Understanding & Writing Reports II: Formal & Long Reports

Intended learning outcomes. You should be able to:

describe the organisational structure of long, more formal reports
describe various front sections
describe various back sections
construct end-text citations from various sources

Contextual Factors in Report Writing

There are a number of differences between the types of short report studied so far and the long investigative reports we are going to look at now. Basically, short reports deal primarily with facts. They are reports in which the writer identifies the relevant details and presents them briefly and succinctly, leaving out any unnecessary embellishments to the text. On the other hand, long investigative reports, including lab reports, frequently also deal with less tangible evidence. These reports are documents in which the writer analyses a situation in depth before drawing one or more conclusions, sometimes also making recommendations.

These long reports may:

describe extensive research, or an investigation of a problem or unsatisfactory condition,
evaluate alternatives to improve a situation,
study and determine the feasibility of taking certain actions,
propose making a change in methods or procedures.

Long, formal reports are written in a fluent narrative style that is both persuasive and convincing. Their writers have concepts or new ideas to present and they want their readers to understand their chain of reasoning. The term investigative report covers any report in which the writer describes how (s)he:

performed tests,
examined data, or
conducted an investigation using real evidence.

Basically, the writer starts with known data and then analyses and examines it so that the reader can see how the investigation was conducted and the final results were reached. These long formal reports require careful preparation and editing. Because they will possibly be distributed outside the company/institution, their writers may need to consider the impression the report will convey of the entire company/institution, as well as the level of subject knowledge the intended audience might have. Formal reports are generally made up of several standard parts, although not all of these need to be present in every report. Each writer uses the parts that best suit the particular subject and the intended method of presentation. Different organisations may have different requirements as well.

Which of the following factors would you associate with formal reports and which with informal reports? long;intended primarily for colleagues; involve detailed and in-depth analysis; involve detailed and in-depth analysis; less detailed; describe an investigation of a problem; present the facts briefly and directly; short; evaluate alternatives; study and determine the feasibility of taking certain actions; propose changes to methods and procedures; may use email or memo format Drag-and-drop each matching ‘factor’ to the correct type of report. Can you justify your response?

Informal Reports	Formal Reports

The Main Body

Elements in the Body of the Report

The body section of the formal report varies according to the subject. However, we can divide the body into some prototypical sub-sections:Introduction,Methods, Findings and Discussion, and Conclusion.

The purposes of different sections in the main body
Subsection	Purpose
Introduction	to provide the background and the scope of the report.
Methods/Methodologies	to describe the steps adopted in any empirical investigation and justify why these steps were adopted
Findings and Discussion	to display and provide a preliminary interpretation of data/results obtained through any empirical investigation to interpret the results of any empirical investigation and relate those results to the goals and aims of the project
Conclusions and/or Recommendations	depending on different needs and scenarios, some reports have both conclusions and recommendations, while others have only one or the other. In general: Conclusions contains a summary of the inferences you’ve made, based on your findings Recommendations are suggestions about what actions could or should be taken

Introduction

Your introduction should include the purpose and background of the report. The statement of purpose informs your readers why you are writing or what you are trying to achieve, whereas the background establishes a context for the reader to better understand your report. In the background section, you’re likely to highlight any problems or gaps in research that may exist, which justifies the need for the report you are writing.

Methods/Methodologies

Text A below is an excerpt of the Methods section of a formal report. Based on the text, answer the questions that follow:

Text A

The initial stage of this study involved a brainstorming and planning meeting to identify different areas of interest and plan the study. In order to gain an insight into the area of market-driven requirements engineering, we aimed at interviewing a large number of software-developing companies. However, it was concluded that this initial stage of the study would benefit from selecting a handful of companies before adjusting the interview instrument and carrying out the full study. Therefore seven interviewees within five Swedish software companies were asked to participate. The interviewees were selected among our industrial partners. The companies all have a market-driven development focus. They have had at least one market release of a software product or are just about to release their first.

Colour-code the parts of text B which are justificatory and those that are procedural, using the buttons below. If you make a mistake, you can clear the colour-coding by clicking the ‘clear formatting’ button.

Text B

Write down some of the key phrases in Text B which are associated with the justificatory and procedural purposes. What do you notice about the grammar and vocabulary used?

In the methodology section, you typically evaluate different potential approaches to your analysis to identify the most appropriate one. Sometimes, a ready-made solution may already exist and can simply be replicated, but in most cases, you’ll probably have to combine and adjust aspects from different existing analysis methods or even come up with an entirely original one. The following are some major aspects you may need to consider when writing your methodology section:

Problem/needs analysis	problem analysis refers to the pre-design research done to identify the specific requirements or parameters of your solution. this may be an analysis of a real-world problem or a hypothetical problem/case or a hypothetical one that is representative of most real-world cases.
Theories	explain the theories, principles, or guidelines that have informed the design of your solution (if not already referred to in the Introduction or the Literature Review).
Algorithms	show your readers how you developed the algorithms for the solution (applicable to fields such as mathematics and computer science)
Technology & resources	describe the forms of technology, the programming language, and other types of resources used in the design or construction of your solution.
The solution	describe in detail the design of your solution (e.g. the architecture of a system, the interfaces of an application, the functionality, etc.)
Testing	report the actions that you took to test the performance of your solution. Your report should also include the materials and instruments involved in the testing, the locations and time of the tests, the number of trials/ tests performed, and the parameters you set for the tests (e.g. accuracy level, processing or response time, area coverage, volume of data handled, etc.)

