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What makes a good report

What makes a good/bad report?

We interviewed academics who regularly set and mark reports and asked what they felt were the most common problems in poor reports. They said:

• Doesn’t answer the brief
• Badly structured
• Inappropriate writing style
• Poor grammar and punctuation
• Incorrect or inadequate referencing
• Too much/too little/irrelevant material
• Expression not clear
• Doesn’t relate results to purpose
• Unnecessary use of jargon

So how can you make sure your report does what it’s meant to do, and does it well? Below are some tips for writing better reports. 

Read the brief 

A frequent complaint of markers is that the report 'does not answer the brief'. The brief for a report is what you have been asked to investigate and who it is for. Both of these variables will affect what you need to do and the way you report your findings. Check that what you are doing is relevant both when you are planning how to conduct your research and when you write it up.

The most important thing you can do is read the brief (or the title of your assignment or your research question) carefully. Then read it again even more carefully! If you’re still not completely clear about what to do, don’t guess. Discuss it with your tutor or someone else who can help. A Study Adviser or postgraduate student in your department are probably better than a friend.

For example, you may have been asked to investigate the rat population on your campus. Consider how your investigation might differ if you were writing the report for:

• an animal welfare group
• the Public Health department
• a university module on British small mammals
• a contractor undertaking a campus building project

Check which sections your report should have

Reports for different disciplines and briefs will require different sections: for instance, a business report may need a separate Recommendations section but no Methods section. Check your brief carefully to make sure you have the correct sections and be clear about which piece of information goes in which section.

Remember that reports are meant to be informative

Reports tell the reader what was done, what was discovered as a consequence and how this relates to the reasons the report was undertaken. Include only relevant material in your background and discussion.

Consider who you are writing for

A report is an act of communication between you and your reader. So pay special attention to who your projected reader is and what they want from the report. Sometimes you will be asked to write for an imaginary reader (e.g. a business client). In this case it’s vital to think about why they want the report to be produced (e.g. to decide on the viability of a project) and to make sure you respond to that. If it’s your tutor, they will want to know that you can communicate the processes and results of your research clearly and accurately, and can discuss your findings in the context of the overall purpose.

Write simply and appropriately

Keep your expression clear and simple. If the purpose of a report is to inform, it won't be achieving that purpose if the reader is confused by complicated phrases and jargon. Your method and findings, for instance, should be described accurately and in non-ambiguous terms so that it is possible for someone else to replicate your research process and achieve the same results.

Spend more time on your discussion section

This is the bit that pulls the whole piece together by showing how your findings relate to the purpose of the report and to any previous research. So read your introduction and literature survey over again and make sure that all the issues raised there are referred to and linked up with your own research in your discussion. This is also a good place to reflect on the methods you chose to use - if something didn't go as planned, discuss why this happened, any changes you had to make and what you might do differently another time.

Make sure your references are correct and complete

Every idea, diagram and piece of information you use that comes from someone else’s work must be acknowledged with a reference. Check your brief or department handbook for the form of referencing required (usually a short reference in the body of the text and a full reference in the Reference List or Bibliography at the end).

See the LearnHigher pages on referencing for more advice.

Make sure you know the scope

The word count and submission date will help you to work out the scope of the report. A 5000 word report will be expected to include a lot more background and discussion than a 1000 word report which will be looking for more conciseness in the way you convey your information. Likewise, a piece of work completed over a term is expected to have more depth than one completed in two weeks. It won't help if you're trying to achieve more than is possible within the limits set.

Plan your time

Make sure you allow enough time to write up your work properly. If you find that your research is taking longer than you expected, remember that you can get a first draft of some of your sections (like the method) written up before you've finished your research - it's always quicker to amend than to write from scratch. It may help to set your own deadline earlier than the handing-in date.

More advice from LearnHigher on managing your time.

Proof read carefully

When it feels like you've been working on a project forever, it's tempting to hand it in the minute the last word is written. But it's easy to overlook small mistakes that could lose you marks. 

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How reports are read

Research on how managers read reports discovered that they were most likely to read in this order: 

1. the abstract or summary
2. the introduction
3. the conclusions
4. the discussion
5. the findings and methodology
6. the appendices  

This is not to suggest that you should spend less time on writing up your discussion or your findings but it does show that the sections you may think of as less important (like the abstract or introduction) are actually often the places a reader gets their first impressions. So it’s worth getting them right.

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