 Lecture 23, As-Salaam-Alaikum. Welcome to the virtual university's course on business and technical communication. In the previous lesson, we looked at writing short reports, and today we will look at how to plan long reports and eventually how to write them as well. In today's lecture, you will learn to define the problem, to be solved by studying and outlining the issues that are to be analyzed. You will learn to identify and analyze the issues that have to be analyzed during your study, prepare a work plan for conducting your investigation, planning the necessary steps, estimating their timing, and deciding on the sources of information required. You will also learn to organize the research phase of the investigation, including the identification of secondary and primary sources of data. We'll look at how to draw sound conclusions and develop practical recommendations and how to develop a final outline and visual aid plan for the report. When you're writing a long report, you must gather facts and arrange them in a convenient format. Before putting a single word on the page, there are, there's a series of steps that you need to follow. And these steps form the foundations of any report. Firstly, you will define and outline the purpose of the report. Then you will outline the issue for investigation. Thirdly, you will prepare a work plan and then a conduct research. And finally, you will analyze and interpret data, draw conclusions, and develop recommendations. Now how would you define the problem? Your first step when you are planning a long report is to write a problem statement, a statement that defines the problem your report will cover. The first step in writing is to narrow the scope of your investigation. Whatever it is that you're writing about, whatever it is that you need to investigate and put on paper, you need to define the scope of it and narrow it down to a manageable size so that you're only covering areas, elements which you can actually tackle within the scope of the report. If you're writing an analytical report that interprets facts and draws conclusions about them, you generally shape your investigation by the way you define the problem to be solved. If there's a report in which you're analyzing something, then the way you define your problem your investigation will reflect the same thing that you have defined the problem. Often the questions have been defined by the person who authorizes the report. You need to ask yourself some questions. You need to ask yourself the right questions so that you can actually focus the scope of the investigation. A lot of the times these questions are given to you by the person who's authorized the report or the company who's authorized the report and sometimes they haven't. If you need to ask questions such as what needs to be determined, why is this issue important, who is involved in the situation, where is the trouble actually located if you're looking at a problem and how did the situation originate? Now you need to remember that not all of these questions apply in all circumstances and all situations but asking them of yourself helps to clarify the boundaries of your investigation or asking them of the person who's authorized the report or asking them from sort of looking at the issue with keeping these questions in mind helps you clarify the boundaries of your investigation. Your analytical report is required to look at facts and draw conclusions for betterment of the situation. When we talk about developing the statement of purpose, you need to prepare a written statement of purpose and then review it with the person who authorizes the study. So when you have in your mind identified what the statement of purpose would be, why it is that you're writing this report, then you need to put it down on paper and check with the person who's authorized the report to see if you and that person are on the same wavelength, if you are actually drawing the same interpretations about the statement of purpose. The most useful way to phrase your purpose is to begin with an infinitive phrase and we're going to look at some examples of that as well. For example, if you're required to write a report on the use of drug abuse amongst assembly line workers in your plant, if you're working in a factory and you want to look at the use of drugs amongst the people working on the floor, then you might phrase the statement of purpose by saying to summarize the extent of substance abuse amongst plant employees. However, if you're doing more than just talking about the extent, if you're going to talk about, if you're going to analyze the, maybe how that drug abuse is affecting the workers, then your statement of purpose might be to analyze the effects of employee substance abuse on productivity and product quality and recommend ways to counteract these effects. So we looked at two different ways in which to phrase a problem statement. Both ways were in, both statements were infinitive. The phrasing was infinitive, starting with the word too. But while the first was just looking at the extent, it was basically going to draw on facts and figures and the writer would not draw any conclusions or would not base any, give any analysis. The second one, in the second one, the writer is going to analyze the effects and how the effects of drug abuse and how that in turn affects the product quality for that company and then also suggest ways to improve. When you're developing a statement of purpose, using the infinitive phrase, as the type of phrases that we looked at just now, encourages you to take control and decide where you're going before you actually write. And also before