the body of the research report includes

10.7 Body of the report

The body of the report is of course the main text of the report, the sections between the introduction and conclusion. Illustrated below are sample pages.

In all but the shortest reports (two pages or less), use headings to mark off the different topics and subtopics covered. Headings are the titles and subtitles you see within the actual text of much professional scientific, technical, and business writing. Headings are like the parts of an outline that have been pasted into the actual pages of the document.

Headings are an important feature of professional technical writing: they alert readers to upcoming topics and subtopics, help readers find their way around in long reports and skip what they are not interested in, and break up long stretches of straight text.

Headings are also useful for writers. They keep you organized and focused on the topic. When you begin using headings, your impulse may be to slap in the headings after you’ve written the rough draft. Instead, visualize the headings before you start the rough draft, and plug them in as you write.

Your task in this chapter is to learn how to use headings and to learn the style and format of a specific design of headings. Here are a number of helpful tips:

Make the phrasing of headings self-explanatory: instead of “Background” or “Technical Information,” make it more specific, such as “Physics of Fiber Optics.”
Make headings indicate the range of topic coverage in the section. For example, if the section covers the design and operation of a pressurized water reactor, the heading “Pressurized Water Reactor Design” would be incomplete and misleading.
Avoid “stacked” headings—any two consecutive headings without intervening text.
Avoid pronoun reference to headings. For example, if you have a heading “Torque,” don’t begin the sentence following it with something like this: “This is a physics principle…..”
When possible, omit articles from the beginning of headings. For example, “The Pressurized Water Reactor” can easily be changed to “Pressurized Water Reactor” or, better yet, “Pressurized Water Reactors.”
Don’t use headings as lead-ins to lists or as figure titles.
Avoid “widowed” headings: that’s where a heading occurs at the bottom of a page and the text it introduces starts at the top of the next page. Keep at least two lines of body text with the heading, or force it to start the new page.

If you manually format each individual heading using the guidelines presented in the preceding list, you’ll find you’re doing quite a lot of repetitive work. The styles provided by Microsoft Word, OpenOffice Writer, and other software save you this work. You simply select Heading 1, Heading 2, Heading 3, and so on. You’ll notice the format and style are different from what is presented here. However, you can design your own styles for headings.

Bulleted and numbered lists

In the body of a report, also use bulleted, numbered, and two-column lists where appropriate. Lists help by emphasizing key points, by making information easier to follow, and by breaking up solid walls of text. Always introduce the list so that your audience understand the purpose and context of the list. Whenever practical, provide a follow-up comment, too. Here are some additional tips:

Use lists to highlight or emphasize text or to enumerate sequential items.
Use a lead-in to introduce the list items and to indicate the meaning or purpose of the list (and punctuate it with a colon).
Use consistent spacing, indentation, punctuation, and caps style for all lists in a document.
Make list items parallel in phrasing.
Make sure that each item in the list reads grammatically with the lead-in.
Avoid using headings as lead-ins for lists.
Avoid overusing lists; using too many lists destroys their effectiveness.
Use similar types of lists consistently in similar text in the same document.

Following up a list with text helps your reader understand context for the information distilled into list form. The tips above provide a practical guide to formatting lists.

Graphics and figure titles

In technical report, you are likely to need drawings, diagrams, tables, and charts. These not only convey certain kinds of information more efficiently but also give your report an added look of professionalism and authority. If you’ve never put these kinds of graphics into a report, there are some relatively easy ways to do so—you don’t need to be a professional graphic artist. For strategies for adding graphics and tables to reports, see the chapter on Creating and Using Visuals. See the chapter on visuals for more help with the principles for creating visuals.

Conclusions

For most reports, you will need to include a final section. When you plan the final section of your report, think about the functions it can perform in relation to the rest of the report. A conclusion does not necessarily just summarize a report. Instead, use the conclusion to explain the most significant findings you made in relation to your report topic.

Appendixes are those extra sections following the conclusion. What do you put in appendixes? Anything that does not comfortably fit in the main part of the report but cannot be left out of the report altogether. The appendix is commonly used for large tables of data, big chunks of sample code, fold-out maps, background that is too basic or too advanced for the body of the report, or large illustrations that just do not fit in the body of the report. Anything that you feel is too large for the main part of the report or that you think would be distracting and interrupt the flow of the report is a good candidate for an appendix. Notice that each one is given a letter (A, B, C, and so on).

Information sources

Documenting your information sources is all about establishing, maintaining, and protecting your credibility in the profession. You must cite (“document”) borrowed information regardless of the shape or form in which you present it. Whether you directly quote it, paraphrase it, or summarize it—it’s still borrowed information. Whether it comes from a book, article, a diagram, a table, a web page, a product brochure, an expert whom you interview in person—it’s still borrowed information.

Documentation systems vary according to professionals and fields. For a technical writing class in college, you may be using either MLA or APA style. Engineers use the IEEE system, examples of which are shown throughout this chapter. Another commonly used documentation system is provided by the American Psychological Association (APA).

Page numbering

Page-numbering style used in traditional report design differs from contemporary report design primarily in the former’s use of lowercase roman numerals in front matter (everything before the introduction).

All pages in the report (within but excluding the front and back covers) are numbered; but on some pages, the numbers are not displayed.
In the contemporary design, all pages throughout the document use arabic numerals; in the traditional design, all pages before the introduction (first page of the body of the report) use lowercase roman numerals.
On special pages, such as the title page and page one of the introduction, page numbers are not displayed.
Page numbers can be placed in one of several areas on the page. Usually, the best and easiest choice is to place page numbers at the bottom center of the page (remember to hide them on special pages).
If you place page numbers at the top of the page, you must hide them on chapter or section openers where a heading or title is at the top of the page.

Chapter Attribution Information

This chapter was derived by Annemarie Hamlin, Chris Rubio, and Michele DeSilva, Central Oregon Community College, from Online Technical Writing by David McMurrey – CC: BY 4.0

Technical Writing Copyright © 2017 by Allison Gross, Annemarie Hamlin, Billy Merck, Chris Rubio, Jodi Naas, Megan Savage, and Michele DeSilva is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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The Report Body

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The body of your report is a detailed discussion of your work for those readers who want to know in some depth and completeness what was done. The body of the report shows what was done, how it was done, what the results were, and what conclusions and recommendations can be drawn.

Introduction

The introduction states the problem and its significance, states the technical goals of the work, and usually contains background information that the reader needs to know in order to understand the report. Consider, as you begin your introduction, who your readers are and what background knowledge they have. For example, the information needed by someone educated in medicine could be very different from someone working in your own field of engineering.

The introduction might include any or all of the following.

Problems that gave rise to the investigation
The purpose of the assignment (what the writer was asked to do)
History or theory behind the investigation Literature on the subject
Methods of investigation

While academic reports often include extensive literature reviews, reports written in industry often have the literature review in an appendix.

Summary or background

This section gives the theory or previous work on which the experimental work is based if that information has not been included in the introduction.

Methods/procedures

This section describes the major pieces of equipment used and recaps the essential step of what was done. In scholarly articles, a complete account of the procedures is important. However, general readers of technical reports are not interested in a detailed methodology. This is another instance in which it is necessary to think about who will be using your document and tailor it according to their experience, needs, and situation.

A common mistake in reporting procedures is to use the present tense. This use of the present tense results in what is sometimes called “the cookbook approach” because the description sounds like a set of instructions. Avoid this and use the past tense in your “methods/procedures” sections.

This section presents the data or the end product of the study, test, or project and includes tables and/or graphs and a brief interpretation of what the data show. When interpreting your data, be sure to consider your reader, what their situation is and how the data you have collected will pertain to them.

Discussion of results

This section explains what the results show, analyzes uncertainties, notes significant trends, compares results with theory, evaluates limitations or the chance for faulty interpretation, or discusses assumptions. The discussion section sometimes is a very important section of the report, and sometimes it is not appropriate at all, depending on your reader, situation, and purpose.

It is important to remember that when you are discussing the results, you must be specific. Avoid vague statements such as “the results were very promising.”

Conclusions

This section interprets the results and is a product of thinking about the implications of the results. Conclusions are often confused with results. A conclusion is a generalization about the problem that can reasonably be deduced from the results.

Be sure to spend some time thinking carefully about your conclusions. Avoid such obvious statements as “X doesn’t work well under difficult conditions.” Be sure to also consider how your conclusions will be received by your readers, and as well as by your shadow readers—those to whom the report is not addressed, but will still read and be influenced by your report.

Recommendations

The recommendations are the direction or actions that you think must be taken or additional work that is need to expand the knowledge obtained in your report. In this part of your report, it is essential to understand your reader. At this point you are asking the reader to think or do something about the information you have presented. In order to achieve your purposes and have your reader do what you want, consider how they will react to your recommendations and phrase your words in a way to best achieve your purposes.

Conclusions and recommendations do the following.

They answer the question, “So what?”
They stress the significance of the work
They take into account the ways others will be affected by your report
They offer the only opportunity in your report for you to express your opinions

What are the differences between Results, Conclusions, and Recommendations?

Assume that you were walking down the street, staring at the treetops, and stepped in a deep puddle while wearing expensive new shoes. What results, conclusions, and recommendations might you draw from this situation?

Some suggested answers follow.

Results : The shoes got soaking wet, the leather cracked as it dried, and the soles separated from the tops.
Conclusions : These shoes were not waterproof and not meant to be worn when walking in water. In addition, the high price of the shoes is not closely linked with durability.
Recommendations : In the future, the wearer of this type of shoe should watch out for puddles, not just treetops. When buying shoes, the wearer should determine the extent of the shoes’ waterproofing and/or any warranties on durability.

How to Write a Body of a Research Paper

The main part of your research paper is called “the body.” To write this important part of your paper, include only relevant information, or information that gets to the point. Organize your ideas in a logical order—one that makes sense—and provide enough details—facts and examples—to support the points you want to make.

Logical Order

Transition words and phrases, adding evidence, phrases for supporting topic sentences.

Transition Phrases for Comparisons
Transition Phrases for Contrast
Transition Phrases to Show a Process
Phrases to Introduce Examples
Transition Phrases for Presenting Evidence

How to Make Effective Transitions

Examples of effective transitions, drafting your conclusion, writing the body paragraphs.

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The third and fourth paragraphs follow the same format as the second:
Transition or topic sentence.
Topic sentence (if not included in the first sentence).
Supporting sentences including a discussion, quotations, or examples that support the topic sentence.
Concluding sentence that transitions to the next paragraph.

The topic of each paragraph will be supported by the evidence you itemized in your outline. However, just as smooth transitions are required to connect your paragraphs, the sentences you write to present your evidence should possess transition words that connect ideas, focus attention on relevant information, and continue your discussion in a smooth and fluid manner.

You presented the main idea of your paper in the thesis statement. In the body, every single paragraph must support that main idea. If any paragraph in your paper does not, in some way, back up the main idea expressed in your thesis statement, it is not relevant, which means it doesn’t have a purpose and shouldn’t be there.

Each paragraph also has a main idea of its own. That main idea is stated in a topic sentence, either at the beginning or somewhere else in the paragraph. Just as every paragraph in your paper supports your thesis statement, every sentence in each paragraph supports the main idea of that paragraph by providing facts or examples that back up that main idea. If a sentence does not support the main idea of the paragraph, it is not relevant and should be left out.

A paper that makes claims or states ideas without backing them up with facts or clarifying them with examples won’t mean much to readers. Make sure you provide enough supporting details for all your ideas. And remember that a paragraph can’t contain just one sentence. A paragraph needs at least two or more sentences to be complete. If a paragraph has only one or two sentences, you probably haven’t provided enough support for your main idea. Or, if you have trouble finding the main idea, maybe you don’t have one. In that case, you can make the sentences part of another paragraph or leave them out.

Arrange the paragraphs in the body of your paper in an order that makes sense, so that each main idea follows logically from the previous one. Likewise, arrange the sentences in each paragraph in a logical order.

If you carefully organized your notes and made your outline, your ideas will fall into place naturally as you write your draft. The main ideas, which are building blocks of each section or each paragraph in your paper, come from the Roman-numeral headings in your outline. The supporting details under each of those main ideas come from the capital-letter headings. In a shorter paper, the capital-letter headings may become sentences that include supporting details, which come from the Arabic numerals in your outline. In a longer paper, the capital letter headings may become paragraphs of their own, which contain sentences with the supporting details, which come from the Arabic numerals in your outline.

In addition to keeping your ideas in logical order, transitions are another way to guide readers from one idea to another. Transition words and phrases are important when you are suggesting or pointing out similarities between ideas, themes, opinions, or a set of facts. As with any perfect phrase, transition words within paragraphs should not be used gratuitously. Their meaning must conform to what you are trying to point out, as shown in the examples below:

“Accordingly” or “in accordance with” indicates agreement. For example :Thomas Edison’s experiments with electricity accordingly followed the theories of Benjamin Franklin, J. B. Priestly, and other pioneers of the previous century.
“Analogous” or “analogously” contrasts different things or ideas that perform similar functions or make similar expressions. For example: A computer hard drive is analogous to a filing cabinet. Each stores important documents and data.
“By comparison” or “comparatively”points out differences between things that otherwise are similar. For example: Roses require an alkaline soil. Azaleas, by comparison, prefer an acidic soil.
“Corresponds to” or “correspondingly” indicates agreement or conformity. For example: The U.S. Constitution corresponds to England’s Magna Carta in so far as both established a framework for a parliamentary system.
“Equals,”“equal to,” or “equally” indicates the same degree or quality. For example:Vitamin C is equally as important as minerals in a well-balanced diet.
“Equivalent” or “equivalently” indicates two ideas or things of approximately the same importance, size, or volume. For example:The notions of individual liberty and the right to a fair and speedy trial hold equivalent importance in the American legal system.
“Common” or “in common with” indicates similar traits or qualities. For example: Darwin did not argue that humans were descended from the apes. Instead, he maintained that they shared a common ancestor.
“In the same way,”“in the same manner,”“in the same vein,” or “likewise,” connects comparable traits, ideas, patterns, or activities. For example: John Roebling’s suspension bridges in Brooklyn and Cincinnati were built in the same manner, with strong cables to support a metallic roadway. Example 2: Despite its delicate appearance, John Roebling’s Brooklyn Bridge was built as a suspension bridge supported by strong cables. Example 3: Cincinnati’s Suspension Bridge, which Roebling also designed, was likewise supported by cables.
“Kindred” indicates that two ideas or things are related by quality or character. For example: Artists Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin are considered kindred spirits in the Impressionist Movement. “Like” or “as” are used to create a simile that builds reader understanding by comparing two dissimilar things. (Never use “like” as slang, as in: John Roebling was like a bridge designer.) For examples: Her eyes shone like the sun. Her eyes were as bright as the sun.
“Parallel” describes events, things, or ideas that occurred at the same time or that follow similar logic or patterns of behavior. For example:The original Ocktoberfests were held to occur in parallel with the autumn harvest.
“Obviously” emphasizes a point that should be clear from the discussion. For example: Obviously, raccoons and other wildlife will attempt to find food and shelter in suburban areas as their woodland habitats disappear.
“Similar” and “similarly” are used to make like comparisons. For example: Horses and ponies have similar physical characteristics although, as working farm animals, each was bred to perform different functions.
“There is little debate” or “there is consensus” can be used to point out agreement. For example:There is little debate that the polar ice caps are melting.The question is whether global warming results from natural or human-made causes.

Other phrases that can be used to make transitions or connect ideas within paragraphs include:

Use “alternately” or “alternatively” to suggest a different option.
Use “antithesis” to indicate a direct opposite.
Use “contradict” to indicate disagreement.
Use “on the contrary” or “conversely” to indicate that something is different from what it seems.
Use “dissimilar” to point out differences between two things.
Use “diverse” to discuss differences among many things or people.
Use “distinct” or “distinctly” to point out unique qualities.
Use “inversely” to indicate an opposite idea.
Use “it is debatable,” “there is debate,” or “there is disagreement” to suggest that there is more than one opinion about a subject.
Use “rather” or “rather than” to point out an exception.
Use “unique” or “uniquely” to indicate qualities that can be found nowhere else.
Use “unlike” to indicate dissimilarities.
Use “various” to indicate more than one kind.

Writing Topic Sentences

Remember, a sentence should express a complete thought, one thought per sentence—no more, no less. The longer and more convoluted your sentences become, the more likely you are to muddle the meaning, become repetitive, and bog yourself down in issues of grammar and construction. In your first draft, it is generally a good idea to keep those sentences relatively short and to the point. That way your ideas will be clearly stated.You will be able to clearly see the content that you have put down—what is there and what is missing—and add or subtract material as it is needed. The sentences will probably seem choppy and even simplistic.The purpose of a first draft is to ensure that you have recorded all the content you will need to make a convincing argument. You will work on smoothing and perfecting the language in subsequent drafts.

