 Lecture 26, As-Salamu Alaikum. Welcome to the virtual university's course on business and technical communication. In today's lecture, we will be looking at empirical research reports. In this lecture, you will learn about the typical writing situations in which an empirical research report will be written. We will also look at the typical questions that readers ask most often, like we looked at typical questions when writing a general report. We will also look at the superstructure for empirical research reports, which will include the introduction, the objectives of the research, method, discussion, conclusion and recommendations. We will talk about headings. We will have a look at a planning guide and we will briefly review some sample research reports as well. Now, what are the typical writing situations in which an empirical research report would be written? You will be able to use the superstructure for empirical research reports most successfully if you understand the purpose of research discussed in these reports. When you are writing about empirical research, you will be writing to people who will make decisions based on the results of your report or a smaller amount of empirical research has a different purpose and that could be to extend general human knowledge. So, the two different types of purposes, one could be where people are making decisions based on your research and the other where your research is being used to extend human knowledge. The researchers set out to learn how fish remember, for example, in extending human knowledge, what the molten core of earth is like, etc. This research is carried out for the sake of humanity and is published in science journals, etc. In some situations, the two aims of research which aims to help in decision making and research which aims to extend human knowledge, in some situations these two aims overlap. Some organizations sponsor basic research usually in the hope that what is learnt can later be turned into practical use. So, a lot of the times people want a sponsor research or are interested in some kind of research to learn something, to extend their knowledge and then later it may also be converted into practical use and decisions may be made on the basis of what has been learnt. Likewise, some practical research turns up results that are of interest to those who desire to learn more about the world in general. So, it could also be the other way around that the main purpose of the research is practical, but as a result of that there are some conclusions, some findings that would be of interest to people who are not going to take any action, but they will be reading the report basically to extend their horizons to expand their knowledge. The readers are most likely to ask certain questions when they are setting out to read a report. We looked at some questions that readers ask when we looked at general reports and in the same way when they are reading empirical reports even then the readers will have some preconceived notions, some preconceived questions that will come up in their minds and that they are likely to ask of the material that they are faced with and of themselves as well and of you as a writer. Whether it aims to support practical decisions, extend human knowledge or achieve some combination of the two purposes, almost all empirical research is customarily reported in the same superstructure. All report will follow the same type of superstructure that we will be looking at regardless of what the purpose of that report is and this is because the readers of all types, regardless of what they are hoping to get out of the report, all types of readers will have seven general questions about the report. So as we saw in the previous lecture, there were six general questions and there were six sections of the report. In this, when we look at empirical reports, there are seven general questions that students, that sorry, readers tend to ask and they are correspondingly seven sections to a report as well that answer to those questions. The first question that readers are likely to ask is why is the research important to us? Readers concerned with solving specific practical problems want to know what problems your research will help address. What is it that your research will talk about? Readers concerned with extending human knowledge want to know how you think your research contributes to what humans already know. So whatever aim is to read the readers, they want to know how important this research is for them. If the readers want to do practical research, they want to know how your research will help solve their problems. If the readers are reading your research, your reports are reading that they want to extend their knowledge, then they want to know what you are telling them, which they don't know before. What you are adding to what people know before. Obviously, if you are talking about what thousands of people have already said, then you are not contributing anything new. So people want to know what new are you contributing to existing knowledge. The second important question that readers are likely to ask is what were you trying to find out? What are you looking for? A key part of an empirical research project is the careful formulation of the research questions that the project will try to answer. What is it that you are trying to find out and you need to formulate your questions very carefully so that the corresponding answers then become clear to you and it becomes clear to the reader what you are trying to find out. The readers want to know what those questions are so that they can determine whether they are significant questions or not. If the questions that you are asking in your research say, if they are not important for the reader, if they are not significant, then there is no point in reading the report for the reader. If the questions that you are exploring are not of their interest or if they think that these questions do not mean anything. Another question is, was your research method sound or not? What method were you using? Was it reliable? Was it valid or not? Your method has to be appropriate to your research and it has to be intellectually sound. If the research method is not appropriate or intellectually sound, if it is not according to what you are trying to find out, if it is not appropriate to the needs of what