you proceed, it's important to anticipate how your audience will react. Obviously, every report is written for an audience and you need to anticipate how the audience will react to what you write. So whatever you think will be your readers' probable reaction, you will keep that in mind when you write a statement of purpose and when you write the entire report, you will keep that in mind. So, and also you need to double check, as I said earlier, your statement with the person who authorized the report. Now, the second step in report writing is to outline the issues that you plan to study. So, you've determined a statement of purpose, who authorized it, you've clarified it with them as well, double-checked it and matched it with their statement of purpose and your only one. So, then the next step is that the issues covered in your investigation you need to outline them and make a list of them. To organize your effort, break your problems into a series of specific questions. And this process is sometimes called problem factoring. Chances are that you already use this approach subconsciously when you face a problem. Most likely, when you face a problem yourself, break that problem into different questions, ask yourself some questions and then tackle that issue. For example, when your car doesn't start, what do you do? You're going on the road and your car stopped. So, what do you do? You look at various hypotheses or explanations. You will see a lot of different options. All the things that can be investigated. Maybe the battery is dead. You check if the battery is dead or not. Maybe you're out of petrol. Maybe the ignition system is broken, et cetera. You explore each explanation until you find the particular cause that has made the car stop. Another example related to business would be, for example, that Adam Soft, a software company based in Lahore, hired a consultant, Mr. Suhail Munir, to write a report on how to stimulate their software business in the Punjab region. Now, Mr. Munir said that they started with a general question. And the general question was, why does Adam Soft have such limited success in expanding their business in the Punjab region? The company hired a consultant to expand their business in the Punjab region. How do you tell us? The first question the consultant asked was, why doesn't Adam Soft have such limited success? Why can't he expand his business in Punjab? And then, after asking himself and the company, or the directors of the company, this question, the consultant and the person who authorized the report divided the problem into three sub-questions. The main question was, why isn't he successful? Then he divided it into three more sub-questions. Number one, are the policies followed by Adam Soft flawed? Are the policies of Adam Soft wrong? Because of this, the expansion is not possible. Number two, is the administration of the company at fault? Perhaps the policy is fine, but the administration is wrong. Number three, how can the functioning of the company be improved? So, these were the three questions that I thought these three are the three things that can influence the expansion of the company. So, in this process, this process of outlining, then helped the consultant solve the problem methodically. Let's look at this question on a flowchart. First of all, the main question that was the most general was, why does Adam Soft have such limited success in expanding their business in the Punjab region? It was subdivided into two key questions and then one, and then the third question as well, looking at the policies, the administration and the functioning of the company and how that could be improved. As you can see, the functioning box is the lowest because there will be recommendations in it. So, the first two questions are not parallel but the answer to those questions are their outcome. Because any structure can be factored in any way. Our job as report writers is to choose the most logical way, the one that makes most sense. In terms of Adam Soft, the question that was asked and the structure that was followed in the flowchart was the most logical and the most sensible. So, you will have to look at your own problems and your project with your own problems to find out what kind of questions you will ask and how you will outline them. Which questions will be asked first? Which questions will be asked in regards to the previous questions? Also, you need to remember that informational and analytical studies are factored differently. Informational studies are the ones where you are only giving information as we saw earlier, extent of drug abuse amongst factory workers. Analytical studies are the ones where you are analyzing the information that has been given. And you will factor these two types of reports in different ways. You may use a variety of structural schemes in problem-solving as long as it does not have logical errors. Whatever you do to outline your questions, there should be no logic errors. You should look at which questions are logical and which questions come later. Let's have a look at informational assignments. Studies that emphasize the discovery and reporting of facts may be factored by subtopic. You could either factor them in order of importance. Say you are reviewing five product lines. You might organize your study in the increasing order of the amount of revenue they generate. If you want to review five different product lines, you have to decide who you will write first and who you will write later. If you want to review who you will write later in your report, you may do it in the order of importance. In the increasing order, as you increase the