Transitioning from your topic sentence to the evidence that supports it can be problematic. It requires a transition, much like the transitions needed to move from one paragraph to the next. Choose phrases that connect the evidence directly to your topic sentence.

Consider this: (give an example or state evidence).
If (identify one condition or event) then (identify the condition or event that will follow).
It should go without saying that (point out an obvious condition).
Note that (provide an example or observation).
Take a look at (identify a condition; follow with an explanation of why you think it is important to the discussion).
The authors had (identify their idea) in mind when they wrote “(use a quotation from their text that illustrates the idea).”
The point is that (summarize the conclusion your reader should draw from your research).
This becomes evident when (name the author) says that (paraphrase a quote from the author’s writing).
We see this in the following example: (provide an example of your own).
(The author’s name) offers the example of (summarize an example given by the author).

If an idea is controversial, you may need to add extra evidence to your paragraphs to persuade your reader. You may also find that a logical argument, one based solely on your evidence, is not persuasive enough and that you need to appeal to the reader’s emotions. Look for ways to incorporate your research without detracting from your argument.

Writing Transition Sentences

It is often difficult to write transitions that carry a reader clearly and logically on to the next paragraph (and the next topic) in an essay. Because you are moving from one topic to another, it is easy to simply stop one and start another. Great research papers, however, include good transitions that link the ideas in an interesting discussion so that readers can move smoothly and easily through your presentation. Close each of your paragraphs with an interesting transition sentence that introduces the topic coming up in the next paragraph.

Transition sentences should show a relationship between the two topics.Your transition will perform one of the following functions to introduce the new idea:

Indicate that you will be expanding on information in a different way in the upcoming paragraph.
Indicate that a comparison, contrast, or a cause-and-effect relationship between the topics will be discussed.
Indicate that an example will be presented in the next paragraph.
Indicate that a conclusion is coming up.

Transitions make a paper flow smoothly by showing readers how ideas and facts follow one another to point logically to a conclusion. They show relationships among the ideas, help the reader to understand, and, in a persuasive paper, lead the reader to the writer’s conclusion.

Each paragraph should end with a transition sentence to conclude the discussion of the topic in the paragraph and gently introduce the reader to the topic that will be raised in the next paragraph. However, transitions also occur within paragraphs—from sentence to sentence—to add evidence, provide examples, or introduce a quotation.

The type of paper you are writing and the kinds of topics you are introducing will determine what type of transitional phrase you should use. Some useful phrases for transitions appear below. They are grouped according to the function they normally play in a paper. Transitions, however, are not simply phrases that are dropped into sentences. They are constructed to highlight meaning. Choose transitions that are appropriate to your topic and what you want the reader to do. Edit them to be sure they fit properly within the sentence to enhance the reader’s understanding.

Transition Phrases for Comparisons:

We also see
In addition to
Notice that
Beside that,
In comparison,
Once again,
Identically,
For example,
Comparatively, it can be seen that
We see this when
This corresponds to
In other words,
At the same time,
By the same token,

Transition Phrases for Contrast:

By contrast,
On the contrary,
Nevertheless,
An exception to this would be …
Alongside that,we find …
On one hand … on the other hand …
[New information] presents an opposite view …
Conversely, it could be argued …
Other than that,we find that …
We get an entirely different impression from …
One point of differentiation is …
Further investigation shows …
An exception can be found in the fact that …

Transition Phrases to Show a Process:

At the top we have … Near the bottom we have …
Here we have … There we have …
Continuing on,
We progress to …
Close up … In the distance …
With this in mind,
Moving in sequence,
Proceeding sequentially,
Moving to the next step,
First, Second,Third,…
Examining the activities in sequence,
Sequentially,
As a result,
The end result is …
To illustrate …
Subsequently,
One consequence of …
If … then …
It follows that …
This is chiefly due to …
The next step …
Later we find …

Phrases to Introduce Examples:

For instance,
Particularly,
In particular,
This includes,
Specifically,
To illustrate,
One illustration is
One example is
This is illustrated by
This can be seen when
This is especially seen in
This is chiefly seen when

Transition Phrases for Presenting Evidence:

Another point worthy of consideration is
At the center of the issue is the notion that
Before moving on, it should be pointed out that
Another important point is
Another idea worth considering is
Consequently,
Especially,
Even more important,
Getting beyond the obvious,
In spite of all this,
It follows that
It is clear that
More importantly,
Most importantly,

How to make effective transitions between sections of a research paper? There are two distinct issues in making strong transitions:

Does the upcoming section actually belong where you have placed it?
Have you adequately signaled the reader why you are taking this next step?

The first is the most important: Does the upcoming section actually belong in the next spot? The sections in your research paper need to add up to your big point (or thesis statement) in a sensible progression. One way of putting that is, “Does the architecture of your paper correspond to the argument you are making?” Getting this architecture right is the goal of “large-scale editing,” which focuses on the order of the sections, their relationship to each other, and ultimately their correspondence to your thesis argument.

It’s easy to craft graceful transitions when the sections are laid out in the right order. When they’re not, the transitions are bound to be rough. This difficulty, if you encounter it, is actually a valuable warning. It tells you that something is wrong and you need to change it. If the transitions are awkward and difficult to write, warning bells should ring. Something is wrong with the research paper’s overall structure.

After you’ve placed the sections in the right order, you still need to tell the reader when he is changing sections and briefly explain why. That’s an important part of line-by-line editing, which focuses on writing effective sentences and paragraphs.

Effective transition sentences and paragraphs often glance forward or backward, signaling that you are switching sections. Take this example from J. M. Roberts’s History of Europe . He is finishing a discussion of the Punic Wars between Rome and its great rival, Carthage. The last of these wars, he says, broke out in 149 B.C. and “ended with so complete a defeat for the Carthaginians that their city was destroyed . . . .” Now he turns to a new section on “Empire.” Here is the first sentence: “By then a Roman empire was in being in fact if not in name.”(J. M. Roberts, A History of Europe . London: Allen Lane, 1997, p. 48) Roberts signals the transition with just two words: “By then.” He is referring to the date (149 B.C.) given near the end of the previous section. Simple and smooth.

Michael Mandelbaum also accomplishes this transition between sections effortlessly, without bringing his narrative to a halt. In The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets , one chapter shows how countries of the North Atlantic region invented the idea of peace and made it a reality among themselves. Here is his transition from one section of that chapter discussing “the idea of warlessness” to another section dealing with the history of that idea in Europe.

The widespread aversion to war within the countries of the Western core formed the foundation for common security, which in turn expressed the spirit of warlessness. To be sure, the rise of common security in Europe did not abolish war in other parts of the world and could not guarantee its permanent abolition even on the European continent. Neither, however, was it a flukish, transient product . . . . The European common security order did have historical precedents, and its principal features began to appear in other parts of the world. Precedents for Common Security The security arrangements in Europe at the dawn of the twenty-first century incorporated features of three different periods of the modern age: the nineteenth century, the interwar period, and the ColdWar. (Michael Mandelbaum, The Ideas That Conquered the World: Peace, Democracy, and Free Markets . New York: Public Affairs, 2002, p. 128)

It’s easier to make smooth transitions when neighboring sections deal with closely related subjects, as Mandelbaum’s do. Sometimes, however, you need to end one section with greater finality so you can switch to a different topic. The best way to do that is with a few summary comments at the end of the section. Your readers will understand you are drawing this topic to a close, and they won’t be blindsided by your shift to a new topic in the next section.

Here’s an example from economic historian Joel Mokyr’s book The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress . Mokyr is completing a section on social values in early industrial societies. The next section deals with a quite different aspect of technological progress: the role of property rights and institutions. So Mokyr needs to take the reader across a more abrupt change than Mandelbaum did. Mokyr does that in two ways. First, he summarizes his findings on social values, letting the reader know the section is ending. Then he says the impact of values is complicated, a point he illustrates in the final sentences, while the impact of property rights and institutions seems to be more straightforward. So he begins the new section with a nod to the old one, noting the contrast.

In commerce, war and politics, what was functional was often preferred [within Europe] to what was aesthetic or moral, and when it was not, natural selection saw to it that such pragmatism was never entirely absent in any society. . . . The contempt in which physical labor, commerce, and other economic activity were held did not disappear rapidly; much of European social history can be interpreted as a struggle between wealth and other values for a higher step in the hierarchy. The French concepts of bourgeois gentilhomme and nouveau riche still convey some contempt for people who joined the upper classes through economic success. Even in the nineteenth century, the accumulation of wealth was viewed as an admission ticket to social respectability to be abandoned as soon as a secure membership in the upper classes had been achieved. Institutions and Property Rights The institutional background of technological progress seems, on the surface, more straightforward. (Joel Mokyr, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress . New York: Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 176)

Note the phrase, “on the surface.” Mokyr is hinting at his next point, that surface appearances are deceiving in this case. Good transitions between sections of your research paper depend on:

Getting the sections in the right order
Moving smoothly from one section to the next
Signaling readers that they are taking the next step in your argument
Explaining why this next step comes where it does

Every good paper ends with a strong concluding paragraph. To write a good conclusion, sum up the main points in your paper. To write an even better conclusion, include a sentence or two that helps the reader answer the question, “So what?” or “Why does all this matter?” If you choose to include one or more “So What?” sentences, remember that you still need to support any point you make with facts or examples. Remember, too, that this is not the place to introduce new ideas from “out of the blue.” Make sure that everything you write in your conclusion refers to what you’ve already written in the body of your paper.

Back to How To Write A Research Paper .

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the body of the research report includes

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36 Body of the report

The body of the report is of course the main text of the report, the sections between the introduction and conclusion. Illustrated below are sample pages.

In all but the shortest reports (two pages or less), use headings (or captions) to mark off your topics and subtopics, that is, to visually signal the structure of the report. Think of headings as the entries of an outline that have been pasted into the actual text of the document.

Headings are an important feature of professional technical writing. They alert readers to upcoming topics and subtopics, help readers find their way around in long reports and skip what they are not interested in, and break up long stretches of straight text.

Avoid vague headings. For example, instead of “Background” or “Technical Information,” make it more specific.
Make sure headings accurately indicate the range of topic coverage in the section.
When possible, omit articles from the beginning of headings. For example, “The Pressurized Water Reactor” can easily be changed to “Pressurized Water Reactor” or, better yet, “Pressurized Water Reactors.”
Avoid “widowed” headings: that’s where a heading occurs at the bottom of a page and the text it introduces starts at the top of the next page. Keep at least two lines of body text with the heading, or force it to start the new page.

Bulleted and numbered lists

Use lists to highlight or emphasize text or to enumerate sequential items.
Use a lead-in to introduce the list items and to indicate the meaning or purpose of the list (and punctuate it with a colon).
Use consistent spacing, indentation, punctuation, and caps style for all lists in a document.
Make list items parallel in phrasing.
Make sure that each item in the list reads grammatically with the lead-in.
Avoid using headings as lead-ins for lists.
Avoid overusing lists; using too many lists destroys their effectiveness.
Use similar types of lists consistently in similar text in the same document.

Following up a list with text helps your reader understand context for the information distilled into list form. The tips above provide a practical guide to formatting lists.

Graphics and figure titles

Conclusions.

Most reports are strengthened by an brief conclusion. A conclusion reinforces main points, stresses what you want the reader’s “takeaways” to be, note the next steps in the project, and can indicate desired follow-up actions.

Information sources

Page numbering

All pages in the report (within but excluding the front and back covers) are numbered; but on some pages, the numbers are not displayed.
In the contemporary design, all pages throughout the document use arabic numerals; in the traditional design, all pages before the introduction (first page of the body of the report) use lowercase roman numerals.
On special pages, such as the title page and page one of the introduction, page numbers are not displayed.
Page numbers can be placed in one of several areas on the page. Usually, the best and easiest choice is to place page numbers at the bottom center of the page (remember to hide them on special pages).
If you place page numbers at the top of the page, you must hide them on chapter or section openers where a heading or title is at the top of the page.

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10.7: Body of the report

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DeSilva et al.
Central Oregon Community College via OpenOregon

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The body of the report is of course the main text of the report, the sections between the introduction and conclusion. Illustrated below are sample pages.

Your task in this chapter is to learn how to use headings and to learn the style and format of a specific design of headings. Here are a number of helpful tips:

Make the phrasing of headings self-explanatory: instead of “Background” or “Technical Information,” make it more specific, such as “Physics of Fiber Optics.”
Make headings indicate the range of topic coverage in the section. For example, if the section covers the design and operation of a pressurized water reactor, the heading “Pressurized Water Reactor Design” would be incomplete and misleading.
Avoid “stacked” headings—any two consecutive headings without intervening text.
Avoid pronoun reference to headings. For example, if you have a heading “Torque,” don’t begin the sentence following it with something like this: “This is a physics principle…..”
When possible, omit articles from the beginning of headings. For example, “The Pressurized Water Reactor” can easily be changed to “Pressurized Water Reactor” or, better yet, “Pressurized Water Reactors.”
Don’t use headings as lead-ins to lists or as figure titles.
Avoid “widowed” headings: that’s where a heading occurs at the bottom of a page and the text it introduces starts at the top of the next page. Keep at least two lines of body text with the heading, or force it to start the new page.

Bulleted and numbered lists

Use lists to highlight or emphasize text or to enumerate sequential items.
Use a lead-in to introduce the list items and to indicate the meaning or purpose of the list (and punctuate it with a colon).
Use consistent spacing, indentation, punctuation, and caps style for all lists in a document.
Make list items parallel in phrasing.
Make sure that each item in the list reads grammatically with the lead-in.
Avoid using headings as lead-ins for lists.
Avoid overusing lists; using too many lists destroys their effectiveness.
Use similar types of lists consistently in similar text in the same document.

Following up a list with text helps your reader understand context for the information distilled into list form. The tips above provide a practical guide to formatting lists.

Graphics and figure titles

Conclusions

Information sources

Page numbering

All pages in the report (within but excluding the front and back covers) are numbered; but on some pages, the numbers are not displayed.
In the contemporary design, all pages throughout the document use arabic numerals; in the traditional design, all pages before the introduction (first page of the body of the report) use lowercase roman numerals.
On special pages, such as the title page and page one of the introduction, page numbers are not displayed.
Page numbers can be placed in one of several areas on the page. Usually, the best and easiest choice is to place page numbers at the bottom center of the page (remember to hide them on special pages).
If you place page numbers at the top of the page, you must hide them on chapter or section openers where a heading or title is at the top of the page.

Chapter Attribution Information

This chapter was derived by Annemarie Hamlin, Chris Rubio, and Michele DeSilva, Central Oregon Community College, from Online Technical Writing by David McMurrey – CC: BY 4.0

Uncomplicated Reviews of Educational Research Methods

Writing a Research Report

.pdf version of this page

This review covers the basic elements of a research report. This is a general guide for what you will see in journal articles or dissertations. This format assumes a mixed methods study, but you can leave out either quantitative or qualitative sections if you only used a single methodology.

This review is divided into sections for easy reference. There are five MAJOR parts of a Research Report:

1. Introduction 2. Review of Literature 3. Methods 4. Results 5. Discussion

As a general guide, the Introduction, Review of Literature, and Methods should be about 1/3 of your paper, Discussion 1/3, then Results 1/3.

Section 1 : Cover Sheet (APA format cover sheet) optional, if required.

Section 2: Abstract (a basic summary of the report, including sample, treatment, design, results, and implications) (≤ 150 words) optional, if required.

Section 3 : Introduction (1-3 paragraphs) • Basic introduction • Supportive statistics (can be from periodicals) • Statement of Purpose • Statement of Significance

Section 4 : Research question(s) or hypotheses • An overall research question (optional) • A quantitative-based (hypotheses) • A qualitative-based (research questions) Note: You will generally have more than one, especially if using hypotheses.

Section 5: Review of Literature ▪ Should be organized by subheadings ▪ Should adequately support your study using supporting, related, and/or refuting evidence ▪ Is a synthesis, not a collection of individual summaries

Section 6: Methods ▪ Procedure: Describe data gathering or participant recruitment, including IRB approval ▪ Sample: Describe the sample or dataset, including basic demographics ▪ Setting: Describe the setting, if applicable (generally only in qualitative designs) ▪ Treatment: If applicable, describe, in detail, how you implemented the treatment ▪ Instrument: Describe, in detail, how you implemented the instrument; Describe the reliability and validity associated with the instrument ▪ Data Analysis: Describe type of procedure (t-test, interviews, etc.) and software (if used)

Section 7: Results ▪ Restate Research Question 1 (Quantitative) ▪ Describe results ▪ Restate Research Question 2 (Qualitative) ▪ Describe results

Section 8: Discussion ▪ Restate Overall Research Question ▪ Describe how the results, when taken together, answer the overall question ▪ ***Describe how the results confirm or contrast the literature you reviewed

Section 9: Recommendations (if applicable, generally related to practice)

Section 10: Limitations ▪ Discuss, in several sentences, the limitations of this study. ▪ Research Design (overall, then info about the limitations of each separately) ▪ Sample ▪ Instrument/s ▪ Other limitations

Section 11: Conclusion (A brief closing summary)

Section 12: References (APA format)

What is a Research Report?