you need to know or if there are flaws in it which are logical flaws or intellectual flaws, then your readers will not place any faith in your results. You will not have any credibility. Your conclusions will not have any credibility nor will your recommendations. So, if your methods are not so clear, sound, not reliable, then your results, your conclusions, your recommendations will also have a suspicion on your audience and they will think that the information collected by them was not correct. So, their results, recommendations and conclusions can be as correct as they are. Also, your readers will want to know what results did your research produce? What results did you research and what results did you relay? And that is obviously very natural that they would want to know that because if they are going through the research, they are going through the methods that you use, then obviously the natural conclusion of that is that they want to know what you found. Also, they will want to know how you interpreted those results. Your readers will want to interpret these results in a way that is meaningful to them. So, you need the interpretation that you put upon the results should be meaningful to the reader. They will also ask what is the significance of the results? As you see, there is a natural progression to the questions and there is a natural connection between all the questions. So, once they have questioned the methods, they have questioned what results were achieved, the interpretation, then they say what is the significance of what you found? What answers do these results imply for your research questions? When you asked the research questions in the beginning, we said what are you trying to find out? For those research questions, what are the answers to your research questions? And also, how do your results relate to the problems that the research was to help solve or to the area of knowledge that your research set out to expand? Whatever your results were, your objective in the beginning of the research, if your objective was that you are solving some problems and you are taking some decision on the basis, then how does your result relate to that? If your objective was that there is an expansion in knowledge, then how do you expand that area of knowledge and how do you relate to it? Also, then the readers also want to know as a consequence, what do you as a writer think we, the readers, should do? The readers concerned with practical problems want to know what you advise them? What are you advising them? What are your recommendations? When the readers want to solve some problems, they want you to advise them. Now tell them that we have done this research and this result. That is how we interpreted them. Now we should do this. Readers concerned with extending human knowledge, on the other hand, want to know what you think and what you think your results imply for future research. The results you have found and the results you have found, now on their basis, what is their role in the future research and in the expansion of knowledge? Now, after having looked at these seven questions that readers are most likely to ask, questions that readers ask most often, you need to look at the superstructure of a general report because this will answer the questions that readers ask most often. And this superstructure has the following elements. It has an introduction. There is a section which talks of the objectives of the research. Then there is a discussion of the methods, the results. Then there is a discussion of the results, a conclusion and a recommendation. So, introduction, objectives, method, results, discussion, conclusion, recommendations. These are the seven sections which relate your seven questions. As you can see on this slide. Now let us have a look at each of these sections separately. In the introduction to an empirical report, you should seek to answer the question why is the research important to us as we just saw. Typically, writers answer this question in two steps. They announce the topic of their research and then they explain the importance of the topic to the readers. When it comes to announcing the topic, you can apply the topic of your research simply by including the topic as the key phrase in the opening sentence of your report. For example, consider the first sentence of a report on the satellite communication system as shown on your screen. For the past 18 months, the satellite products laboratory has been developing a system that will permit companies with large nationwide fleets of trucks to communicate directly with their drivers at any time through a satellite link. A big part of this research is that it is the topic of this report that a system will develop in this way that will make it easier for companies to communicate through a satellite link. Let us have a look at another one. This is a first sentence from a report on the way people develop friendly research through a satellite link. Let us have a look at another one. This is a first sentence from a report on the way people develop friendly research and develop friendly relations. It says, social psychologists know very little about the way rail friendships develop in their natural settings. Now this phrase, the way rail friendships occur in their natural settings is the topic of the report. Now explaining the importance of the research. Why is the research important? To explain the importance of the research to your readers you can use either one or both of these methods. You can state the relevance of your research to your organization's goals. You can review the previously published literature on the subject. You can review the previously published literature on the subject. When it comes to talking about the relevance to organizational goals, in reports which are written in organizations, whether you own or a client's organization, you can explain the relevance of your research by relating it to a goal or a problem that that organization is facing. Sometimes the importance of the research will be so obvious to your readers that merely naming your topic will be sufficient. Sometimes the importance of the research will be so obvious to your readers that merely naming your topic will be sufficient. Many times you will have to mention the topic in the beginning of your report and the importance of your research