revenue of the line, you should first review the less revenue and then the more revenue. And the other way around, the products that are giving more revenue to the company, you should first review them and then the less revenue you are giving, you should do the decreasing order. But whatever it is, it will be the order of importance that is more important to you. Or your investigation could be factored according to the chronology when investigating a chain of events. You can organize the study according to what happened in January, what happened in February, and so on. According to time. Or it could be organized according to space, spatially. For example, if you're studying a physical object, you can study it from left to right, top to bottom, inside to outside, et cetera. So, according to that, you will factor it out. You will see that you have to talk about the left side, you have to talk about the right side, the inside, the outside, et cetera. Or it could be by geography. If the location is important, then you will use the geographical divisions. For example, you might want to talk about a particular, if you're looking at sales, then you might want to look at particular regions within Pakistan and then present accordingly. Or categorically, if you're asked to review, for example, several distinct aspects of a subject, you will look at one category at a time. For example, for one subject, you will look at sales, profit, investment, et cetera. Whatever the different categories are, you will look at them, you won't look at the location, for example. For this, analytical assignments, studies that focus on problems or problem solving may be factored on the basis of hypotheses. Those that focus on the evaluation of alternatives may be factored on relative merits. For example, your problem is to determine why your company's having difficulty hiring secretaries. You would factor the problem by speculating about reasons, then collect information to confirm or disapprove each reason. First, you will look at what are the reasons that are causing your company to have difficulty hiring secretaries. You will look at all the reasons, then you will collect information that the reasons you thought were the reasons are the reasons that are causing the problem or not. Or maybe by doing all these things, by following all these routines, you will get a new reason. For example, if the question is why are we having trouble hiring secretaries, it could be that salaries are too low, one reason. Then, the questions that you need to ask are, what do we pay our secretaries? What is the salary? What do comparable companies pay their secretaries? The other companies that are with you, what are they paying their secretaries for? And then, how important is pay in influencing job choices of the secretaries? Are the secretaries paying for the pay or are they paying for other factors that influence their choice that they should work in the company? So, these are questions that you need to then, if one factor is that you think one probable factor could be that salaries are low, then you need to ask specific questions regarding that. Another factor could be that your location is poor or not convenient. Then, questions you need to ask are, are we accessible by public transport and major roads? Is the area that we are located in physically attractive? This is not the reason that our area is so poor that people are not coming here. Are housing costs affordable? The area where there is a company, where housing is expensive, affordable or not, maybe because of that, people don't live nearby that they can apply in the company. Is crime a problem? Maybe it's not a very safe area and that's why people don't want to come and work there. So, again, these are questions that you will need to ask and discount. It's not necessary that all the answers come in positive, there are many factors that are not for your company, but you will have to think about or factors that may be the reason if you are talking about location. Then, another factor could be that you feel could be that the supply of secretaries is diminishing, maybe in the marketplace, there are not so many secretaries available that you can apply. For that, you will have to see how many secretaries were available five years ago as opposed to now so that you can compare. And also, what was the demand for secretaries five years ago as opposed to now? How many supplies were there five years ago? How many were there? And now, how many supplies are there? You will get an idea of why you are not getting the secretaries. So, this was an example of different factors that you would need to keep in mind when you had a specific problem and how then, related to each factor, you would ask specific questions. When the problem is to try and look at a new dealership, for example, the natural way is to subdivide your analysis to focus on the criteria. You could maybe focus on where we should look at a new dealership. And when you're looking at that, then you have to think of construction costs. Location A, location B, or location C, you have to keep your dealership and in different locations, you have to construct an office or a showroom to construct the cost. You will also need to look at, then, labour availability. Again, what would be labour availability in different locations? Here, you will see that all your subdivisions are looking at three divisions and all your factors are related to three locations and you are reviewing each factor according to the three locations. You could also look at transportation facilities for each of the three locations and so on and so forth. So then, you will, once you've