A research report is a well-crafted document that outlines the processes, data, and findings of a systematic investigation. It is an important document that serves as a first-hand account of the research process, and it is typically considered an objective and accurate source of information.

In many ways, a research report can be considered as a summary of the research process that clearly highlights findings, recommendations, and other important details. Reading a well-written research report should provide you with all the information you need about the core areas of the research process.

Features of a Research Report

So how do you recognize a research report when you see one? Here are some of the basic features that define a research report.

It is a detailed presentation of research processes and findings, and it usually includes tables and graphs.
It is written in a formal language.
A research report is usually written in the third person.
It is informative and based on first-hand verifiable information.
It is formally structured with headings, sections, and bullet points.
It always includes recommendations for future actions.

Types of Research Report

The research report is classified based on two things; nature of research and target audience.

Nature of Research

Qualitative Research Report

This is the type of report written for qualitative research . It outlines the methods, processes, and findings of a qualitative method of systematic investigation. In educational research, a qualitative research report provides an opportunity for one to apply his or her knowledge and develop skills in planning and executing qualitative research projects.

A qualitative research report is usually descriptive in nature. Hence, in addition to presenting details of the research process, you must also create a descriptive narrative of the information.

Quantitative Research Report

A quantitative research report is a type of research report that is written for quantitative research. Quantitative research is a type of systematic investigation that pays attention to numerical or statistical values in a bid to find answers to research questions.

In this type of research report, the researcher presents quantitative data to support the research process and findings. Unlike a qualitative research report that is mainly descriptive, a quantitative research report works with numbers; that is, it is numerical in nature.

Target Audience

Also, a research report can be said to be technical or popular based on the target audience. If you’re dealing with a general audience, you would need to present a popular research report, and if you’re dealing with a specialized audience, you would submit a technical report.

Technical Research Report

A technical research report is a detailed document that you present after carrying out industry-based research. This report is highly specialized because it provides information for a technical audience; that is, individuals with above-average knowledge in the field of study.

In a technical research report, the researcher is expected to provide specific information about the research process, including statistical analyses and sampling methods. Also, the use of language is highly specialized and filled with jargon.

Examples of technical research reports include legal and medical research reports.

Popular Research Report

A popular research report is one for a general audience; that is, for individuals who do not necessarily have any knowledge in the field of study. A popular research report aims to make information accessible to everyone.

It is written in very simple language, which makes it easy to understand the findings and recommendations. Examples of popular research reports are the information contained in newspapers and magazines.

Importance of a Research Report

Knowledge Transfer: As already stated above, one of the reasons for carrying out research is to contribute to the existing body of knowledge, and this is made possible with a research report. A research report serves as a means to effectively communicate the findings of a systematic investigation to all and sundry.
Identification of Knowledge Gaps: With a research report, you’d be able to identify knowledge gaps for further inquiry. A research report shows what has been done while hinting at other areas needing systematic investigation.
In market research, a research report would help you understand the market needs and peculiarities at a glance.
A research report allows you to present information in a precise and concise manner.
It is time-efficient and practical because, in a research report, you do not have to spend time detailing the findings of your research work in person. You can easily send out the report via email and have stakeholders look at it.

Guide to Writing a Research Report

A lot of detail goes into writing a research report, and getting familiar with the different requirements would help you create the ideal research report. A research report is usually broken down into multiple sections, which allows for a concise presentation of information.

Structure and Example of a Research Report

This is the title of your systematic investigation. Your title should be concise and point to the aims, objectives, and findings of a research report.

Table of Contents

This is like a compass that makes it easier for readers to navigate the research report.

An abstract is an overview that highlights all important aspects of the research including the research method, data collection process, and research findings. Think of an abstract as a summary of your research report that presents pertinent information in a concise manner.

An abstract is always brief; typically 100-150 words and goes straight to the point. The focus of your research abstract should be the 5Ws and 1H format – What, Where, Why, When, Who and How.

Introduction

Here, the researcher highlights the aims and objectives of the systematic investigation as well as the problem which the systematic investigation sets out to solve. When writing the report introduction, it is also essential to indicate whether the purposes of the research were achieved or would require more work.

In the introduction section, the researcher specifies the research problem and also outlines the significance of the systematic investigation. Also, the researcher is expected to outline any jargons and terminologies that are contained in the research.

Literature Review

A literature review is a written survey of existing knowledge in the field of study. In other words, it is the section where you provide an overview and analysis of different research works that are relevant to your systematic investigation.

It highlights existing research knowledge and areas needing further investigation, which your research has sought to fill. At this stage, you can also hint at your research hypothesis and its possible implications for the existing body of knowledge in your field of study.

An Account of Investigation

This is a detailed account of the research process, including the methodology, sample, and research subjects. Here, you are expected to provide in-depth information on the research process including the data collection and analysis procedures.

In a quantitative research report, you’d need to provide information surveys, questionnaires and other quantitative data collection methods used in your research. In a qualitative research report, you are expected to describe the qualitative data collection methods used in your research including interviews and focus groups.

In this section, you are expected to present the results of the systematic investigation.

This section further explains the findings of the research, earlier outlined. Here, you are expected to present a justification for each outcome and show whether the results are in line with your hypotheses or if other research studies have come up with similar results.

Conclusions

This is a summary of all the information in the report. It also outlines the significance of the entire study.

References and Appendices

This section contains a list of all the primary and secondary research sources.

Tips for Writing a Research Report

Define the Context for the Report

As is obtainable when writing an essay, defining the context for your research report would help you create a detailed yet concise document. This is why you need to create an outline before writing so that you do not miss out on anything.

Define your Audience

Writing with your audience in mind is essential as it determines the tone of the report. If you’re writing for a general audience, you would want to present the information in a simple and relatable manner. For a specialized audience, you would need to make use of technical and field-specific terms.

Include Significant Findings

The idea of a research report is to present some sort of abridged version of your systematic investigation. In your report, you should exclude irrelevant information while highlighting only important data and findings.

Include Illustrations

Your research report should include illustrations and other visual representations of your data. Graphs, pie charts, and relevant images lend additional credibility to your systematic investigation.

Choose the Right Title

A good research report title is brief, precise, and contains keywords from your research. It should provide a clear idea of your systematic investigation so that readers can grasp the entire focus of your research from the title.

Proofread the Report

Before publishing the document, ensure that you give it a second look to authenticate the information. If you can, get someone else to go through the report, too, and you can also run it through proofreading and editing software.

How to Gather Research Data for Your Report

Understand the Problem

Every research aims at solving a specific problem or set of problems, and this should be at the back of your mind when writing your research report. Understanding the problem would help you to filter the information you have and include only important data in your report.

Know what your report seeks to achieve

This is somewhat similar to the point above because, in some way, the aim of your research report is intertwined with the objectives of your systematic investigation. Identifying the primary purpose of writing a research report would help you to identify and present the required information accordingly.

Identify your audience

Knowing your target audience plays a crucial role in data collection for a research report. If your research report is specifically for an organization, you would want to present industry-specific information or show how the research findings are relevant to the work that the company does.

Create Surveys/Questionnaires

A survey is a research method that is used to gather data from a specific group of people through a set of questions. It can be either quantitative or qualitative.

A survey is usually made up of structured questions, and it can be administered online or offline. However, an online survey is a more effective method of research data collection because it helps you save time and gather data with ease.

You can seamlessly create an online questionnaire for your research on Formplus . With the multiple sharing options available in the builder, you would be able to administer your survey to respondents in little or no time.

Formplus also has a report summary too l that you can use to create custom visual reports for your research.

Step-by-step guide on how to create an online questionnaire using Formplus

Sign into Formplus

In the Formplus builder, you can easily create different online questionnaires for your research by dragging and dropping preferred fields into your form. To access the Formplus builder, you will need to create an account on Formplus.

Once you do this, sign in to your account and click on Create new form to begin.

Edit Form Title : Click on the field provided to input your form title, for example, “Research Questionnaire.”
Edit Form : Click on the edit icon to edit the form.
Add Fields : Drag and drop preferred form fields into your form in the Formplus builder inputs column. There are several field input options for questionnaires in the Formplus builder.
Edit fields
Click on “Save”
Form Customization: With the form customization options in the form builder, you can easily change the outlook of your form and make it more unique and personalized. Formplus allows you to change your form theme, add background images, and even change the font according to your needs.
Multiple Sharing Options: Formplus offers various form-sharing options, which enables you to share your questionnaire with respondents easily. You can use the direct social media sharing buttons to share your form link to your organization’s social media pages. You can also send out your survey form as email invitations to your research subjects too. If you wish, you can share your form’s QR code or embed it on your organization’s website for easy access.

Conclusion

Always remember that a research report is just as important as the actual systematic investigation because it plays a vital role in communicating research findings to everyone else. This is why you must take care to create a concise document summarizing the process of conducting any research.

In this article, we’ve outlined essential tips to help you create a research report. When writing your report, you should always have the audience at the back of your mind, as this would set the tone for the document.

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Section 1- Evidence-based practice (EBP)

Chapter 6: Components of a Research Report

Components of a research report.

Partido, B.B.

Elements of research report

The research report contains four main areas:

Introduction – What is the issue? What is known? What is not known? What are you trying to find out? This sections ends with the purpose and specific aims of the study.
Methods – The recipe for the study. If someone wanted to perform the same study, what information would they need? How will you answer your research question? This part usually contains subheadings: Participants, Instruments, Procedures, Data Analysis,
Results – What was found? This is organized by specific aims and provides the results of the statistical analysis.
Discussion – How do the results fit in with the existing literature? What were the limitations and areas of future research?

Want to create or adapt books like this? Learn more about how Pressbooks supports open publishing practices.

6.6: Formal Report—Conclusion, Recommendations, References, and Appendices

Learning objectives.

Examine the remaining report sections: conclusion, recommendation, reference list, appendices

What Are the Remaining Report Sections?

Conclusions and recommendations.

The conclusions and recommendations section conveys the key results from the analysis in the discussion section. Up to this point, readers have carefully reviewed the data in the report; they are now logically prepared to read the report’s conclusions and recommendations.

According to OACETT (2021), “Conclusions are reasoned judgment and fact, not opinion. Conclusions consider all of the variables and relate cause and effect. Conclusions analyze, evaluate, and make comparisons and contrasts” (p. 7) and “Recommendation(s) (if applicable) suggest a course of action and are provided when there are additional areas for study, or if the reason for the Technology Report was to determine the best action going forward” (p. 7).

You may present the conclusions and recommendations in a numbered or bulleted list to enhance readability.

Reference Page

All formal reports should include a reference page; this page documents the sources cited within the report. The recipient(s) of the report can also refer to this page to locate sources for further research.

Documentation systems vary according to professionals and fields. In ENGL 250, we follow APA. Refer to a credible APA guide for support.

Appendices are those extra sections in a report that follow the conclusion. According to OACETT (2021), “Appendices can include detailed calculations, tables, drawings, specifications, and technical literature” (p. 7).

Anything that does not comfortably fit in the main part of the report but cannot be left out of the report altogether should go into the appendices. They are commonly used for large tables of data, big chunks of sample code, background that is too basic or too advanced for the body of the report, or large illustrations that just do not fit in the body of the report. Anything that you feel is too large for the main part of the report or that you think would be distracting and interrupt the flow of the report is a good candidate for an appendix.

References & Attributions

Blicq, R., & Moretto, L. (2012). Technically write. (8th Canadian Ed.). Pearson Canada.

OACETT. (2021). Technology report guidelines . https://www.oacett.org/getmedia/9f9623ac-73ab-4f99-acca-0d78dee161ab/TR_GUIDELINES_Final.pdf.aspx

Attributions

Content is adapted from Technical Writing by Allison Gross, Annemarie Hamlin, Billy Merck, Chris Rubio, Jodi Naas, Megan Savage, and Michele DeSilva, which is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Writing in a Technical Environment (First Edition) Copyright © 2022 by Centennial College is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Chapter 30: Formatting the Report

Rebekah bennetch, corey owen, and zachary keesey.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this chapter, you should be able to:

Distinguish between the three parts of your written report: the front matter, the report body, and the back matter
List out the 12 elements that are present within a written report
Identify the different requirements found in a summary and introduction

Key Terms and Concepts

front matter
report body
back matter

We’ve spent a lot of time on how to generate the content of your formal written report. However, it’s time to take a step back and look at how you will format the report.

Like any kind of project, technical reports have specifications. These specifications can be for a number of different things such as the report’s layout, organization, and content; how to format the headings and lists; and how to label graphics and tables. The advantage of a required format for written reports is that you or anyone else can expect them to be designed in a familiar way. If someone hands you a report, and you want to read the summary section first, you will know exactly where to look. This is why different academic programs and career fields use style guides like APA. Reports are usually read in a hurry because readers want to quickly get the information they need, and a standard report format helps them achieve that.

For our purpose in RCM 200, you need to think of your formal written report as having three distinct parts: a front matter , the report body and the back matter . Within those three parts are a combined twelve different elements you will potentially need to include in your report. In order, these elements are:

Transmittal Document

Table of contents, list of tables and figures, introduction, recommendations.

Ensuring you have all of the correct elements present in your report—and that you write and format them correctly—is key if you wish to create a professional report and receive a good grade. We will now go into each element in detail. At the very bottom of this page, you will be able to see an example formal research report that includes most of these elements.

Front Matter

The first part is the front matter. This combination of elements, such as the title page and table of contents, will be the first thing your reader sees of your report. They are relatively easy to make, but if they are done sloppily, these elements can negatively impact the reader’s view of the credibility of your work before they even read it.

Cover/Cover Page

It’s not uncommon for formal reports to be bound. In these cases, there is a usually a cover, like with any book, and on that cover is the title of the report. If the report is produced by a company, the cover will have the company’s name and logo.

You are not required to bind your formal research report though. However, you will need a cover page. At minimum, you will need to include the title of your report centered on the page. If you want, you can also include the author name. However, that is not required.

A transmittal document can either be a letter or memo. The one you choose will depend on who is receiving the report, but ultimately the goal of this element is to maintain goodwill with the client by adding a personal component to the report.

If you need a refresher on writing a memo or letter, revisit this chapter from our text. For our specific purposes though, your letter/memo should:

describe the topic and remind the reader of who authorized the report
make a brief statement of major findings while also acknowledging who helped form the report
express appreciation to the client and offer to follow-up with the report

The title page is similar to the cover page. The main difference is that the title page has more detail. Your title page must have three things:

the name of the report
the name and title of the author
the date of submission

In certain circumstances, a title page can also include the name and title of the person who commissioned the report.

Despite this being the third page your reader will see in in the report, the title page is considered to be page Roman numeral i for numbering purposes. Though, this page is often unnumbered in the report.

The summary gives the reader an overview of the report. It allows them to quickly see what the content of your paper is without having to read the entire document.

In a professional context, you might have to search through dozens, if not hundreds of reports to find information for your own research. You obviously wouldn’t have time to read all of them, so looking at just the summary section would help you quickly sort through your potential research materials.

In a long report, like the one you are writing for this course, the summary should be about 10% of the length of the entire report. It should condense the information that is already in the main document. This includes information like the report’s recommendations, justifications, and conclusions.

The page number of this report (if numbered) would be Roman numeral ii .

A table of contents (TOC) lists out the sections of a report. This means that the primary headings for each section are included along with the page numbers where they appear. If your report has secondary or lower headings, those should be included too.

Make sure your organization is consistent. A TOC must properly reflect the organization of your report. For example, you wouldn’t put the summary (which comes at the top of your report) as the last entry of your TOC. Additionally, you must proofread to ensure that the headings are worded the same in the body of the report and the TOC.

The List of Tables and Figures operates similarly to the TOC. It presents an organized list of all the graphics that you created for your report with the page numbers where they are found. This list will be a separate page that comes after your TOC, which means that it needs to be in the TOC. Don’t forget to include it!

Report Body

The second part of your formal research report is the report body. This is the main portion of the report that you have already been working on with your research.

You are probably familiar with the traditional five-paragraph essay—which has an introduction, body, and conclusion. For those kinds of essays, the introduction and conclusion are only one paragraph long. That is not the case for written reports where both of those elements can have multiple paragraphs. Similarly, the discussion can be broken up into multiple sub-sections, each with their own specific focus and multiple paragraphs. The number of paragraphs for all three parts will ultimately depend on the information you are trying to convey.

Students often are unclear about the distinctions between the Summary and Introduction, so we will spend a little more time on both of those.

Your introduction sets the tone and expectations for your report.

First and foremost, your introduction is where you are trying to demonstrate your good judgement and good character to your reader through the use of rhetorical theory.

