Reports

• The components of a report:

  1. abstract
  2. introduction
  3. method
  4. results
  5. discussion
  6. references
  7. appendices
• An abstract is a brief summary of the report which includes an overview of previous research, methodology, results and discussion.
• An introduction introduces the reader to the subject area and informs them of the past research and theories that place the research in context. This is where the hypotheses are stated.
• The method describes how the study was conducted to ensure the findings can be checked for reliability and validity.
• The results has descriptive results (mean, mode, visual comparison etc.) and inferential (significance tests) so they can make a decision on what hypothesis to accept.
• The discussion contains a summary of the findings and offers explanations for these. It also discusses the limitations of the research and suggest implications and future improvements.
• The references section has a lost of all research documents used when writing the report (journals, books etc.) using the harvard system.
• The appendices contains all of the resources used within the research, raw data and statistical calculations.
• To reference a book:

  Surname, Initial. (Date) Book title, Location: Publisher, Edition, Page numbers.
• To reference a journal:

  Surname, Initial. (Date) Article Title, Journal Title, Volume number (Issue number), Page numbers.