divided the information that you have according to the categories that you've made, then you can go about analyzing them as well. You need to, when you're dividing, you need to follow the rules of division to ensure that your study will be organized in a logical and systematic way. Abhiya division ke rules kya hain? You need to divide the topic into at least two parts. You can obviously not have just one part because then it would not be a division. So the minimum two parts, obviously they can be more than two parts. Apart from this, you will use a significant, useful basis as a guiding principle for your division. For example, you could subdivide the subject matter into two groups, problems that arise in a software company when handling the international projects and the problems that arise when dealing with local projects. So jobi aakki problems hain aakko do a different tarahan se divide kya aur unki jobi thi ek significant basis thi unko divide karne mein. Ek aapne international projects ke sahabse problems ko divide kya aur categorize kya aur baaki problems ko apne lokal projects ke sahabse categorize kya. To yejur international aur lokal inki aapse mein ek relationship bhi banti hain aur parallel bhi yeh areas hain. Isle yeh inme divisions karna logical lakta hain. Also when dividing a whole into parts, restrict yourself to one basis at a time. If you switch your analysis from one basis to another, you could get a mixed classification which can confuse your analysis. For example, if you're analyzing the sales of foreign projects versus non-foreign projects, you could later analyze them on the basis of their nature. For example, database, web development, et cetera. But keep the categories separate so that you're only looking at one basis at one time and then subdividing each basis. Make sure that each group, each category is separate and distinct. The groups have to be mutually exclusive or you will end up talking about the same item under two or more headings. Jo bhi groups hon, onki aandar on groups ke andar, yeh on categories ke andar, jo cheezin shamil hon, wo sirf onhi categories ke andar hon aur categories ke andar nahon. Kyuki agar wohi chee jayi cheez hain, hain her category mein, yeh her group ke andar hain, to phir aap, hain aapne section mein, yeh her group ke baare mein, jab baat karein hain to ap ek hi cheez kaya hain honge. For example, dividing a population into male, female and teenage wouldn't make sense as the groups overlap. Male or female do alaga lag hain, lekin teenage jo hain wo male bhi ho sakte hain, female bhi ho sakte hain. So yeh teen categories ka banana population ka would not make sense. Aap jo bhi categories banayin, wo aisi banayin ke oni mai overlapping nahon. Teenage ki category jo hain wo male mein aur female donon mein overlap karthi hain. Also you need to be thorough. When listing all the components of a whole. For example, it would be misleading to subdivide the engine into parts without mentioning the piston. An important part of the whole would be missing when making the, and then it would make the whole picture unclear. Aap jo sphi cheez ki baat kare hain wo skender jo jo different elements involved hain, on sab ko madhain azar rakh hain. Kyun kya agar aapne ek list banayin aur us mein ek do important cheez hain miss kar di, to jo bhi aap information denge wo bhi phir incomplete ho ghi. When you've made your divisions, when you've made your categories, then you need to prepare a preliminary outline. Initial ek outline aap banayin ke ta ke usse aapne wo aapke liye ek road map banjayaega ke jis ko follow kar kya apne report ko of final shakal denge. You need to organize your study by going through the factoring process and then you might want to outline the format to organize your ideas. In some cases, for example, when you're writing a short report, a few notes on a piece of paper could be an outline. In other cases, it could be a more formal outline or it could be a flowchart or a list. Detailed outline is definitely worth the effort when you are amongst several people working on an assignment. So if you're not alone when you're working on an assignment, there are other people with you, then it makes, it's definitely worth it to make a detailed outline so that everybody knows where you are and what you need to do. Ek outline banayin hogi, sbko pata hoga ke yehi steps follow karne hain, yehi sari kheezan dekhne hain. Aur ye bhi sab, aram se dekhsuktein ke kya kaam ho gaya hain aur kya kaam hone ko rahta hain. And you also, you need to make a detailed outline when your investigation is to be intensive and will involve many different sources of data. Agar aapne ek se zyada jaga se, data karna hain, bohad bdi aapne investigation hain, bohad basi hain, to tab bhi, behtar hain ki aap outline banayin, ta ke aap jupne data hain, usko zyada asani se manage kar sakein. Also, if you know from your past experience that the person who's requested the study will revise the assignment during the course of the study. Then you need to have an outline so that whoever it is who's authorized the study can actually have a look at the outline and match that with all the material that you've already collected. Agar aapko pata hain ke boh beech mein, jinne bhi wo authorize kiya hain iss report ko, boh beech mein dekh na chayenge ke aapne kitna kaam kiya, to phir ek outline ho, ta ke wo se match kar sakein. Now, when you're preparing the preliminary outline, there are two widely used systems, which are the alpha numeric and the decimal system. Also, you will use the same grammatical form for each group of items in your outline. Jo bhi aap outline mein different aapne agar questions