To accomplish this, you must provide your reader with an understanding of the purpose and scope of your report. Additionally, you must illustrate why your topic is important by describing the size and impact of the problem (the rhetorical exigence) that you are analyzing. The inclusion of these details will help establish your pathos appeal.

Lastly, an introduction will provide essential context that is required to understand the organization, language, and approach you are using to produce the report. This context contributes to your logos appeal and extends good will.

Summary vs Introduction

It’s important to mention that many students will confuse the purpose of a report’s summary and introduction. The main difference is that a summary provides an overview of the report as a whole. This means that it include the results and conclusions of the report. The introduction does not do this. Instead, it’s purpose is to provide background information to help ease the reader into the topic. Below is a representation of the differences in a table format.

Below is an example of former student’s summary and introduction for their report. Read through both documents without clicking on the hotspots. After you are finished, see if you can answer the following questions. Once you have answered them, you may click on the hotspots to help break down both sections.

Please keep in mind as you read that these are just examples, and your summary and introduction may look different from these.

What differences do you see between the two sections?
Based off the summary , what do you think the report is about? What topics will it cover?
Based off the summary , what recommendations will this report make?
Based off the i ntroduction , what specific topics will the report cover?
What sources are used to back up claims in the i ntroduction ? How do they help establish credibility?
What is the background information in the i ntroduction ? How does it justify the report being written?

The original version of this chapter contained H5P content. You may want to remove or replace this element.

The discussion is the main part of your report. This is where you are defining the problem that you want to resolve. You do this by laying out your argument and presenting the information needed to support your conclusion. As a result, the discussion section will have the most detailed information. It it typically divided into multiple sections, each labeled with a heading that establishes the structure of the argument.

By the end of the discussion section, your reader should have a clear understanding of the problem you are addressing. The conclusion explains why it’s important. It answer’s the “so what?” question that a reader will ultimately have by this stage of your report. Put another way, after reading your report, the reader will have all this new information you provided them, “so what” are they supposed to do with it?

To answer this question you must start by summarizing, section by section, the main claims of your report. You shouldn’t be adding any new information at this point, or going into great detail. Rather, you are briefly explaining each point in the order they come up in your report and explaining how they connect to your main argument.

Do not tell the reader what you think they should do at this stage. That’s for the recommendations section, which comes next.

Back Matter

Congratulations! You are now done with the report body ! Just one more part to go.

The third, and final, part of the report is made up of the back matter . This is where the reader can find information that helps them learn more about your topic. Specifically, this is where you will put your recommendations, references page, and appendix.

Keep in mind that, for your formal written report for RCM 200, the recommendations and appendix are optional. However, you must include a references page.

This is where you will tell the reader how they should act based on the conclusions you have come to in your report.

Pay close attention to your tone here. Don’t make it sound like you are commanding or ordering the reader to do something. Instead, try to recognize that the choice is up to the reader to decide whether to take the recommended action.

References Page

We’ve already talked a bit about the references page in the chapter on APA Style , so we will just review here. A references page includes a full reference entry for each work you cite in your report. These entries allow your reader to find the original sources for the information you are using if they want them.

Keep in mind that every source in your reference page must appear in the body of your report as an in-text citation.

The appendix section is for anything that needs to be attached to a report.

In general, a piece of content goes into the appendix if it is too long or complex to include in the discussion. However, don’t just put anything in the appendix. The information should help the reader more fully understand your topic by supplementing the material in the body of the report.

Each appendix item should contain only one type of material. For example, all images should be under one heading, all tables should be under a different heading, etc. Don’t forget to include appendix items in the table of contents!

A Sample Report

We just went through twelve different elements that you will need to include in your formal report. That’s a lot! To help you visual what your final product might look like, check out the example below.

Key Takeaways

Using a consistent format for your written reports is essential for establishing your credibility as a writer. If your paper’s format is inconsistent or missing key elements, a reader may assume you are not taking the report seriously and question the reliability of your work.
A written report is made up of three parts: the front matter, the report body, and the back matter. Between these three parts, there are a total of 12 different elements that can be present in a report.
The front matter is the first thing your reader will see. This part sets the stage for what’s to come because it presents an outline of your report.
The report body is the main portion of your report. It’s where all the research on your topic goes. This is where you will be using the rhetorical strategies you have learned to try and persuade your audience.
The back matter is where your reader can learn more about the topic. If they want to look up a citation you used or review extra material you couldn’t get in the report body, they will go here.
In terms of the 12 elements, most students struggle with differentiating between the summary and introduction sections. In brief, the summary provides an overview of the entire report. This means it includes the reports conclusions and, if needed, recommendations. The introduction, on the other hand, provides background information for the reader in order to help ease them into the topic.

Formal Report Sections

In addition to the body of the report, formal reports include specific front and back matter.

Front Matter

Front matter – the sections that come before the body of the report – establishes the authority of the report, intended audience, and key concepts. Front matter includes:

letter of transmittal – to introduce the report to its audience
cover/title page of the report
table of contents/list of figures if needed (use if a report is longer than 5 pages or so, and/or contains many different sections and figures; if the formal report is relatively short or direct, a table of contents may be omitted )
executive summary – a condensed version of key ideas

Read more fully about the letter of transmittal and executive summary on the following page of this text.

Report Body

The body of a formal report may contain many sections, among which are the following. Note that, aside from the Introduction, Background, and Purpose/Problem sections, which most formal reports contain in some configuration at the start of the body, the rest of the sections change depending on your purpose, audience, context, role, and other communications variables you identify in your situational analysis. It’s up to you to identify and create the sections you need to include in each formal report.

Introduction

The introduction sets up the structure of a report. It tells your reader what is to come and in what order, and it reminds your reader of the situation that instigated the report’s creation. This section is key to the reader following and retaining major points of the report. Sometimes the introduction contains background and purpose or problem, although these sections may also be separate, depending on the communication situation.

The background section explains the circumstances that led to the report’s creation and may explain the current situation, including any potential constraints such as budget, time, human resources, etc. In some situations, you may want to incorporate background into the introduction.

Purpose or Problem Statement

A purpose or problem statement may be part of the introduction and/or background, or it can stand separately, depending upon the complexity of the report. A purpose or problem statement should directly, succinctly, and clearly relay its information. The intention of a purpose or problem statement is to eliminate uncertainty or questions in your reader, so that the reader can focus immediately on the report’s function and main ideas.

Sections for Each Topic or Group of Information, Related to your Purpose

You’ll develop your own sections appropriate to your report’s purpose, audience, and other communication variables, as shown in the examples below. Each section should have a clear, descriptive heading; longer sections should have subheadings; and the sections should have a logic in terms of grouping and classifying information.

example 1: incident report

If you are writing an analytical report on an unfortunate incident that occurred at work, as a result of an email that was inappropriately forwarded, you might include the following body sections after your Introduction/Background/Purpose:

Steps Taken to Address the Situation
Environmental Analysis
Recommendations to Avoid Future Incidents

example 2: research report

If you were asked to research the feasibility of hosting a carnival event as a fundraiser for your group, you might include some or all of the following body sections after your Introduction/Background/Purpose:

Project Management Group
Recommendations

Some Additional, Often-Used Report Sections

Research/Methods – This section explains your process of finding information; it does not contain the data itself, which comes later in the body or in an appendix, if the data is lengthy. Explaining your methodology helps establish credibility by showing that you consulted appropriate sources, and that your perspective is supported by outside experts.
Available Options/Possible Solutions – This section presents multiple ways to approach a concept, process, or issue, other than the one you end up recommending. Including a comprehensive look at options also establishes your credibility by showing that you have considered the pros and cons of many possibilities before choosing one. Note that this section is sometimes combined with the recommended solution and evaluation.
Recommendation/Solution – This section may be a short statement of your recommendations, or it may be combined with your evaluation of the situation and explanation of why this solution is the best. If your audience is likely to resist your recommendation, the evaluation might appear before you make the recommendation, to lead your readers through a logical argument toward your recommendation. In some reports the recommendation is used in lieu of the conclusion.
Evaluation – This section details and prioritizes each option’s feasibility using criteria you develop, e.g., cost, ease of implementation, maintenance, etc. Explain how the solution you recommend is the best using these criteria; show that your solution will result in substantial benefits for the group or organization. You may want to add graphs, charts, etc. if they help your audience understand your information. You may want to use statistics that back up your reasoning. If you have not yet evaluated how other solutions do not address your criteria as well, then include that evaluation here.
Implementation/Schedule – This section details when, why, where, and how certain activities will occur. Include what is expected to happen, the date and time of implementation, the duration of implementation, etc. You may also choose to say that you will note what works and what needs to be changed during a certain implementation period. This section is often standard in analytical reports. In informative reports, it may show “how to” do something. Note that you may opt for a separate schedule section or may include a schedule within an implementation section. Schedules provide readers with three things: 1) a final deadline, so readers will know when to expect results, 2) interim deadlines, which are also a way to track progress, and 3) assurance of feasibility.
Personnel/Qualifications – This section identifies the people involved in a project, team, or investigation. You may explain what their tasks and responsibilities are, and show why each member is appropriate for the task, based on talent and experience.

The conclusion finishes the body of the report by summarizing the major ideas of the report. While not the same as an executive summary, it has a similar feel as it provides the report’s key concepts. A conclusion should never introduce a fact or idea not presented earlier in the report.

Back Matter

Back matter contains documentation, a glossary, an appendix, or any other appropriate, additional information that helps clarify the sources of information used in the body of the report. For example, you may have researched a lot of data that you used as the basis for recommendations in your report, which focuses on purchasing and implementing new information technology (IT). That data may be overwhelming to your primary audience, a top manager interested in expanding the company but not fully knowledgeable in technical fields. However, you know that your data could be very useful to your secondary audience of IT managers, who need to be convinced of the validity, currency, and scope of your research when consulted by the top manager. You may choose to include the data in an appendix to meet the needs of both of your audiences.

Back matter will change depending on the context of the report, and some reports may not contain any back matter.

The following video discusses a formal report’s front and back matter.

Visual Overview of a Sample Report’s Sections

The figure below shows just one example of the many possible sections in a sales proposal, which is one type of report. White pages are front and back matter; shaded pages are the body of this particular report. Note that this proposal was written in response to a request for proposals (RFP), so the author decided to include a copy of the RFP at the start. Note also that, to follow the format required in the RFP, the writer moved the executive summary before the title page of the report, instead of at the end of the front matter, since required format always take precedence over standard practice.

Image of order sections of a proposal. There are thirteen rectangles representing pages found in a report. The pages laid in an accordion fashion, one on top of each other. The pages the following text starting with the first page: "Copy of RFP (optional), letter of transmittal, abstract or summary, title page, table of connects, list of figures, introduction, background, problem, purpose, schedule, staffing, budget, authorization, appendix."

Formal Reports in Action

Remember that formal report sections always align to writing situation. When writing formal reports, you usually have the ability to create, name, and order sections in the body of the report according to your purpose, context, and audience’s needs. For example, if your audience is expected to react neutrally or positively to your message, then your conclusion or recommendation might be offered near the beginning of the report. If your audience is expected to react negatively to your message, then you may want to implement what you’ve learned about presenting negative information and place the conclusion or recommendation toward the end of the report. Whatever sections you develop, make sure that they result from your conscious choice, based on your situational analysis of the communication situation for the formal report.

The following video briefly discusses the parts of a formal report.

The following video first reviews basic professional communication concepts and then discusses the sections of a formal report (approx. 2 minutes into the video), offering a useful overview of report writing within the context of writing processes.

To see a sample, annotated, formal report, link to the University of Wellington’s publication, How to Write a Business Report . The sample report is in Appendix D, pages 23-38.

Report Sections original information and information adapted from page on Formal Reports from Business Communication Skills for Managers; attributions below. Authored by : Susan Oaks. Project : Communications for Professionals. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
Formal Reports. Authored by : Susan Kendall. Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : https://courses.lumenlearning.com/wmopen-businesscommunicationmgrs/chapter/formal-reports/ . Project : Business Communication Skills for Managers. License : CC BY: Attribution
image of pages of a business report. Authored by : David Schwarzenberg. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/photos/financial-analytics-blur-business-2860753/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
video Analytical Reports: Front and Back matter. Provided by : University of Minnesota Writing Studies. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrljzRy6HVc . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video
video Business Report: Structure. Authored by : Morag. Provided by : Academic Skills, The University of Melbourne. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4YM0fqw-gI&t=8s . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video
video Business Reports. Authored by : Lorin Mayo. Located at : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6I3uYxxvOs . License : Other . License Terms : YouTube video

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11 The Body of the Research Proposal

Drawing on guidelines developed in the UBC graduate guide to writing proposals (Petrina, 2009), we highlight eight steps for constructing an effective research proposal:

Presenting the topic
Literature Review
Identifying the Gap
Research Questions that addresses the Gap
Methods to address the research questions

Data Analysis

Summary, Limitations and Implications

In addition to those eight sections, research proposals frequently include a research timeline. We discuss each of these eight sections as well as producing a research timeline below.

Presenting The Topic (Statement of Research Problem)

The research proposal should begin with a hook to entice your readers. Like a steaming fresh pie on a windowsill, you want to allure your reader by presenting your topic (the pie on the sill) and then alluding to its importance (the delicious scent and taste of the cooling cherry pie). This can be done in many ways, so long as you are able to entice your reader to the core themes of your research. Some suggestions include:

Highlighting a paradox that your work will attempt to resolve e.g., “Why is it that social research has been shown to bring about higher net-positive outcomes than natural scientific research, but is funded less?” or “Why is it that women earn less than men in meritocratic societies even though they have more qualifications?” Paradoxes are popular because they draw on problematics (see Chapter 1) and indicate an obstacle in the thinking of fellow researchers that you may offer hope in resolving.

Presenting a narrative introduction (often used in ethnographic papers) to the problem at hand. The following opening statement from Bowen, Elliott & Brenton (2014, p. 20) illustrates:

It’s a hot, sticky Fourth of July in North Carolina, and Leanne, a married working-class black mother of three, is in her cramped kitchen. She’s been cooking for several hours, lovingly preparing potato salad, beef ribs, chicken legs, and collards for her family. Abruptly, her mother decides to leave before eating anything. “But you haven’t eaten,” Leanne says. “You know I prefer my own potato salad,” says her mom. She takes a plateful to go anyway,

Provide an historical overview of the problem, discussing its significance in history and indicating how that interrelates to the present: “On January 23rd, 2020, tears were shed as cabbies heard the news of Uber’s approval to operate in the city of Vancouver.”
Introduce your positionality to the problem: How did it come of concern? How are you personally related to the social problem in question? The following introduction by Germon (1999, p.687) illustrates:

Throughout the paper I locate myself as part of the disabled peoples movement, and write from a position of a shared value base and analyses of a collective experience. In doing so, I make no apology for flouting academic pretentions of objectivity and neutrality. Rather, I believe I am giving essential information which clarifies my motivation and political position

Begin with a quotation : Because this is an overused technique, if you use it, make sure that it addresses your research question and that you can explicitly relate to it in the body of your introduction. Do not start with a quotation for the sake of.
Begin with a concession : Start with a statement recognizing an opinion or approach different from the one you plan to take in your thesis. You can acknowledge the merits in a previous approach but show how you will improve it or make a different argument, e.g., “Although critical theory and antiracism explain oppression and exploitation in contemporary society, they do not fully address the experiences of Indigenous peoples”.
Start with an interesting fact or statistics : This is a sure way to draw attention to the topic and its significance e.g. “Canada is the fourth most popular destination country in the world for international students in 2018, with close to half a million international students” (CBIE, 2018)
A definition : You may start by defining a key term in your research topic. This is useful if it distinguishes how you plan to use a term or concept in your thesis.

The above strategies are not exhaustive nor are they only applicable to the introduction of your research proposal. They can be used to introduce any section of your thesis or any paper. Regardless of the strategy that you use to introduce your topic, remember that the key objective is to convince your reader that the issue is problematic and is worth investigating. A well developed statement of research problem will do the following:

Contextualize the problem . This means highlighting what is already known and how it is problematic to the specific context in which you wish to study it. By highlighting what is already known, you can build on key facts (such as the prevalence and whether it has received attention in the past). Please note that this is not the literature review; you are simply fleshing out a few pertinent details to introduce the topic in a few sentences or a paragraph.
Specify the problem by describing precisely what you plan to address. In other words, elaborate on what we need to know. For example, building on your contextualization of the problem, you can specify the problem with a statement such as: “There is an abundance of literature on international migration. In fact, the IOM (2018) estimates that there are close to 258 million international migrants globally, who contribute billions to the global economy. However, not much is known about the extent of intra-regional migration in the global south such as within the African continent. There is, hence, a pressing need to study this phenomenon in greater detail.”
Highlight the relevance of the problem . This means explaining to the readers why we need to know this information, who will be affected, who will benefit?
Outline the goal and objectives of the research.
The goal of your research is what you hope to achieve by answering the research question. To write the goal of your research, go back to your research question and state the results you intend to obtain. For example, if your research question is “What effect does extended social media use have on female body images?”, the goal of your research could be stated as “The goal of this study is to identity the point at which social media use negatively impact female body images so that they can be informed about how to use it responsibly.
The objectives of your study is a further elaboration on your goals i.e., details about the steps that you will take to achieve the goal. Based on the goal above, you probably will study incidents of depression among female social media users, changes in self-esteem and incidents of eating disorders. These could translate into objectives such as to: (1) compare the incidents of depression among female social media users based on length of use (2) assess changes in female social media users’ self esteem (3) determine if there are differences in the incidents of eating disorder among female social media users based on extent of use. Notice that in achieving those objectives, you will be able to reach the goal of answering your research question.