will be known because it will be stated directly in the topic. Why is it important? However, at other times you will need to discuss at length the relevance of your research to your organization. In the first paragraph of the satellite report, for instance, the writer mentions the potential market for the satellite communication system that they are developing. Now, the second way was to give an extended discussion of work that has been done previously, a literature review. This is where you review the existing knowledge on your research. Thereby, you establish the importance of your research. You talk about what has been done in this area and because of that you show why this area is important. Generally, you can arrange a literature review in two parts. You can first present the main pieces of knowledge communicated in the literature. What were the main topics that are generally covered and about which research has been done and then you identify some significant gap in this knowledge. The knowledge that people already know and research has been done but what is not yet research that people do not know about? This is the very gap that your own research will fill. You have to talk about it. In this way, you establish this special contribution that your research will make. You are actually showing why your research is important. Because it has been discussed before and it has been researched in this area but there was one particular aspect that was not seen and now you will see the importance of your research. Let's have a look at an example where initially the writer talks about what is known on his topic. This is the beginning of the literature review. He says a great deal of research in social psychology has focused on variables influencing an individual's attraction to another at an initial encounter usually in laboratory settings and then in brackets he gives the names and years of who conducted the research and when. And then he continues to identify the gap in knowledge and by saying yet very little data exists on the processes by which individuals in the real world move beyond initial attraction to develop a friendship. Even less is known about the way developing friendships are maintained and how they evolve over time and then he gives a reference of who says that very little is known about them and about the evolution. Now as you saw initially in this example we talked about the importance by showing that a lot of research has been done. And then he says by using the word yet he lets the reader know that there is something missing. So he qualifies the sentence and then he continues to say that very little data exists on a particular area which is on the relationships in the real world. It was in the laboratory settings and now we are talking about the real world and there is very little information in it. The writer continues this discussion of the previous research then over three paragraphs. Each paragraph follows the same pattern it identifies an area of research tells what is known about it about that area and then identify gaps in the knowledge. That this writer has conducted. Obviously when you are highlighting the gaps you are doing it because your aim is to fill those gaps otherwise there is no need to highlight those gaps. Now these paragraphs that the writer writes then serve an important additional function also performed by many literature reviews. They introduce established facts and theories that are relevant to the writer's work and necessary to the understanding of the report. Writers almost always include literature reviews in the reports that they write for professional journals. The reports written for professional journals are bi and large literature reviews included. In contrast if the reports are made for readers within an organization then literature reviews may be omitted. That is because such reviews are often unnecessary when addressing organizational readers. Many times when you are writing a report within an organization then you do not need to give a background review. This is because many times organizational readers judge the importance of a report in terms of its relevance to the organization's not in terms of its relation to the general pool of human knowledge. They do not need to know what generally is known about that problem. They are concerned with how it relates to their organization. For example the typical reader of the truck and satellite communication report that we looked at was interested in the report because he or she or they wanted to learn how well their company system would work. To them a general survey of the literature on satellite communications would have seemed irrelevant perhaps even annoying. They do not want to know what are the general communication systems and what are the reasons for their work. They have a connection with their own company and they are interested in the relevance of their company. A second reason that writers often omit literature reviews when addressing readers in organizations is that such reviews rarely help such readers understand the report. They do not really aid understanding. A lot of the times they end up confusing the reader as well. That is because the research projects undertaken by within organizations usually focus so sharply on a particular local question that published literature on the subject in general is besides the point. The scope of the literature is so focused that the general topic of the literature is irrelevant in organizations that is why literature reviews are omitted. For example a review of previously published literature on satellite communications would not have helped readers understand the truck and satellite report either. Sometimes of course literature reviews do appear in reports written to organizational readers and often they say if they do appear then they say something like this. In a published article one of our competitors claims to have saved large amounts of money by trying a new technique. The purpose of the research described in this report is to determine whether or not we could enjoy similar results. As you have seen the writer has referred to the claim of the competitor and this is the background which is sufficient for this report. He did not write the whole what was written in the report and he told the key findings and this is a reference point on which the report