hain, yaya areas hain, topics hain. Onke jisna aap phrase karenge to aap boh hi grammatical form rekhenge sarao mein. Because this parallel construction enables the readers to see that the ideas are related. It shows a relationship amongst the ideas and it's easy to follow. And they also seem to have the same, you give them the same importance as well. Let's have a look at a sample of the alpha numeric system. Here you will have the Roman one and then sections a, b, and then they would be subdivided for, if there's first the subdivision between, between b, then you have one and two, and then go on to c, et cetera. And then section two has similarly subdivisions according to what is included in section two. On the other hand, the decimal system uses numbers with decimals. So the main heading could be 1.0 and then the subheadings could be 1.1, 1.2. And if 1.2 has further categories, then they could be 1.21, 1.22, et cetera. When you're writing an outline, you choose between descriptive or topical headings and informative or talking headings. Informative outlines or outlines with informative headings are generally more helpful than descriptive outlines. When you've completed your research, however, you might want to switch from a working outline to an outline that summarizes your findings. The initial outline you made can be changed in the end and you can make such an outline with which you can find your findings. Another step in writing a long report is preparing your work plan. And this is based on your preliminary outline. So now you'll make your work plan on how you'll do your work. A formal work plan might include the following items, problem statement, statement of purpose. These are both very important. In addition, to these, these following are important as well. They can be a discussion of the sequence of tasks to be accomplished. Whatever tasks you have to do, whatever work you have to do, what are the discussions? Including the sources of information, where you'll get information from, the required experiments, restrictions of time, et cetera. Another thing that will be included is the description of the end result that will follow from the investigation. After doing this investigation, what will you get as a result? Also, you will review the project assignments, schedules, and resources management. Whatever assignments you have given for this project, whatever resources, whatever time schedule you have made, you will review them all in your work plan. And then you will come to actually conducting the research. The value of the report is based on the quality of the information that it is based upon. Obviously, when information is of less quality in a report, then the value of that report will also be less. If the information is very thorough, it's very well researched, it's very relevant, then the quality of that report will be improved. So, your next step then, once you've made your, defined your problem statement, made your preliminary outline, and determined your work plan, then your next step is to conduct the research. And actually gather, physically gather the information. And when you start to do that, it's important to get organized. Research writing is done by consulting primary, or first-hand, and secondary, or second-hand sources. Primary's first-hand means that you take information from a direct source, and secondary is that you take information from any information source. So, talking, let's look at these primary and secondary sources in more detail. We're going to look at second resources first. You will conduct secondary research, or tap secondary resources, by locating information that has already been collected, as I said. Someone has taken information, collected it, and now you're tapping it. And usually, this is in the form of books, periodical reports. The information someone has collected, someone has written it in a book, someone has written it in a journal, someone has written it in a journal, someone has written it in a report, and now you're reading that book or report. So, you're looking at secondary source. And regardless of the amount of research you do, you will need to retain complete and accurate notes on the sources of all the material you collect. Your research is small or big. You have to note one thing, that whatever information you get, from where did you get it, from which book, and when you retain its information, then you have its name, author's name, or report's name, author's name, year in which it was published. And also, if there's a publisher, then you will also record the name of the publisher, a publishing body. So, this is information that you really need to have so that you can have, actually, refer to them in a bibliography as well, at the end of your report, so that you can show that these are the sources that you have looked at. However, if the information that you need is not available to you in books, or if you feel that it will be better to go directly to the source, then you will be engaged in primary research or collecting primary data. And then you will need to collect the data yourself and interpret it yourself as well. Secondary sources say, you will get the interpretation of the data. If you do primary research, you will have to do the interpretation yourself. The four ways of collecting primary data are by examining documents, observing things, serving people, and conducting experiments. You have some documents that you are examining, you are seeing that these are the different documents produced and you have to collect data about them. Or you have some things that you have to see and report about them, you have to draw some conclusions, or