In summary, you should strive to have one goal for each research question. If your project has only one research question, one goal is sufficient. Your objectives are the pathways (or steps) that will get you to achieve the goal i.e., what will you need to do in order to answer the research question. Summarize the steps in no more than two or three objectives per goal.

Brief Literature Review

After the problem and rationale are introduced, the next step is to frame the problem within the academic discourse. This involves conducting a preliminary literature review covering, inter alia, the history of the phenomena itself and the scholarly theories and investigations that have attempted to understand it (Petrina, 2009). In elaborating on the history of the concepts and theories, you should also attempt to draw attention to the theories which will guide your own research (or which will be contested by your research). By foregrounding the major ways of perceiving the problem, you will then set the stage for your own methodology: the major concepts and tools you will use to investigate/interpret the problem.

While in graduate research proposals the literature review often composes a section of its own (Petrina, 2009), in undergraduate research this step can be incorporated into the introduction. However, you should avoid, as Wong (n.d.) writes, framing your research question “in the context of a general, rambling literature review,” where your research question “may appear trivial and uninteresting.” Try to respond to seminal papers in the literature and to identify clearly for your reader the key concepts in the literature that you will be discussing. Part of outlining the scholarly discussion should also focus on clarifying the boundaries of your topic. While making the significance concrete, try to hone in on select themes that your research will evaluate. This way, when you go to outline the methods you will use, the topic will have clearly defined boundaries and concerns. See chapter 5 for more guidance on how to construct an extended literature review.

Box 2. 1 – Tips for the Literature Review

Summarize : The literature in your literature review is not going to be exhaustive but it should demonstrate that you have a good grasp on key debates and trends in the field
Quality not quantity : Despite the fact that this is non-exhaustive, there is no magic number of sources that you need. Do not think in terms of how many sources are sufficient. Think about presenting a decent representation of key themes in the literature.
Highlight theory and methodology of your sources (if they are significant). Doing so could help justify your theoretical and methodological decisions, whether you are departing from previous approaches or whether you are adopting them.
Synthesize your results. Do not simply state “According to Robinson (2021)….According to Wilson (2021)… etc”. Instead, find common grounds between sources and summarize the point e.g., “Researchers argue that we should not list our literature (Bartolic, 2021; Robinson, 2020; Wilson 2021).
Justify methodological choice
Assess and Evaluate: After assessing the literature in your field, you should be able to answer the following questions: Why should we study (further) this research topic/problem?
Contribution : At the end of the literature, you should be able to determine contributions will my study make to the existing literature?

As you briefly discuss the key literature concerning your topic of interest, it is important that you allude to gaps. Gaps are ambiguities, faults, and missing aspects of previous studies. Think about questions that you have which are not answered by existing literature. Specifically, think about how the literature might insufficiently address the following, and locate your research as filling those gaps (see UNE, 2021):

Population or sample : size, type, location, demography etc. [Are there specific populations that are understudied e.g., Indigenous people, female youth, BIPOC, the elderly etc.]
Research methods : qualitative, quantitative, or mixed [Has the research in the area been limited to just a few methods e.g., all surveys? How is yours different?]
Data analysis [Are you using a different method of analysis than those used in the literature?]
Variables or conditions [Are you examining a new or different set of variables than those previously studied? Are the conditions under which your study is being conducted unique e.g., under pandemic conditions]
Theory [Are you employing a theory in a new way?]

Refer to Chapter 6 (Literature Review) for more detail about this process and for a discussion on common types of gaps in social research.

Box 2. 2 – Identifying a Gap

To indicate the usefulness and originality of your research, you should be conscious of how your research is both unique from previous studies in the field and how its findings will be useful. When you write your thesis or research report, you will expound on these gaps some more. However, in the body of your proposal, it is important that you explicitly highlight the insufficiency of existing literature (i.e. gaps). Below are some phrases that you can use to indicate gaps:

…has not been clarified, studied, reported, or elucidated
further research is required or needed
…is not well reported
key question(s) remains unanswered
it is important to address …
…poorly understood or known
Few studies have (UNE, 2021)

Research Questions & Research Questions that Address the Gap

The gaps and literature you outline should set the context for your research questions. In outlining the major issues concerning your topic, you should have raised key concepts and actors (Wong, n.d.). Your research question should attempt to engage or investigate the key concepts previously stated, showing to your reader that you have developed a line of inquiry that directly touches upon gaps in the previous literature that can be concretely investigated (ie. concepts that are operationalized). After indicating what your research intends to study, formulate this gap into a set of research questions which make investigating this gap tangible. Refer to the previous chapter for more advice about devising a solid research question. Remember, as McCombes (2021) notes, a good research question is:

Focused on a single problem or issue
Researchable using primary and/or secondary sources
Feasible to answer within the timeframe and practical constraints
Specific enough to answer thoroughly
Complex enough to develop the answer over the space of a paper or thesis (i.e., not answerable with a simple yes/no)
Provide scope for debate Original (not one that is answered already)
Relevant to your field of study and/or society more broadly.

Methods to Address Research Questions

By the time you begin writing your methodology section, you would have already introduced your topic and its significance, and have provided a brief account of its scholarly history (literature review) and the gaps you will be filling. The methods section allows you to discuss how you intend to fulfill said gap. In the methods section, you also indicate what data you intend to investigate (content: including the time, place, and variables) and how you intend to find it (the methods you will use to reveal content e.g., qualitative interviewing, discourse analysis, experimental research, and comparative research). Your ability to outline these steps clearly and plausibly will indicate whether your research is repeatable, possible, and effective. Repeatable research allows other researchers to repeat your methods and find the same results (Bhattacherjee, 2012), thereby proving that your findings were not invented but are discoverable by all. Your descriptions must be specific enough so that other researchers can repeat them and arrive at the same results. It is important in this section that you also justify why you believe this specific methodology is the most effective for answering the research question. This does not need to be extensive, but you should at least briefly note why you think, for instance, qualitative, quantitative, or mixed methods (and your specific proposed approach) are appropriate for answering your research question. For more details about writing an immaculate methodology, refer to Chapter 7.

This short section requires you to discuss how you intend to interpret your findings. You will need to ask yourself five critical questions before you write this section: (1) will theory guide the interpretation of the results? (2) Will I use a matrix with pre-established codes to categorize results? (3) Will I use an inductive approach such as grounded theory that does not go into an investigation with strict codes? (4) Will I use statistics to explain trends in numerical data? (5) Will I be using a combination of these or another strategy to interpret my findings?This section should also include some discussion of the theories that you intend to use to possibly explain or understand your data. Be sure to outline key notions and explain how they will be operationalized to extrapolate the data you may receive. Again, this section also does not have to be extensive. At this point, you are demonstrating that you have given thought to what you intend to do with the data once you have collected it. This may change later on, but make sure that the proposed analytical strategy is appropriate to the data collected, for example, if you are evaluating newspaper discourse on the coronavirus pandemic, unless you intend to code the data quantitatively, you would not be expected to use statistics. Content, thematic or discourse analysis might be more intuitive. See the Data Analysis (Chapters 9 and 10 ) for more details.

Summarize, Engage with Limitations, and Implicate

After you have outlined the literature, the gaps in the literature, how you intend to investigate that gap, and how you intend to analyze what you have found, it is important to again reiterate the significance of your study. Allude to what your study could find and what this would mean . This requires returning to the significant territory that began your proposal and linking it to how your study could help to explain/change this understanding or circumstance. Report on the possible beneficial outcomes of your study. For instance, say you study the impact of welfare checks on homelessness. Then you could respond to the following question: How could my findings improve our responses to homelessness? How could it make welfare policies more effective? Remember you must explain the usefulness or benefits of the study to both the outside world and the research community. In addition to noting your strengths, also reflect on the weaknesses. All research has limitations but you need to demonstrate that you have taken steps to mitigate those that can be mitigated and that the research is valuable despite the weaknesses. Be straightforward about the things your study will not be able to find, and the potential obstacles that will be presented to you in conducting your study (in research that is conducted with a population, be sure to note harms/benefits that might come to them). With this in mind, try to address these obstacles to the best of your ability and to prove the value of your study despite inevitable tradeoffs. However, do not finish with a long list of inadequacies. End with a magnanimous crescendo –with the impression that despite the trials and limitations of research, you are prepared for the challenge and the challenge is well worth overcoming. This means reiterating the significance, potential uses and implications of the findings.

Box 2.3 – Seven Tips for Getting Started with Your Proposed Methodology

Introduce the overall methodological approach (e.g., qualitative, quantitative, mixed)
Indicate how the approach fits the overall research design (e.g., setting, participants, data collection process)
Describe the specific methods of data collection (e.g., interviews, surveys, ethnography, secondary data etc.)
Explain how you intend to analyze and interpret your results (i.e. statistical analysis, grounded theory; outline any theoretical framework that will guide the analysis; see below ).
If necessary, provide background and rationale for unfamiliar methodologies.
Highlight the ethical process including whether institutional ethics review was done
Address potential limitations ( see below )

Bhattacherjee, Anol. (2012). Social Science Research: Principles, Methods, and Practices Textbooks Collection. https://scholarcommons.usf.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=&httpsredir=1&article=1002&context=oa_textbooks

Bowen, S., Elliott, S., & Brenton, J. (2014). The joy of cooking? Contexts , 13(3), 20-25.

CBIE [Canadian Bureau for International Education] (2018, August). International students in Canada . https://cbie.ca/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/International-Students-in-CanadaENG.pdf

Germon, P. (1999). Purely academic? Exploring the relationship between theory and political activism. Disability & Society, 14(5), 687-692.

International Organization on Migration. (2018). “Global Migration Indicators.” global_migration_indicators_2018.pdf (iom.int)

McCombes, S. (2021, March 22). Developing Strong Research Questions: Criteria and Examples. Scribbr . https://www.scribbr.com/research-process/research-questions/

UNE (2021). Gaps in the literature. UNE Library services. https://library.une.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Gaps-in-the-Literature.pdf

Petrina, Stephen. (2009). “Thesis Dissertation and Proposal Guide For Graduate Students.”

https://edcp-educ.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2013/08/researchproposal1.pdf

What one hopes to achieve by answering the research question.

A further elaboration on goals i.e., details about the steps that will be taken to achieve the goal.

The ambiguities, faults, and missing aspects of the established literature.

The notion that another researcher should be able to repeat your methods and find the same results (see replicable).

Practicing and Presenting Social Research Copyright © 2022 by Oral Robinson and Alexander Wilson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Published: 17 October 2023

The impact of founder personalities on startup success

Paul X. McCarthy 1 , 2 ,
Xian Gong 3 ,
Fabian Braesemann 4 , 5 ,
Fabian Stephany 4 , 5 ,
Marian-Andrei Rizoiu 3 &
Margaret L. Kern 6

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Startup companies solve many of today’s most challenging problems, such as the decarbonisation of the economy or the development of novel life-saving vaccines. Startups are a vital source of innovation, yet the most innovative are also the least likely to survive. The probability of success of startups has been shown to relate to several firm-level factors such as industry, location and the economy of the day. Still, attention has increasingly considered internal factors relating to the firm’s founding team, including their previous experiences and failures, their centrality in a global network of other founders and investors, as well as the team’s size. The effects of founders’ personalities on the success of new ventures are, however, mainly unknown. Here, we show that founder personality traits are a significant feature of a firm’s ultimate success. We draw upon detailed data about the success of a large-scale global sample of startups (n = 21,187). We find that the Big Five personality traits of startup founders across 30 dimensions significantly differ from that of the population at large. Key personality facets that distinguish successful entrepreneurs include a preference for variety, novelty and starting new things (openness to adventure), like being the centre of attention (lower levels of modesty) and being exuberant (higher activity levels). We do not find one ’Founder-type’ personality; instead, six different personality types appear. Our results also demonstrate the benefits of larger, personality-diverse teams in startups, which show an increased likelihood of success. The findings emphasise the role of the diversity of personality types as a novel dimension of team diversity that influences performance and success.

Predicting success in the worldwide start-up network

The personality traits of self-made and inherited millionaires

The nexus of top executives’ attributes, firm strategies, and outcomes: Large firms versus SMEs

Introduction.

The success of startups is vital to economic growth and renewal, with a small number of young, high-growth firms creating a disproportionately large share of all new jobs 1 , 2 . Startups create jobs and drive economic growth, and they are also an essential vehicle for solving some of society’s most pressing challenges.

As a poignant example, six centuries ago, the German city of Mainz was abuzz as the birthplace of the world’s first moveable-type press created by Johannes Gutenberg. However, in the early part of this century, it faced several economic challenges, including rising unemployment and a significant and growing municipal debt. Then in 2008, two Turkish immigrants formed the company BioNTech in Mainz with another university research colleague. Together they pioneered new mRNA-based technologies. In 2020, BioNTech partnered with US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer to create one of only a handful of vaccines worldwide for Covid-19, saving an estimated six million lives 3 . The economic benefit to Europe and, in particular, the German city where the vaccine was developed has been significant, with windfall tax receipts to the government clearing Mainz’s €1.3bn debt and enabling tax rates to be reduced, attracting other businesses to the region as well as inspiring a whole new generation of startups 4 .

While stories such as the success of BioNTech are often retold and remembered, their success is the exception rather than the rule. The overwhelming majority of startups ultimately fail. One study of 775 startups in Canada that successfully attracted external investment found only 35% were still operating seven years later 5 .

But what determines the success of these ‘lucky few’? When assessing the success factors of startups, especially in the early-stage unproven phase, venture capitalists and other investors offer valuable insights. Three different schools of thought characterise their perspectives: first, supply-side or product investors : those who prioritise investing in firms they consider to have novel and superior products and services, investing in companies with intellectual property such as patents and trademarks. Secondly, demand-side or market-based investors : those who prioritise investing in areas of highest market interest, such as in hot areas of technology like quantum computing or recurrent or emerging large-scale social and economic challenges such as the decarbonisation of the economy. Thirdly, talent investors : those who prioritise the foundation team above the startup’s initial products or what industry or problem it is looking to address.

Investors who adopt the third perspective and prioritise talent often recognise that a good team can overcome many challenges in the lead-up to product-market fit. And while the initial products of a startup may or may not work a successful and well-functioning team has the potential to pivot to new markets and new products, even if the initial ones prove untenable. Not surprisingly, an industry ‘autopsy’ into 101 tech startup failures found 23% were due to not having the right team—the number three cause of failure ahead of running out of cash or not having a product that meets the market need 6 .

Accordingly, early entrepreneurship research was focused on the personality of founders, but the focus shifted away in the mid-1980s onwards towards more environmental factors such as venture capital financing 7 , 8 , 9 , networks 10 , location 11 and due to a range of issues and challenges identified with the early entrepreneurship personality research 12 , 13 . At the turn of the 21st century, some scholars began exploring ways to combine context and personality and reconcile entrepreneurs’ individual traits with features of their environment. In her influential work ’The Sociology of Entrepreneurship’, Patricia H. Thornton 14 discusses two perspectives on entrepreneurship: the supply-side perspective (personality theory) and the demand-side perspective (environmental approach). The supply-side perspective focuses on the individual traits of entrepreneurs. In contrast, the demand-side perspective focuses on the context in which entrepreneurship occurs, with factors such as finance, industry and geography each playing their part. In the past two decades, there has been a revival of interest and research that explores how entrepreneurs’ personality relates to the success of their ventures. This new and growing body of research includes several reviews and meta-studies, which show that personality traits play an important role in both career success and entrepreneurship 15 , 16 , 17 , 18 , 19 , that there is heterogeneity in definitions and samples used in research on entrepreneurship 16 , 18 , and that founder personality plays an important role in overall startup outcomes 17 , 19 .

Motivated by the pivotal role of the personality of founders on startup success outlined in these recent contributions, we investigate two main research questions:

Which personality features characterise founders?

Do their personalities, particularly the diversity of personality types in founder teams, play a role in startup success?

We aim to understand whether certain founder personalities and their combinations relate to startup success, defined as whether their company has been acquired, acquired another company or listed on a public stock exchange. For the quantitative analysis, we draw on a previously published methodology 20 , which matches people to their ‘ideal’ jobs based on social media-inferred personality traits.