was based. Of course the final standard for judging whether you should include a literature review in your report is your understanding of your purpose and your readers. In some way or another however the introduction to all your empirical research reports should answer your readers question why is this research important to us. Now coming to the objectives of the research. Every empirical research project has carefully constructed objectives. Every project has objectives of why the project is being done and what are the aims and objectives. These objectives define the focus of your project they influence the choice of research methods that are used and they shape the way in which you interpret your result. Thus readers of empirical research reports want and need to know what the objectives are. Obviously when your objectives define which method you are using and what is the scope of your research and how it will be then these are very important things that you should know about your objectives. The following example from the satellite report shows one way you can tell your readers about your objectives. It says in particular we wanted to test whether we could achieve accurate data transmissions and good quality voice transmissions in the variety of terrains typically and the second objective says we wanted also to see what factors might affect the quality of transmissions. Now here the first objective is that they wanted to see whether they can achieve accurate data transmission and the second objective is which factors affect the quality of the transmission. Now with these two they will decide what method to use and how to interpret the data and what are the objectives. When reporting on research that involves the use of statistics you can usually state your objectives by stating the hypotheses you tested. Where appropriate you can explain these hypotheses in terms of theory. Again citing previous publications on the subject. If you have already worked on the subject then you will hand them over to them. The following passage shows how the writer who studied friendship explains some of his hypotheses. Notice how the author begins with a statement of the overall goal of the research. The goal of the study was to identify characteristic behavioural and attitudinal changes that occurred within interpersonal relationships as they progress from initial acquaintance to close friendship. With regard to relationships benefit and costs it was predicted that both benefits and costs would increase as the friendship developed. The ratings of both the costs and benefits would be positively correlated with the ratings of friendship intensity. In addition the types of benefits listed by the subjects were expected to change as the friendships developed. Now let us have a look at the method. These were the objectives. We looked at objectives and obviously we said that based on what the objectives were the method of achieving the method of obtaining data would be determined. When reading the reports of your empirical research for precise details concerning your method you know that your objectives are based on a particular method that we will collect our data in this way. But the readers want to know the precise details of that method to know what things are included in this method and how you collected the data. These details serve three purposes. They let the reader assess the soundness of your research design and appropriateness for problems that you are investigating. Secondly, the details of your method enable you readers to determine the limitations that your method might place upon the conclusions that you are drawing. Due to which what are the limitations in your conclusions and what things you can conclude and what things you cannot conclude. Thirdly, the description of your method provides information that will help your readers repeat your experiment if they wish to verify your results or conduct similar research of their own. So the kind of information you should provide about your method depends upon the nature of your research. So the kind of information you should provide about your method depends upon the nature of your research. For example, the writer studying friendship began his description of his research method in this way. At the beginning of their first term at the university, college freshmen selected two individuals whom they had just met and completed a series of questionnaires regarding their relationships with those two individuals at three-week intervals through the school terms. Now, let's see what they have said in this description that when they were researching what kind of research they had done. As you may remember at the beginning of their research they had said that during the first research in laboratory settings human relationships were not seen in real-life situations. Now, they are telling how they interacted with people in college and monitored them. At the beginning of their first term students selected two individuals whom they had just met and together they filled a series of questions regarding their relationships and after three-week intervals they answered these questions so that consistency came and on the basis of these answers all the research they found were done. In the remaining of the paragraph the writers explain the questionnaires that asked the freshman to tell about such things as their attitudes towards each of the two individuals. However, the paragraph that we saw and the remainder of the paragraph that you have not seen is a small amount but actual research is a document of about 1200 words but the research methods have been discussed in just a few words. The writers of the satellite report likewise provided detailed information about their procedures. He provides three paragraphs and two slides explaining their equipment that was used and then also uses two paragraphs and one map of the region covered by the trucks The trucks that go in the 11 regions what were their stages how they used to explain two paragraphs and one map and the equipment used for research to describe three paragraphs and two tables this is a special link of the research method but because the research was more complicated there were more methods and their description is longer. Now you as a writer need to decide which method to include the most obvious way in which to decide is to