you have to ask people, do surveys, or conduct experiments. All of these will be included in primary research. Let's have a look at these four separately. Documents, these could include documentary evidence, historical records, et cetera. Observations, observation applies to your five senses and your judgment to investigate. Surveys are often the best way to obtain answers from people who have relevant experience and opinions. A formal survey is a way of finding out what a cross-section of people think about something. For example, we have a formal survey, a cross-section of society, different types of people go and get information from them. And a formal survey requires a number of important decisions. You need to decide on whether you should use face-to-face interviews, phone calls, or printed questionnaires. If you are going to do a survey, first of all, you have to think about how to do that survey. You have to interview people face-to-face, call them and get information from them, or give them questionnaires, personally, or send them. You have to keep a lot of things in mind and decide about them. Also, you need to decide how many people you need to contact to get the desired result. Obviously, if you are doing interviews, then you have to contact a different number of people for that. I am just saying that you are sending questionnaires to the mail. Basically, one main reason could be that you would need to look at feasibility. Time, effort, manpower available. In interviews, obviously, more effort, more time, more people get a job, in questionnaires, less time, but both have different responses and the rate of return is also different. So, you need to keep all these different factors in mind as well. Also, you need to determine what particular questions you would need to ask in order to get the valid picture and get the kind of information that you require for your research. Two important research criteria include, when you're looking at surveys, include reliability, which means would the same results be obtained when the research is repeated or not? If you're doing a research once and you repeat it, would you get the same answers or not? This research is so reliable, it's not influenced by any different factors that if the factors are removed, your research results will change. And validity. Validity basically means that the research measures what it is intended to measure. So, are you getting the same information that you want to measure? Are you getting the same information or are you getting the same information that you wanted to ask something else? For a survey, if you need to develop an effective questionnaire, we talked about whether you can do an interview, a face-to-face interview or telephone calls or you can develop a questionnaire. For a face-to-face interview or telephone interview, you have to develop questions in one way or for a questionnaire, you have to develop questions in another way. And you need all the preparation for different types of questions requires great care and skill. If you are developing a questionnaire, you need to provide clear instructions so that respondents know exactly how to fill out the questionnaire. For example, if you want them to have different choices in the questionnaire and they have to tick or circle something or write the entire questionnaire, then in the beginning of the questionnaire, you have to give them clear instructions on what to do. Also, you need to keep the questionnaire short and easy to answer. If the questionnaire is short, there are more chances that you will get the answer. People will fill it out and give it back. If the questionnaire is on the surface, there are more chances that people will see it and say, it's not the right time and we will fill it out later and then it will never fill out. So, it's important to keep your questionnaire short. Also, you need to formulate questions that provide easily tabulated and analysed answers. Now, whenever you ask a question, when you get the answer, you have to tabulate them and analyse them. So, keep your question as such that you get the answer in the same way that you can analyse and compare easily. The easiest and most tabulated answer is where there are multiple choice questions or people have to rank something on 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, they have to choose or rate things. The open-ended questions where people have to give qualitative information or answer in sentences, if the questionnaire is filled out by a lot of people, then it becomes difficult to tabulate the long paragraphs or sentences of so many people. So, depending on the purpose, depending on how many people are filling out the questionnaire, you need to keep in mind the type of questions you ask as well. Avoid questions that lead to a particular answer because these then bias your survey. They lead to some kind of a bias within your survey. If your question is that there can be only one answer, then obviously, the audience or the questionnaire that you are going to fill has not given you the choice to answer the second question. So, whatever the different alternatives are, people have the choice to answer them. Also, ask only one thing at a time. If you ask do you read books, books and magazines regularly, you are basically targeting only those people who read books and either books or magazines or both. You are not targeting people who read newspapers, who read periodicals, etc. Also, avoid questions having vague or abstract words instead of saying something like are you frequently troubled by colds or fever? You should ask how many colds or how many times do you have fever in the