We find that personality traits matter for startup success. In addition to firm-level factors of location, industry and company age, we show that founders’ specific Big Five personality traits, such as adventurousness and openness, are significantly more widespread among successful startups. As we find that companies with multi-founder teams are more likely to succeed, we cluster founders in six different and distinct personality groups to underline the relevance of the complementarity in personality traits among founder teams. Startups with diverse and specific combinations of founder types (e. g., an adventurous ‘Leader’, a conscientious ‘Accomplisher’, and an extroverted ‘Developer’) have significantly higher odds of success.

We organise the rest of this paper as follows. In the Section " Results ", we introduce the data used and the methods applied to relate founders’ psychological traits with their startups’ success. We introduce the natural language processing method to derive individual and team personality characteristics and the clustering technique to identify personality groups. Then, we present the result for multi-variate regression analysis that allows us to relate firm success with external and personality features. Subsequently, the Section " Discussion " mentions limitations and opportunities for future research in this domain. In the Section " Methods ", we describe the data, the variables in use, and the clustering in greater detail. Robustness checks and additional analyses can be found in the Supplementary Information.

Our analysis relies on two datasets. We infer individual personality facets via a previously published methodology 20 from Twitter user profiles. Here, we restrict our analysis to founders with a Crunchbase profile. Crunchbase is the world’s largest directory on startups. It provides information about more than one million companies, primarily focused on funding and investors. A company’s public Crunchbase profile can be considered a digital business card of an early-stage venture. As such, the founding teams tend to provide information about themselves, including their educational background or a link to their Twitter account.

We infer the personality profiles of the founding teams of early-stage ventures from their publicly available Twitter profiles, using the methodology described by Kern et al. 20 . Then, we correlate this information to data from Crunchbase to determine whether particular combinations of personality traits correspond to the success of early-stage ventures. The final dataset used in the success prediction model contains n = 21,187 startup companies (for more details on the data see the Methods section and SI section A.5 ).

Revisions of Crunchbase as a data source for investigations on a firm and industry level confirm the platform to be a useful and valuable source of data for startups research, as comparisons with other sources at micro-level, e.g., VentureXpert or PwC, also suggest that the platform’s coverage is very comprehensive, especially for start-ups located in the United States 21 . Moreover, aggregate statistics on funding rounds by country and year are quite similar to those produced with other established sources, going to validate the use of Crunchbase as a reliable source in terms of coverage of funded ventures. For instance, Crunchbase covers about the same number of investment rounds in the analogous sectors as collected by the National Venture Capital Association 22 . However, we acknowledge that the data source might suffer from registration latency (a certain delay between the foundation of the company and its actual registration on Crunchbase) and success bias in company status (the likeliness that failed companies decide to delete their profile from the database).

The definition of startup success

The success of startups is uncertain, dependent on many factors and can be measured in various ways. Due to the likelihood of failure in startups, some large-scale studies have looked at which features predict startup survival rates 23 , and others focus on fundraising from external investors at various stages 24 . Success for startups can be measured in multiple ways, such as the amount of external investment attracted, the number of new products shipped or the annual growth in revenue. But sometimes external investments are misguided, revenue growth can be short-lived, and new products may fail to find traction.

Success in a startup is typically staged and can appear in different forms and times. For example, a startup may be seen to be successful when it finds a clear solution to a widely recognised problem, such as developing a successful vaccine. On the other hand, it could be achieving some measure of commercial success, such as rapidly accelerating sales or becoming profitable or at least cash positive. Or it could be reaching an exit for foundation investors via a trade sale, acquisition or listing of its shares for sale on a public stock exchange via an Initial Public Offering (IPO).

For our study, we focused on the startup’s extrinsic success rather than the founders’ intrinsic success per se, as its more visible, objective and measurable. A frequently considered measure of success is the attraction of external investment by venture capitalists 25 . However, this is not in and of itself a good measure of clear, incontrovertible success, particularly for early-stage ventures. This is because it reflects investors’ expectations of a startup’s success potential rather than actual business success. Similarly, we considered other measures like revenue growth 26 , liquidity events 27 , 28 , 29 , profitability 30 and social impact 31 , all of which have benefits as they capture incremental success, but each also comes with operational measurement challenges.

Therefore, we apply the success definition initially introduced by Bonaventura et al. 32 , namely that a startup is acquired, acquires another company or has an initial public offering (IPO). We consider any of these major capital liquidation events as a clear threshold signal that the company has matured from an early-stage venture to becoming or is on its way to becoming a mature company with clear and often significant business growth prospects. Together these three major liquidity events capture the primary forms of exit for external investors (an acquisition or trade sale and an IPO). For companies with a longer autonomous growth runway, acquiring another company marks a similar milestone of scale, maturity and capability.

Using multifactor analysis and a binary classification prediction model of startup success, we looked at many variables together and their relative influence on the probability of the success of startups. We looked at seven categories of factors through three lenses of firm-level factors: (1) location, (2) industry, (3) age of the startup; founder-level factors: (4) number of founders, (5) gender of founders, (6) personality characteristics of founders and; lastly team-level factors: (7) founder-team personality combinations. The model performance and relative impacts on the probability of startup success of each of these categories of founders are illustrated in more detail in section A.6 of the Supplementary Information (in particular Extended Data Fig. 19 and Extended Data Fig. 20 ). In total, we considered over three hundred variables (n = 323) and their relative significant associations with success.

The personality of founders

Besides product-market, industry, and firm-level factors (see SI section A.1 ), research suggests that the personalities of founders play a crucial role in startup success 19 . Therefore, we examine the personality characteristics of individual startup founders and teams of founders in relationship to their firm’s success by applying the success definition used by Bonaventura et al. 32 .

Employing established methods 33 , 34 , 35 , we inferred the personality traits across 30 dimensions (Big Five facets) of a large global sample of startup founders. The startup founders cohort was created from a subset of founders from the global startup industry directory Crunchbase, who are also active on the social media platform Twitter.

To measure the personality of the founders, we used the Big Five, a popular model of personality which includes five core traits: Openness to Experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Emotional stability. Each of these traits can be further broken down into thirty distinct facets. Studies have found that the Big Five predict meaningful life outcomes, such as physical and mental health, longevity, social relationships, health-related behaviours, antisocial behaviour, and social contribution, at levels on par with intelligence and socioeconomic status 36 Using machine learning to infer personality traits by analysing the use of language and activity on social media has been shown to be more accurate than predictions of coworkers, friends and family and similar in accuracy to the judgement of spouses 37 . Further, as other research has shown, we assume that personality traits remain stable in adulthood even through significant life events 38 , 39 , 40 . Personality traits have been shown to emerge continuously from those already evident in adolescence 41 and are not significantly influenced by external life events such as becoming divorced or unemployed 42 . This suggests that the direction of any measurable effect goes from founder personalities to startup success and not vice versa.

As a first investigation to what extent personality traits might relate to entrepreneurship, we use the personality characteristics of individuals to predict whether they were an entrepreneur or an employee. We trained and tested a machine-learning random forest classifier to distinguish and classify entrepreneurs from employees and vice-versa using inferred personality vectors alone. As a result, we found we could correctly predict entrepreneurs with 77% accuracy and employees with 88% accuracy (Fig. 1 A). Thus, based on personality information alone, we correctly predict all unseen new samples with 82.5% accuracy (See SI section A.2 for more details on this analysis, the classification modelling and prediction accuracy).

We explored in greater detail which personality features are most prominent among entrepreneurs. We found that the subdomain or facet of Adventurousness within the Big Five Domain of Openness was significant and had the largest effect size. The facet of Modesty within the Big Five Domain of Agreeableness and Activity Level within the Big Five Domain of Extraversion was the subsequent most considerable effect (Fig. 1 B). Adventurousness in the Big Five framework is defined as the preference for variety, novelty and starting new things—which are consistent with the role of a startup founder whose role, especially in the early life of the company, is to explore things that do not scale easily 43 and is about developing and testing new products, services and business models with the market.

Once we derived and tested the Big Five personality features for each entrepreneur in our data set, we examined whether there is evidence indicating that startup founders naturally cluster according to their personality features using a Hopkins test (see Extended Data Figure 6 ). We discovered clear clustering tendencies in the data compared with other renowned reference data sets known to have clusters. Then, once we established the founder data clusters, we used agglomerative hierarchical clustering. This ‘bottom-up’ clustering technique initially treats each observation as an individual cluster. Then it merges them to create a hierarchy of possible cluster schemes with differing numbers of groups (See Extended Data Fig. 7 ). And lastly, we identified the optimum number of clusters based on the outcome of four different clustering performance measurements: Davies-Bouldin Index, Silhouette coefficients, Calinski-Harabas Index and Dunn Index (see Extended Data Figure 8 ). We find that the optimum number of clusters of startup founders based on their personality features is six (labelled #0 through to #5), as shown in Fig. 1 C.

To better understand the context of different founder types, we positioned each of the six types of founders within an occupation-personality matrix established from previous research 44 . This research showed that ‘each job has its own personality’ using a substantial sample of employees across various jobs. Utilising the methodology employed in this study, we assigned labels to the cluster names #0 to #5, which correspond to the identified occupation tribes that best describe the personality facets represented by the clusters (see Extended Data Fig. 9 for an overview of these tribes, as identified by McCarthy et al. 44 ).

Utilising this approach, we identify three ’purebred’ clusters: #0, #2 and #5, whose members are dominated by a single tribe (larger than 60% of all individuals in each cluster are characterised by one tribe). Thus, these clusters represent and share personality attributes of these previously identified occupation-personality tribes 44 , which have the following known distinctive personality attributes (see also Table 1 ):

Accomplishers (#0) —Organised & outgoing. confident, down-to-earth, content, accommodating, mild-tempered & self-assured.

Leaders (#2) —Adventurous, persistent, dispassionate, assertive, self-controlled, calm under pressure, philosophical, excitement-seeking & confident.

Fighters (#5) —Spontaneous and impulsive, tough, sceptical, and uncompromising.

We labelled these clusters with the tribe names, acknowledging that labels are somewhat arbitrary, based on our best interpretation of the data (See SI section A.3 for more details).

For the remaining three clusters #1, #3 and #4, we can see they are ‘hybrids’, meaning that the founders within them come from a mix of different tribes, with no one tribe representing more than 50% of the members of that cluster. However, the tribes with the largest share were noted as #1 Experts/Engineers, #3 Fighters, and #4 Operators.

To label these three hybrid clusters, we examined the closest occupations to the median personality features of each cluster. We selected a name that reflected the common themes of these occupations, namely:

Experts/Engineers (#1) as the closest roles included Materials Engineers and Chemical Engineers. This is consistent with this cluster’s personality footprint, which is highest in openness in the facets of imagination and intellect.

Developers (#3) as the closest roles include Application Developers and related technology roles such as Business Systems Analysts and Product Managers.

Operators (#4) as the closest roles include service, maintenance and operations functions, including Bicycle Mechanic, Mechanic and Service Manager. This is also consistent with one of the key personality traits of high conscientiousness in the facet of orderliness and high agreeableness in the facet of humility for founders in this cluster.

Founder-Level Factors of Startup Success. ( A ), Successful entrepreneurs differ from successful employees. They can be accurately distinguished using a classifier with personality information alone. ( B ), Successful entrepreneurs have different Big Five facet distributions, especially on adventurousness, modesty and activity level. ( C ), Founders come in six different types: Fighters, Operators, Accomplishers, Leaders, Engineers and Developers (FOALED) ( D ), Each founder Personality-Type has its distinct facet.

Together, these six different types of startup founders (Fig. 1 C) represent a framework we call the FOALED model of founder types—an acronym of Fighters, Operators, Accomplishers, Leaders, Engineers and D evelopers.

Each founder’s personality type has its distinct facet footprint (for more details, see Extended Data Figure 10 in SI section A.3 ). Also, we observe a central core of correlated features that are high for all types of entrepreneurs, including intellect, adventurousness and activity level (Fig. 1 D).To test the robustness of the clustering of the personality facets, we compare the mean scores of the individual facets per cluster with a 20-fold resampling of the data and find that the clusters are, overall, largely robust against resampling (see Extended Data Figure 11 in SI section A.3 for more details).

We also find that the clusters accord with the distribution of founders’ roles in their startups. For example, Accomplishers are often Chief Executive Officers, Chief Financial Officers, or Chief Operating Officers, while Fighters tend to be Chief Technical Officers, Chief Product Officers, or Chief Commercial Officers (see Extended Data Fig. 12 in SI section A.4 for more details).

The ensemble theory of success

While founders’ individual personality traits, such as Adventurousness or Openness, show to be related to their firms’ success, we also hypothesise that the combination, or ensemble, of personality characteristics of a founding team impacts the chances of success. The logic behind this reasoning is complementarity, which is proposed by contemporary research on the functional roles of founder teams. Examples of these clear functional roles have evolved in established industries such as film and television, construction, and advertising 45 . When we subsequently explored the combinations of personality types among founders and their relationship to the probability of startup success, adjusted for a range of other factors in a multi-factorial analysis, we found significantly increased chances of success for mixed foundation teams:

Initially, we find that firms with multiple founders are more likely to succeed, as illustrated in Fig. 2 A, which shows firms with three or more founders are more than twice as likely to succeed than solo-founded startups. This finding is consistent with investors’ advice to founders and previous studies 46 . We also noted that some personality types of founders increase the probability of success more than others, as shown in SI section A.6 (Extended Data Figures 16 and 17 ). Also, we note that gender differences play out in the distribution of personality facets: successful female founders and successful male founders show facet scores that are more similar to each other than are non-successful female founders to non-successful male founders (see Extended Data Figure 18 ).

The Ensemble Theory of Team-Level Factors of Startup Success. ( A ) Having a larger founder team elevates the chances of success. This can be due to multiple reasons, e.g., a more extensive network or knowledge base but also personality diversity. ( B ) We show that joint personality combinations of founders are significantly related to higher chances of success. This is because it takes more than one founder to cover all beneficial personality traits that ‘breed’ success. ( C ) In our multifactor model, we show that firms with diverse and specific combinations of types of founders have significantly higher odds of success.

Access to more extensive networks and capital could explain the benefits of having more founders. Still, as we find here, it also offers a greater diversity of combined personalities, naturally providing a broader range of maximum traits. So, for example, one founder may be more open and adventurous, and another could be highly agreeable and trustworthy, thus, potentially complementing each other’s particular strengths associated with startup success.

The benefits of larger and more personality-diverse foundation teams can be seen in the apparent differences between successful and unsuccessful firms based on their combined Big Five personality team footprints, as illustrated in Fig. 2 B. Here, maximum values for each Big Five trait of a startup’s co-founders are mapped; stratified by successful and non-successful companies. Founder teams of successful startups tend to score higher on Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, and Agreeableness.

When examining the combinations of founders with different personality types, we find that some ensembles of personalities were significantly correlated with greater chances of startup success—while controlling for other variables in the model—as shown in Fig. 2 C (for more details on the modelling, the predictive performance and the coefficient estimates of the final model, see Extended Data Figures 19 , 20 , and 21 in SI section A.6 ).

Three combinations of trio-founder companies were more than twice as likely to succeed than other combinations, namely teams with (1) a Leader and two Developers , (2) an Operator and two Developers , and (3) an Expert/Engineer , Leader and Developer . To illustrate the potential mechanisms on how personality traits might influence the success of startups, we provide some examples of well-known, successful startup founders and their characteristic personality traits in Extended Data Figure 22 .

Startups are one of the key mechanisms for brilliant ideas to become solutions to some of the world’s most challenging economic and social problems. Examples include the Google search algorithm, disability technology startup Fingerwork’s touchscreen technology that became the basis of the Apple iPhone, or the Biontech mRNA technology that powered Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine.

We have shown that founders’ personalities and the combination of personalities in the founding team of a startup have a material and significant impact on its likelihood of success. We have also shown that successful startup founders’ personality traits are significantly different from those of successful employees—so much so that a simple predictor can be trained to distinguish between employees and entrepreneurs with more than 80% accuracy using personality trait data alone.

Just as occupation-personality maps derived from data can provide career guidance tools, so too can data on successful entrepreneurs’ personality traits help people decide whether becoming a founder may be a good choice for them.

We have learnt through this research that there is not one type of ideal ’entrepreneurial’ personality but six different types. Many successful startups have multiple co-founders with a combination of these different personality types.

To a large extent, founding a startup is a team sport; therefore, diversity and complementarity of personalities matter in the foundation team. It has an outsized impact on the company’s likelihood of success. While all startups are high risk, the risk becomes lower with more founders, particularly if they have distinct personality traits.

Our work demonstrates the benefits of personality diversity among the founding team of startups. Greater awareness of this novel form of diversity may help create more resilient startups capable of more significant innovation and impact.