follow the general reporting practices in your field what are the general practices the easiest way to know is to look at the reports written in your field and see how the section of the method is long and detailed if generally in your area in a very short concise way the section of the method is not given a detailed description then you do not need to give but if in your area and really the articles or reports there is a lot of detail of the methodology then you have to evaluate the details of the method used you can check the scope of your research in the ways described in what you see on your screen now you need to list every aspect of your procedure that you made a decision about what are the different aspects of your procedure that you made a decision about then identify every aspect of your research that your readers might ask about what are the aspects of your procedure that you might ask ask yourself what aspects of your procedure might limit the conclusions you draw from your results take some time and ask yourself what are the aspects of your procedure that might limit the conclusions of your procedure your results identify every procedure that other researchers would need to understand in order to design a similar study what are the steps in your procedure that you have to write that without them other researchers cannot follow this procedure if you feel that they are necessary in order to use this procedure again then you need to list those features as well now that was the methods some a checklist a few things you needed to list you needed to put down in your method section and why you needed to put them down that affected your understanding of what you were doing and how that affected your readers' understanding of the reliability of the methods used and of how you did things the next section will deal with the results that you actually got by using those methods if you have used the methods then of course there were experiments or questionnaires or interviews that you gave your description you also need to tell them what results were the results of empirical research are the data that you obtain although your results are the heart of your empirical research project they may take up a very small portion of it generally results are placed in one of two ways they either presented through tables and graphs the satellite report uses two tables the report and friendship uses four tables and eleven graphs or results can be placed in sentences when placed in sentences results are often woven into a discussion that combines data and interpretation sometimes let us briefly present all the results in one section and then discuss them in a separate section sometimes they combine the two in a single integrated section and then in this integrated section it is often interwoven the results can also be interwoven with the data whichever method you use your discussion must link your interpretative comments with the specific results that you are interpreting whatever your comments your interpretation should have a connection with the results which you are giving interpretation on you will not have any connection with your results let us have a look at an example where we have a discussion section and we are going to look at the different sections or the different elements of a discussion section the first section is the emphasis on the key results that are shown in the table it says as table 3 shows 91% of the data transmissions were successful now this next then in the next centers the writers draw attention to other important results by saying the most important difference to note is the one between the rate of successful transmissions in the southern Piedmont region and the rates in all the other regions then in the last section the writers interpret these results they say in the southern Piedmont area we had the truck drive slightly outside the ATS-6 footprint so that we could see if successful transmissions could be made there when the truck left the footprint the percentage of successful data transmissions dropped abruptly to 43% so in the end there were their interpretations that when this was done then how much was dropped what was seen let us have a look at the other example where we were talking about friendship and relationships and let us see the discussion section of that report in this the writers for interpretation they say inter-correlations among the subject's friendship intensity ratings at the various assessment points showed that friendship attitudes became increasingly stable over time then this next section talks about the specific results presented as support for the interpretation for example the correlation between friendship intensity ratings and friendship intensity ratings at 3 weeks and 6 weeks was 0.55 between 6 weeks and 9 weeks 0.78 between 9 weeks and 12 weeks 0.88 so in this way you can present your discussions interpretation and results or you can tell them separately first you will decide the order and nature of your report now let us come to the conclusions besides interpreting the results of your search you need to explain what your results mean in terms of original research questions that you had at the beginning and the general problem that you set out to investigate your explanation of these matters are the conclusions the readers of some empirical research reports want to know what based on the research the writers think should be done the research you have done what you think should be done and the readers want to know this is especially true in cases where the research is directly solving a practical problem consequently then research reports include a section on recommendations so basically these were all the sections of an empirical research report in this lecture we have looked at typical writing situations where the typical situations in which empirical research reports are written we have looked at the questions that readers are most likely to ask we have looked at the superstructure for empirical research reports which included the introduction the objectives of research method, discussion conclusion, recommendation we also looked at a planning guide at the end and we in this lecture we have also seen some samples of research reports with this we come to the end of today's lesson on empirical research writing I will see you next time until then, Allah Hafiz