Writing Research Reports  Writing from research requires that you recognize your audience use an effective style, appropriate to your reader and purpose use effective formatting techniques for reader-friendly ease of access.

Criteria for Research Writing  Audience: are your readers high-tech, low- tech, or lay?  Style: research reports should be more formal than other types of writing.  Format: reader-friendly ease of access is accomplished through highlighting techniques

Effective Formatting  Overall organization introduction, discussion, and conclusion  Internal organization problem/solution; comparison/contrast; analysis; cause/effect  Parenthetical source citations  Works cited documentation of sources

Finding Information  Research leads you to two basic types of information: Primary information Secondary information

Primary Information  Involves the firsthand gathering of data  Sources include: Interviews Surveys Observations

Secondary Information  Includes sources of information that are already in published form.  Sources include: booksperiodicalsencyclopedias handbooks almanacsdirectoriesdictionaries web sites databasesgovernmentdiscussion groups