The data-driven research approach presented here comes with certain methodological limitations. The principal data sources of this study—Crunchbase and Twitter—are extensive and comprehensive, but there are characterised by some known and likely sample biases.

Crunchbase is the principal public chronicle of venture capital funding. So, there is some likely sample bias toward: (1) Startup companies that are funded externally: self-funded or bootstrapped companies are less likely to be represented in Crunchbase; (2) technology companies, as that is Crunchbase’s roots; (3) multi-founder companies; (4) male founders: while the representation of female founders is now double that of the mid-2000s, women still represent less than 25% of the sample; (5) companies that succeed: companies that fail, especially those that fail early, are likely to be less represented in the data.

Samples were also limited to those founders who are active on Twitter, which adds additional selection biases. For example, Twitter users typically are younger, more educated and have a higher median income 47 . Another limitation of our approach is the potentially biased presentation of a person’s digital identity on social media, which is the basis for identifying personality traits. For example, recent research suggests that the language and emotional tone used by entrepreneurs in social media can be affected by events such as business failure 48 , which might complicate the personality trait inference.

In addition to sampling biases within the data, there are also significant historical biases in startup culture. For many aspects of the entrepreneurship ecosystem, women, for example, are at a disadvantage 49 . Male-founded companies have historically dominated most startup ecosystems worldwide, representing the majority of founders and the overwhelming majority of venture capital investors. As a result, startups with women have historically attracted significantly fewer funds 50 , in part due to the male bias among venture investors, although this is now changing, albeit slowly 51 .

The research presented here provides quantitative evidence for the relevance of personality types and the diversity of personalities in startups. At the same time, it brings up other questions on how personality traits are related to other factors associated with success, such as:

Will the recent growing focus on promoting and investing in female founders change the nature, composition and dynamics of startups and their personalities leading to a more diverse personality landscape in startups?

Will the growth of startups outside of the United States change what success looks like to investors and hence the role of different personality traits and their association to diverse success metrics?

Many of today’s most renowned entrepreneurs are either Baby Boomers (such as Gates, Branson, Bloomberg) or Generation Xers (such as Benioff, Cannon-Brookes, Musk). However, as we can see, personality is both a predictor and driver of success in entrepreneurship. Will generation-wide differences in personality and outlook affect startups and their success?

Moreover, the findings shown here have natural extensions and applications beyond startups, such as for new projects within large established companies. While not technically startups, many large enterprises and industries such as construction, engineering and the film industry rely on forming new project-based, cross-functional teams that are often new ventures and share many characteristics of startups.

There is also potential for extending this research in other settings in government, NGOs, and within the research community. In scientific research, for example, team diversity in terms of age, ethnicity and gender has been shown to be predictive of impact, and personality diversity may be another critical dimension 52 .

Another extension of the study could investigate the development of the language used by startup founders on social media over time. Such an extension could investigate whether the language (and inferred psychological characteristics) change as the entrepreneurs’ ventures go through major business events such as foundation, funding, or exit.

Overall, this study demonstrates, first, that startup founders have significantly different personalities than employees. Secondly, besides firm-level factors, which are known to influence firm success, we show that a range of founder-level factors, notably the character traits of its founders, significantly impact a startup’s likelihood of success. Lastly, we looked at team-level factors. We discovered in a multifactor analysis that personality-diverse teams have the most considerable impact on the probability of a startup’s success, underlining the importance of personality diversity as a relevant factor of team performance and success.

Data sources

Entrepreneurs dataset.

Data about the founders of startups were collected from Crunchbase (Table 2 ), an open reference platform for business information about private and public companies, primarily early-stage startups. It is one of the largest and most comprehensive data sets of its kind and has been used in over 100 peer-reviewed research articles about economic and managerial research.

Crunchbase contains data on over two million companies - mainly startup companies and the companies who partner with them, acquire them and invest in them, as well as profiles on well over one million individuals active in the entrepreneurial ecosystem worldwide from over 200 countries and spans. Crunchbase started in the technology startup space, and it now covers all sectors, specifically focusing on entrepreneurship, investment and high-growth companies.

While Crunchbase contains data on over one million individuals in the entrepreneurial ecosystem, some are not entrepreneurs or startup founders but play other roles, such as investors, lawyers or executives at companies that acquire startups. To create a subset of only entrepreneurs, we selected a subset of 32,732 who self-identify as founders and co-founders (by job title) and who are also publicly active on the social media platform Twitter. We also removed those who also are venture capitalists to distinguish between investors and founders.

We selected founders active on Twitter to be able to use natural language processing to infer their Big Five personality features using an open-vocabulary approach shown to be accurate in the previous research by analysing users’ unstructured text, such as Twitter posts in our case. For this project, as with previous research 20 , we employed a commercial service, IBM Watson Personality Insight, to infer personality facets. This service provides raw scores and percentile scores of Big Five Domains (Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Emotional Stability) and the corresponding 30 subdomains or facets. In addition, the public content of Twitter posts was collected, and there are 32,732 profiles that each had enough Twitter posts (more than 150 words) to get relatively accurate personality scores (less than 12.7% Average Mean Absolute Error).

The entrepreneurs’ dataset is analysed in combination with other data about the companies they founded to explore questions about the nature and patterns of personality traits of entrepreneurs and the relationships between these patterns and company success.

For the multifactor analysis, we further filtered the data in several preparatory steps for the success prediction modelling (for more details, see SI section A.5 ). In particular, we removed data points with missing values (Extended Data Fig. 13 ) and kept only companies in the data that were founded from 1990 onward to ensure consistency with previous research 32 (see Extended Data Fig. 14 ). After cleaning, filtering and pre-processing the data, we ended up with data from 25,214 founders who founded 21,187 startup companies to be used in the multifactor analysis. Of those, 3442 startups in the data were successful, 2362 in the first seven years after they were founded (see Extended Data Figure 15 for more details).

Entrepreneurs and employees dataset

To investigate whether startup founders show personality traits that are similar or different from the population at large (i. e. the entrepreneurs vs employees sub-analysis shown in Fig. 1 A and B), we filtered the entrepreneurs’ data further: we reduced the sample to those founders of companies, which attracted more than US$100k in investment to create a reference set of successful entrepreneurs (n $=$ 4400).

To create a control group of employees who are not also entrepreneurs or very unlikely to be of have been entrepreneurs, we leveraged the fact that while some occupational titles like CEO, CTO and Public Speaker are commonly shared by founders and co-founders, some others such as Cashier , Zoologist and Detective very rarely co-occur seem to be founders or co-founders. To illustrate, many company founders also adopt regular occupation titles such as CEO or CTO. Many founders will be Founder and CEO or Co-founder and CTO. While founders are often CEOs or CTOs, the reverse is not necessarily true, as many CEOs are professional executives that were not involved in the establishment or ownership of the firm.

Using data from LinkedIn, we created an Entrepreneurial Occupation Index (EOI) based on the ratio of entrepreneurs for each of the 624 occupations used in a previous study of occupation-personality fit 44 . It was calculated based on the percentage of all people working in the occupation from LinkedIn compared to those who shared the title Founder or Co-founder (See SI section A.2 for more details). A reference set of employees (n=6685) was then selected across the 112 different occupations with the lowest propensity for entrepreneurship (less than 0.5% EOI) from a large corpus of Twitter users with known occupations, which is also drawn from the previous occupational-personality fit study 44 .

These two data sets were used to test whether it may be possible to distinguish successful entrepreneurs from successful employees based on the different patterns of personality traits alone.

Hierarchical clustering

We applied several clustering techniques and tests to the personality vectors of the entrepreneurs’ data set to determine if there are natural clusters and, if so, how many are the optimum number.

Firstly, to determine if there is a natural typology to founder personalities, we applied the Hopkins statistic—a statistical test we used to answer whether the entrepreneurs’ dataset contains inherent clusters. It measures the clustering tendency based on the ratio of the sum of distances of real points within a sample of the entrepreneurs’ dataset to their nearest neighbours and the sum of distances of randomly selected artificial points from a simulated uniform distribution to their nearest neighbours in the real entrepreneurs’ dataset. The ratio measures the difference between the entrepreneurs’ data distribution and the simulated uniform distribution, which tests the randomness of the data. The range of Hopkins statistics is from 0 to 1. The scores are close to 0, 0.5 and 1, respectively, indicating whether the dataset is uniformly distributed, randomly distributed or highly clustered.

To cluster the founders by personality facets, we used Agglomerative Hierarchical Clustering (AHC)—a bottom-up approach that treats an individual data point as a singleton cluster and then iteratively merges pairs of clusters until all data points are included in the single big collection. Ward’s linkage method is used to choose the pair of groups for minimising the increase in the within-cluster variance after combining. AHC was widely applied to clustering analysis since a tree hierarchy output is more informative and interpretable than K-means. Dendrograms were used to visualise the hierarchy to provide the perspective of the optimal number of clusters. The heights of the dendrogram represent the distance between groups, with lower heights representing more similar groups of observations. A horizontal line through the dendrogram was drawn to distinguish the number of significantly different clusters with higher heights. However, as it is not possible to determine the optimum number of clusters from the dendrogram, we applied other clustering performance metrics to analyse the optimal number of groups.

A range of Clustering performance metrics were used to help determine the optimal number of clusters in the dataset after an apparent clustering tendency was confirmed. The following metrics were implemented to evaluate the differences between within-cluster and between-cluster distances comprehensively: Dunn Index, Calinski-Harabasz Index, Davies-Bouldin Index and Silhouette Index. The Dunn Index measures the ratio of the minimum inter-cluster separation and the maximum intra-cluster diameter. At the same time, the Calinski-Harabasz Index improves the measurement of the Dunn Index by calculating the ratio of the average sum of squared dispersion of inter-cluster and intra-cluster. The Davies-Bouldin Index simplifies the process by treating each cluster individually. It compares the sum of the average distance among intra-cluster data points to the cluster centre of two separate groups with the distance between their centre points. Finally, the Silhouette Index is the overall average of the silhouette coefficients for each sample. The coefficient measures the similarity of the data point to its cluster compared with the other groups. Higher scores of the Dunn, Calinski-Harabasz and Silhouette Index and a lower score of the Davies-Bouldin Index indicate better clustering configuration.

Classification modelling

Classification algorithms.

To obtain a comprehensive and robust conclusion in the analysis predicting whether a given set of personality traits corresponds to an entrepreneur or an employee, we explored the following classifiers: Naïve Bayes, Elastic Net regularisation, Support Vector Machine, Random Forest, Gradient Boosting and Stacked Ensemble. The Naïve Bayes classifier is a probabilistic algorithm based on Bayes’ theorem with assumptions of independent features and equiprobable classes. Compared with other more complex classifiers, it saves computing time for large datasets and performs better if the assumptions hold. However, in the real world, those assumptions are generally violated. Elastic Net regularisation combines the penalties of Lasso and Ridge to regularise the Logistic classifier. It eliminates the limitation of multicollinearity in the Lasso method and improves the limitation of feature selection in the Ridge method. Even though Elastic Net is as simple as the Naïve Bayes classifier, it is more time-consuming. The Support Vector Machine (SVM) aims to find the ideal line or hyperplane to separate successful entrepreneurs and employees in this study. The dividing line can be non-linear based on a non-linear kernel, such as the Radial Basis Function Kernel. Therefore, it performs well on high-dimensional data while the ’right’ kernel selection needs to be tuned. Random Forest (RF) and Gradient Boosting Trees (GBT) are ensembles of decision trees. All trees are trained independently and simultaneously in RF, while a new tree is trained each time and corrected by previously trained trees in GBT. RF is a more robust and straightforward model since it does not have many hyperparameters to tune. GBT optimises the objective function and learns a more accurate model since there is a successive learning and correction process. Stacked Ensemble combines all existing classifiers through a Logistic Regression. Better than bagging with only variance reduction and boosting with only bias reduction, the ensemble leverages the benefit of model diversity with both lower variance and bias. All the above classification algorithms distinguish successful entrepreneurs and employees based on the personality matrix.

Evaluation metrics

A range of evaluation metrics comprehensively explains the performance of a classification prediction. The most straightforward metric is accuracy, which measures the overall portion of correct predictions. It will mislead the performance of an imbalanced dataset. The F1 score is better than accuracy by combining precision and recall and considering the False Negatives and False Positives. Specificity measures the proportion of detecting the true negative rate that correctly identifies employees, while Positive Predictive Value (PPV) calculates the probability of accurately predicting successful entrepreneurs. Area Under the Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUROC) determines the capability of the algorithm to distinguish between successful entrepreneurs and employees. A higher value means the classifier performs better on separating the classes.

Feature importance

To further understand and interpret the classifier, it is critical to identify variables with significant predictive power on the target. Feature importance of tree-based models measures Gini importance scores for all predictors, which evaluate the overall impact of the model after cutting off the specific feature. The measurements consider all interactions among features. However, it does not provide insights into the directions of impacts since the importance only indicates the ability to distinguish different classes.

Statistical analysis

T-test, Cohen’s D and two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test are introduced to explore how the mean values and distributions of personality facets between entrepreneurs and employees differ. The T-test is applied to determine whether the mean of personality facets of two group samples are significantly different from one another or not. The facets with significant differences detected by the hypothesis testing are critical to separate the two groups. Cohen’s d is to measure the effect size of the results of the previous t-test, which is the ratio of the mean difference to the pooled standard deviation. A larger Cohen’s d score indicates that the mean difference is greater than the variability of the whole sample. Moreover, it is interesting to check whether the two groups’ personality facets’ probability distributions are from the same distribution through the two-sample Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. There is no assumption about the distributions, but the test is sensitive to deviations near the centre rather than the tail.

Privacy and ethics

The focus of this research is to provide high-level insights about groups of startups, founders and types of founder teams rather than on specific individuals or companies. While we used unit record data from the publicly available data of company profiles from Crunchbase , we removed all identifiers from the underlying data on individual companies and founders and generated aggregate results, which formed the basis for our analysis and conclusions.

Data availability

A dataset which includes only aggregated statistics about the success of startups and the factors that influence is released as part of this research. Underlying data for all figures and the code to reproduce them are available on GitHub: https://github.com/Braesemann/FounderPersonalities . Please contact Fabian Braesemann ( [email protected] ) in case you have any further questions.

Change history

07 may 2024.

A Correction to this paper has been published: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-024-61082-7

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Acknowledgements

We thank Gary Brewer from BuiltWith ; Leni Mayo from Influx , Rachel Slattery from TeamSlatts and Daniel Petre from AirTree Ventures for their ongoing generosity and insights about startups, founders and venture investments. We also thank Tim Li from Crunchbase for advice and liaison regarding data on startups and Richard Slatter for advice and referrals in Twitter .

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Contributions

All authors designed research; All authors analysed data and undertook investigation; F.B. and F.S. led multi-factor analysis; P.M., X.G. and M.A.R. led the founder/employee prediction; M.L.K. led personality insights; X.G. collected and tabulated the data; X.G., F.B., and F.S. created figures; X.G. created final art, and all authors wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Fabian Braesemann .

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The original online version of this Article was revised: The Data Availability section in the original version of this Article was incomplete, the link to the GitHub repository was omitted. Full information regarding the corrections made can be found in the correction for this Article.

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McCarthy, P.X., Gong, X., Braesemann, F. et al. The impact of founder personalities on startup success. Sci Rep 13 , 17200 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-41980-y

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What is depression?

Everyone feels sad or low sometimes, but these feelings usually pass. Depression (also called major depression, major depressive disorder, or clinical depression) is different. It can cause severe symptoms that affect how a person feels, thinks, and handles daily activities, such as sleeping, eating, or working.

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Women are diagnosed with depression more often than men, but men can also be depressed. Because men may be less likely to recognize, talk about, and seek help for their negative feelings, they are at greater risk of their depression symptoms being undiagnosed and undertreated. Studies also show higher rates of depression and an increased risk for the disorder among members of the LGBTQI+ community.

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What are the different types of depression?

There are two common types of depression.

Major depression includes symptoms of depressed mood or loss of interest, most of the time for at least 2 weeks, that interfere with daily activities.
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Other types of depression include the following.

Seasonal affective disorder comes and goes with the seasons, with symptoms typically starting in the late fall and early winter and going away during the spring and summer.
Depression with symptoms of psychosis is a severe form of depression in which a person experiences psychosis symptoms, such as delusions or hallucinations.
Bipolar disorder involves depressive episodes, as well as manic episodes (or less severe hypomanic episodes) with unusually elevated mood, greater irritability, or increased activity level.

