.
Use class time to begin doing some library research while you are in class. You may also think about interviews and surveys for additional data collection. For this latter possibility, you should look at research already done on the problem so that you devise informed questions.
Below is the superstructure of your report as discussed in depth during today’s class:
Superstructure of your analytical research report
- Introduction (topic and why your report is important)
- Objectives of the research (what were you attempting to do?)
- Method (methodology–what kinds of research did you do, how did you do it, and why is the research sound?)
- Results (what did you find in your research? facts, quotes, figures, interviews, surveys, etc.)
- Discussion (how do you interpret your results? what story does your data tell us? results and discussion can be combined, but title this section appropriately if you do so)
- Conclusions (what conclusions do you draw from your results and discussion? what is the significance of what you discovered?)
- Recommendations (what do you think should be done to solve the research problem based on your research? this section is what all of your work is leading up to.)