past six months because by saying frequently, the answer will be yes or no and it really won't tell you what the frequency was whereas if you are actually asking about the number of times, then you will get an answer in a number form. People will say in the past six months I had fever or cold five times, four times, whatever and you will be able to tabulate the answer much more easily. You need to pre-test your questionnaire on a sample group to identify questions that are subject to misinterpretation. There are many times when we ask ourselves questions, because we think what questions we want to ask and what kind of answers we are expecting from them, we can't imagine how they will perceive when someone else will read them. And because of that, they can be questions which are misleading. So it's very important to pre-test your questionnaire, give it to a few people, a sample group of people who you want to give a questionnaire to and give a questionnaire to and tell them to fill out some of the questions that you are looking for. If you have any questions that are not clear or you don't understand what you want to do or you can ask one kind of question so that you can identify so that you can improve and finally give out. Also, include a few questions that rephrase the previous questions as a cross-check on the validity of the responses. And then also, there are a few questions which are repeated but in a different form so that when the answer comes you can check whether the people who are answering are valid or not. When the answer is asked in a different way, the answer is matching in both the questions. Remember that, even under the best of circumstances you get more than 10 to 20 responses. A lot of the times people do not return questionnaires so when you are giving out your questionnaire leave room for this aspect as well that whatever number you will give out, there will be many which will not be returned to you. Now the fifth step is to report writing is to analyze your results by calculating statistics and reasonable conclusions and if appropriate developing a set or list of recommendations when you have collected your data then you will analyze the data and on the basis of that you will draw conclusions and give any recommendations if possible. Now when it comes to calculating statistics much of the information you collect in the research phase will be in numerical form so that your readers can interpret its significance. Whenever you will get numbers from your research, you will get data many times in numerical form so obviously you have to interpret it so that your readers will know what is important if you only write numbers in a list then the readers may not be able to interpret it. Much of the information you collect in the research phase will be in numerical form and it must be manipulated by its significance. Let's look at a survey in which the answers will be in numerical form and then if you are presenting this type of survey and giving this type of questions then you will collect all the questions and then analyze them in numerical form what choices and answers were given. In the statistical statistics you will talk in terms of averages which is a single number representing a group of numbers you can talk in terms of trends trend analysis involves an examination of data over time so that patterns and relationships can be determined and you will talk in terms of correlation. A correlation is a statistical relationship between two or more variables. When you get your statistics in different ways you can calculate them as averages, as trends as correlation or as all of them you can talk about them. When you are drawing conclusions the conclusions may be based on a combination of facts value judgments and assumptions. You will check that the logic that underlies your conclusions is actually correct and note that the best conclusion is often the one that gains the most support. The conclusion you draw generally the strongest conclusion is the one that has the most support from the people who have filled out your survey. When you are developing recommendations you need to keep in mind that good recommendations are practical. If you are recommending something it should be that people can act on it. They are acceptable to readers and they are explained in enough detail so that readers can take action. If there are very vague recommendations then it will be difficult to take action on them or people may even get upset because they look very abstract so they should be determined in a concrete form in recommendations. Then preparing the final outline the final outline should be geared to your purpose and the audience's probable reaction. You can use visual aids illustration in tabular graphic schematic or pictorial form is effective. You will use visual aids to simplify, clarify and emphasize important information. There is no need to give everything but you can visually depict the important things you want to emphasize. In this lecture you would learn to define the problem to be solved by studying and outlining the issues that need to be analyzed. You learn to identify and analyze the issues that have to be analyzed during your study. You also learn to prepare a work plan for conducting your investigation estimating their timing and deciding on the sources of information required. We looked at how to organize the research phase of the investigation including the identification of secondary and primary sources of data. We looked at how to draw sound conclusions and develop practical recommendations and developing a final outline and visual aid plan for the report. Until next time, Allah Hafiz.