Refer to TEXT B again. Do you think the text is a complete methods section? Is there any additional information you would expect to see in TEXT B?

Findings and Discussion

In the Findings and Discussion section, you need to report the results of your analysis, initially by stating the facts that you’ve observed (i.e. the findings), and then discussing these appropriately. This section represents the major portion of the long report.

The following four elements are the major constituents of the Findings and Discussion section:

A brief statement of a particular aim or function of the project/product or a brief mention of the methodology (optional).
Reporting of the results (testing results/design interface and performance, etc.)
Referencing figures (pictures, diagrams) and tables
Commenting on the results

Examine TEXT C below and answer the following questions:

In which line does the writer refer to the number(s)?
In which line does the writer provide a summary of key findings?
Why does the writer provide a summary of key findings? Do you think this is helpful for the reader?

Highlight the language items that are useful for displaying results.

Text C

Table 1. shows the experimental results for Tsg. It is measured with the latency time taken to make a complete connection between the control server and the vehicle gateway. The results show that the average communication latency when the control server requests a connection to the vehicle gateway using the cut and call back protocol is 10.302 sec and the standard deviation is 0.821 ms.

Table 1. Connection Time
Init.	Connection Delay(sec)
	min.	Ave.	Max.	std.-Dev
Server	8.76	10.302	12.023	0.821
Gateway	4.064	5.608	7.905	1.131

In the next few sub-sections, we’ll look at some descriptions of the major parts within the ‘Findings and Discussion’ section.

Re-stating Aims & Methodology

You can start the Findings section by briefly reminding the reader of the aims of the project and the main methods involved. Depending on the length of your formal report and the requirements of your supervisor, this may not be necessary.

Findings

A core part of your Findings and Discussion section is to report on the results of your analysis/research, i.e. the ‘facts’. Findings include concrete evidence, based on which you can establish the success or failure of your product/research.

Examples of results/proof can be presented in the form of:

numbers (e.g. number of hits, speed, frequency, percentages, etc.)
images (e.g. captured images, transformed images, modeled images, etc.)
photos (e.g. pictures of a place)
screen shots

References Made to Figures + Tables

When presenting non-text materials (e.g. images, photos, screen captures or tables of numbers), make sure you refer your reader to the materials and provide comments on them. In particular, make sure you:

Label each non-text item accurately. Give the figure a number and a clear and concise caption, ideally by using the ‘Insert Caption’ function of your word processor, e.g. Table 1: Statistics of office noise levels
Provide comments on the item or at least refer your reader to it
Place the item immediately after the comments or reference made to it
Place the item on the page following the comments or the reference if the item occupies a full page
Leave sufficient white space between the item and its preceding and subsequent texts

Comments

Comments express an interpretation of the results reported. We tend to make the following three types of comments:

judgments about the performance drawn based on the results reported (e.g. the numbers suggest that X works. As can be seen from the comparison of speeds of X and Y, Y is a more reliable algorithm. The accuracy of searches is very high.)
reasons for positive, negative, or unexpected results
comparisons between the results you have obtained on your own project and those obtained by in studies done by others.

Study the ‘Results’ section of a journal article below by Ur-Rehman et al. (2009) and highlight the hedged claims and interpretations of findings.

Dish antennas can be complicated by the fact that the illumination of the dish itself is intimately connected to the near vertical axis predicted with azimuth blocks indicates the presence of an ambiguity with this sampling pattern.
As explained in Section III-A, C = R2 × R2 × R3 × SO(3) (or similar) in this case, as shown in Figure 3. Unlike the case of phased arrays or horn antennas, no closed form solutions typically exist. Therefore, the computation of F in our algorithm will usually involve a computational electromagnetic engine. In any case, one needs to make at least 20 measurements to obtain an injective pattern map. To make this model concrete enough for a computer simulation, we represented the feed as an isotropic radiator. In this case, the SO(3) factor plays no role, and may be removed from C. Indeed, the radiation pattern of the resulting isotropic-fed dish can be found by ray-tracing from the feed to the receiver, reflecting off each of a dense set of points on the reflector. Specifically, the reflector is described by the equation of y = ax2 + bz2.
Our simulation tested dish antennas whose reflector radii were up to 6 wavelengths and feed was located within 6 wavelengths from the vertex of the reflector. The parameters a and b were chosen randomly between 0 and 6. The reflector was simulated with a grid with 20 axial points and 10 radial points. The typical results for 100 dish antennas (10 iterations used in the solver) are shown in Figure 10. Unlike both horn and rectangular arrays, the performance of dishes is essentially the same regardless of sampling pattern. In particular, random sampling does not outperform other sampling patterns. There are no obvious ambiguities, apparently as the model of the antenna has no symmetries that always are shared the sam- pling pattern. The model can be symmetric, but pairs typical antennas will not share axes of symmetry.