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Common signs and symptoms of depression include:

Persistent sad, anxious, or “empty” mood
Feelings of hopelessness or pessimism
Feelings of irritability, frustration‚ or restlessness
Feelings of guilt, worthlessness, or helplessness
Loss of interest or pleasure in hobbies and activities
Fatigue, lack of energy, or feeling slowed down
Difficulty concentrating, remembering, or making decisions
Difficulty sleeping, waking too early in the morning, or oversleeping
Changes in appetite or unplanned weight changes
Physical aches or pains, headaches, cramps, or digestive problems without a clear physical cause that do not go away with treatment
Thoughts of death or suicide or suicide attempts

Depression can also involve other changes in mood or behavior that include:

Increased anger or irritability
Feeling restless or on edge
Becoming withdrawn, negative, or detached
Increased engagement in high-risk activities
Greater impulsivity
Increased use of alcohol or drugs
Isolating from family and friends
Inability to meet responsibilities or ignoring other important roles
Problems with sexual desire and performance

Not everyone who is depressed shows all these symptoms. Some people experience only a few symptoms, while others experience many. Depression symptoms interfere with day-to-day functioning and cause significant distress for the person experiencing them.

If you show signs or symptoms of depression and they persist or do not go away, talk to a health care provider. If you see signs of depression in someone you know, encourage them to seek help from a mental health professional.

If you or someone you know is struggling or having thoughts of suicide, call or text the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline at 988 or chat at 988lifeline.org . In life-threatening situations, call 911 .

How is depression diagnosed?

To be diagnosed with depression, a person must have symptoms most of the day, nearly every day, for at least 2 weeks. One of the symptoms must be a depressed mood or a loss of interest or pleasure in most activities. Children and adolescents may be irritable rather than sad.

Although several persistent symptoms, in addition to low mood, are required for a depression diagnosis, people with only a few symptoms may benefit from treatment. The severity and frequency of symptoms and how long they last vary depending on the person.

If you think you may have depression, talk to a health care provider, such as a primary care doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist. During the visit, the provider may ask when your symptoms began, how long they have lasted, how often they occur, and if they keep you from going out or doing your usual activities. It may help to take some notes about your symptoms before the visit.

Certain medications and medical conditions, such as viruses or thyroid disorders, can cause the same symptoms as depression. A provider can rule out these possibilities by doing a physical exam, interview, and lab tests.

Does depression look the same in everyone?

Depression can affect people differently depending on their age.

Children may be anxious or cranky, pretend to be sick, refuse to go to school, cling to a parent, or worry that a parent may die.
Older children and teens may get into trouble at school, sulk, be easily frustrated‚ feel restless, or have low self-esteem. They may have other disorders, such as anxiety, an eating disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, or substance use disorder. Older children and teens are also more likely to experience excessive sleepiness (called hypersomnia) and increased appetite (called hyperphagia).
Young adults are more likely to be irritable, complain of weight gain and hypersomnia, and have a negative view of life and the future. They often have other disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, panic disorder, or substance use disorder.
Middle-aged adults may have more depressive episodes, decreased libido, middle-of-the-night insomnia, or early morning waking. They often report stomach problems, such as diarrhea or constipation.
Older adults often feel sadness, grief, or other less obvious symptoms. They may report a lack of emotions rather than a depressed mood. Older adults are also more likely to have other medical conditions or pain that can cause or contribute to depression. Memory and thinking problems (called pseudodementia) may be prominent in severe cases.

Depression can also look different in men versus women, such as the symptoms they show and the behaviors they use to cope with them. For instance, men (as well as women) may show symptoms other than sadness, instead seeming angry or irritable.

For some people, symptoms manifest as physical problems (for example, a racing heart, tightened chest, chronic headaches, or digestive issues). Many men are more likely to see a health care provider about these physical symptoms than their emotional ones. While increased use of alcohol or drugs can be a sign of depression in any person, men are also more likely to use these substances as a coping strategy.

How is depression treated?

Depression treatment typically involves psychotherapy (in person or virtual), medication, or both. If these treatments do not reduce symptoms sufficiently, brain stimulation therapy may be another option.

Choosing the right treatment plan is based on a person’s needs, preferences, and medical situation and in consultation with a mental health professional or a health care provider. Finding the best treatment may take trial and error.

For milder forms of depression, psychotherapy is often tried first, with medication added later if the therapy alone does not produce a good response. People with moderate or severe depression usually are prescribed medication as part of the initial treatment plan.

Psychotherapy

Psychotherapy (also called talk therapy or counseling) can help people with depression by teaching them new ways of thinking and behaving and helping them change habits that contribute to depression. Psychotherapy occurs under the care of a licensed, trained mental health professional in one-on-one sessions or with others in a group setting.

Psychotherapy can be effective when delivered in person or virtually via telehealth. A provider may support or supplement therapy using digital or mobile technology, like apps or other tools.

Evidence-based therapies to treat depression include cognitive behavioral therapy and interpersonal therapy. Using other forms of psychotherapy, such as psychodynamic therapy, for a limited time also may help some people with depression.

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) : With CBT, people learn to challenge and change unhelpful thoughts and behaviors to improve their depressive and anxious feelings. Recent advances in CBT include adding mindfulness principles and specializing the therapy to target specific symptoms like insomnia.
Interpersonal therapy (IPT) : IPT focuses on interpersonal and life events that impact mood and vice versa. IPT aims to help people improve their communication skills within relationships, form social support networks, and develop realistic expectations to better deal with crises or other issues that may be contributing to or worsening their depression.

Learn more about psychotherapy .

Antidepressants are medications commonly used to treat depression. They work by changing how the brain produces or uses certain chemicals involved in mood or stress.

Antidepressants take time—usually 4−8 weeks—to work, and problems with sleep, appetite, and concentration often improve before mood lifts. Giving a medication a chance to work is important before deciding whether it is right for you.

Treatment-resistant depression occurs when a person doesn’t get better after trying at least two antidepressants. Esketamine is a medication approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for treatment-resistant depression. Delivered as a nasal spray in a doctor’s office, clinic, or hospital, the medication acts rapidly, typically within a couple of hours, to relieve depression symptoms. People will usually continue to take an antidepressant pill to maintain the improvement in their symptoms.

Another option for treatment-resistant depression is to combine an antidepressant with a different type of medication that may make it more effective, such as an antipsychotic or anticonvulsant medication.

All medications can have side effects. Talk to a health care provider before starting or stopping any medication. Learn more about antidepressants .

Note : In some cases, children, teenagers, and young adults under 25 years may experience an increase in suicidal thoughts or behavior when taking antidepressants, especially in the first few weeks after starting or when the dose is changed. The FDA advises that patients of all ages taking antidepressants be watched closely, especially during the first few weeks of treatment.

Information about medication changes frequently. Learn more about specific medications like esketamine, including the latest approvals, side effects, warnings, and patient information, on the FDA website .

Brain stimulation therapy

Brain stimulation therapy is an option when other depression treatments have not worked. The therapy involves activating or inhibiting the brain with electricity or magnetic waves.

Although brain stimulation therapy is less frequently used than psychotherapy and medication, it can play an important role in treating depression in people who have not responded to other treatments. The therapy generally is used only after a person has tried psychotherapy and medication, and those treatments usually continue. Brain stimulation therapy is sometimes used as an earlier treatment option when severe depression has become life-threatening, such as when a person has stopped eating or drinking or is at a high risk of suicide.

The FDA has approved several types of brain stimulation therapy. The most used are electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS). Other brain stimulation therapies are newer and, in some cases, still considered experimental. Learn more about brain stimulation therapies .

Natural products

The FDA has not approved any natural products for treating depression. Although research is ongoing and findings are inconsistent, some people report that natural products, including vitamin D and the herbal dietary supplement St. John’s wort, helped their depression symptoms. However, these products can come with risks, including, in some cases, interactions with prescription medications.

Do not use vitamin D, St. John’s wort, or other dietary supplements or natural products without first talking to a health care provider. Rigorous studies must test whether these and other natural products are safe and effective.

How can I take care of myself?

Most people with depression benefit from mental health treatment. Once you begin treatment, you should gradually start to feel better. Go easy on yourself during this time. Try to do things you used to enjoy. Even if you don’t feel like doing them, they can improve your mood.

Other things that may help:

Try to get physical activity. Just 30 minutes a day of walking can boost your mood.
Try to maintain a regular bedtime and wake-up time.
Eat regular, healthy meals.
Do what you can as you can. Decide what must get done and what can wait.
Connect with people. Talk to people you trust about how you are feeling.
Delay making important life decisions until you feel better. Discuss decisions with people who know you well.
Avoid using alcohol, nicotine, or drugs, including medications not prescribed for you.

How can I find help for depression?

You can learn about ways to get help and find tips for talking with a health care provider on the NIMH website.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) also has an online tool to help you find mental health services in your area.

How can I help a loved one who is depressed?

If someone you know is depressed, help them see a health care provider or mental health professional. You also can:

Offer support, understanding, patience, and encouragement.
Invite them out for walks, outings, and other activities.
Help them stick to their treatment plan, such as setting reminders to take prescribed medications.
Make sure they have transportation or access to therapy appointments.
Remind them that, with time and treatment, their depression can lift.

What are clinical trials and why are they important?

Clinical trials are research studies that look at ways to prevent, detect, or treat diseases and conditions. These studies help show whether a treatment is safe and effective in people. Some people join clinical trials to help doctors and researchers learn more about a disease and improve health care. Other people, such as those with health conditions, join to try treatments that aren’t widely available.

NIMH supports clinical trials across the United States. Talk to a health care provider about clinical trials and whether one is right for you. Learn more about participating in clinical trials .

For more information

Learn more about mental health disorders and topics . For information about various health topics, visit the National Library of Medicine’s MedlinePlus .

The information in this publication is in the public domain and may be reused or copied without permission. However, you may not reuse or copy images. Please cite the National Institute of Mental Health as the source. Read our copyright policy to learn more about our guidelines for reusing NIMH content.

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES National Institutes of Health NIH Publication No. 24-MH-8079 Revised 2024

Calcium is a mineral most often associated with healthy bones and teeth, although it also plays an important role in blood clotting, helping muscles to contract, and regulating normal heart rhythms and nerve functions. About 99% of the body’s calcium is stored in bones, and the remaining 1% is found in blood, muscle, and other tissues.

In order to perform these vital daily functions, the body works to keep a steady amount of calcium in the blood and tissues. If calcium levels drop too low in the blood, parathyroid hormone (PTH) will signal the bones to release calcium into the bloodstream. This hormone may also activate vitamin D to improve the absorption of calcium in the intestines. At the same time, PTH signals the kidneys to release less calcium in the urine. When the body has enough calcium, a different hormone called calcitonin works to do the opposite: it lowers calcium levels in the blood by stopping the release of calcium from bones and signaling the kidneys to rid more of it in the urine.

The body gets the calcium it needs in two ways. One is by eating foods or supplements that contain calcium, and the other is by drawing from calcium in the body. If one does not eat enough calcium-containing foods, the body will remove calcium from bones. Ideally, the calcium that is “borrowed” from the bones will be replaced at a later point. But this doesn’t always happen, and can’t always be accomplished just by eating more calcium.

Recommended Amounts

The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for calcium for women 19-50 years of age is 1,000 mg daily; for women 51+, 1,200 mg. For pregnant and lactating women, the RDA is 1,000 mg. For men 19-70 years of age, the RDA is 1,000 mg; for men 71+ years, 1,200 mg. [1]

Calcium and Health

The reviews below specifically looked at the effect of calcium on various health conditions. Scroll down for links to more information on the health effect of specific foods rich in calcium.

Several literature reviews on the topic of total calcium intake, from food and supplements, and blood pressure have suggested a possible link to lowering high blood pressure. However, problems with study designs in these analyses (small numbers of participants, differences among the people studied, and various biases in the types of studies included) prevent a new recommendation for the treatment of high blood pressure that would increase calcium intake above the Recommended Dietary Allowance. [2] Larger trials with longer duration are needed to clarify whether increased calcium intakes or the use of calcium supplements can lower high blood pressure.

Some research has raised concerns about calcium supplements and heart health . These studies found that taking calcium supplements increased the risk of cardiovascular events in men and women. It has been suggested that high-dose supplements can cause hypercalcemia (toxic level of calcium in the blood) that can cause blood to clot or the arteries to harden, leading to cardiovascular disease. The connection is not yet clear, but a clinical guideline published after review of the available research from the National Osteoporosis Foundation and the American Society for Preventive Cardiology stated that calcium from food or supplements has no relationship (beneficial or harmful) to cardiovascular disease in generally healthy adults. The guideline advises people not to exceed the Upper Limit for calcium, that is, 2,000-2,500 mg daily from food and supplements. [3]

Calcium is one of the most important nutrients required for bone health. Bone is living tissue that is always in flux. Throughout the lifespan, bones are constantly being broken down and built up in a process known as remodeling. Bone cells called osteoblasts build bone, while other bone cells called osteoclasts break down bone if calcium is needed. In healthy individuals who get enough calcium and physical activity, bone production exceeds bone destruction up to about age 30. After that, destruction typically exceeds production. This is sometimes called “negative calcium balance,” which can lead to bone loss. Women tend to experience greater bone loss than men later in life due to menopause, a condition that lowers the amount of hormones that help to build and preserve bone.

Getting enough dietary calcium at all ages may help to slow the degree of bone loss, but calcium intakes at any level are not known to completely prevent bone loss. [4] Calcium is less easily absorbed at later ages, and therefore eating a very high amount of calcium will not always resolve the problem.

Studies on calcium intake and bone density in postmenopausal women have mixed results. Possible reasons:

The study only looked at calcium intakes from a supplement provided to the participants, and did not account for calcium from the diet or estimate the total amount of calcium from both food and supplements. [4]
The study did not adjust for or track if women were also taking hormone replacement therapy or other vitamin supplements that can lessen bone less, such as vitamin D.

Because the results of some large trials found that higher calcium intakes (usually achieved with a supplement) was associated with improved bone density and slightly lower risk of hip fractures, the RDA for calcium for postmenopausal women is higher than at younger ages. [5] Some studies suggest that frail elderly (80 years and older living in institutions) may benefit from supplementation more than “younger” elderly who live independently in the community. [6]

A 2018 review of randomized controlled trials by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force did not find that supplements with calcium and vitamin D taken for up to 7 years reduced the incidence of fractures in postmenopausal women. These women did not have osteoporosis or a vitamin D deficiency at the start of the study and lived independently in the community. The amount of calcium of the supplements ranged from 600-1,600 mg daily. [7]

Epidemiological studies following people over time suggest a protective role of high calcium intakes (whether from food and/or supplements) from colorectal cancer. [8]

However, randomized controlled trials using calcium supplements, with our without vitamin D, have shown mixed results. One reason may be a fairly short duration. Due to higher cost and difficulty with continued compliance from participants, clinical trials tend to be shorter in duration than epidemiological studies. But colorectal cancer can take 7-10 years or longer to develop, during which these trials might not reflect any changes in the colon.

A Cochrane review of two well-designed double-blind placebo-controlled trials found that taking 1,200 mg of elemental calcium daily for about 4 years caused a 26% reduced incidence of new colorectal adenomas in participants, some of whom had had adenomas before. [9] An adenoma is a non-cancerous tumor but which can become cancerous.
A randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial from the Women’s Health Initiative gave 36,282 postmenopausal women two doses daily of 500 mg elemental calcium and 200 IU vitamin D, or placebo, for about 7 years. The trial did not find a difference in incidence of colorectal cancer between the two groups. [8] A follow-up to this study five years later (total of 11 years follow-up) also did not find a lower incidence of colorectal cancer with the same calcium and vitamin D supplement regimen. [10] It was noted in these studies that the women already had a high calcium intake at the start of the study, so additional supplements may not have made a difference.

After a review of both cohort and clinical studies by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research, they reported strong evidence that calcium supplements of more than 200 mg daily and intake of high-calcium dairy foods will likely decrease the risk of colorectal cancer. [11] They noted possible causes including the ability of calcium to bind to certain toxic substances in the colon and prevent the growth of tumor cells. Certain bacteria in dairy foods may also be protective against the development of cancerous cells in the colon. [12]

At one time, experts recommended that people with kidney stones limit their calcium intake because the mineral makes up one of the most common types of stones, called calcium-oxalate stones. What we know now is the reverse—that not eating enough calcium-rich foods can increase the risk of stone formation. Research from large trials including the Women’s Health Initiative and the Nurses’ Health Study found that a high intake of calcium foods decreased the risk for kidney stones in women. However the same effect is not true with supplements, as calcium in pill form was found to increase risk. [13,14]

A benefit of calcium-rich foods (mainly from dairy) on the prevention of kidney stones was found in a cohort of 45,619 men. Intakes of skim or low-fat milk and cottage cheese or ricotta cheese showed the greatest protective effect. Men who drank two or more 8-ounce glasses of skim milk a day had 42% less risk of developing kidney stones as compared with men who drank less than one glass a month. Eating two or more half-cup servings of cottage cheese or ricotta cheese a week was associated with 30% less risk of kidney stones as compared with men who ate less than one serving a month. It is believed that calcium-rich foods reduce the formation of stones by lowering the absorption of oxalates, which make up calcium-oxalate stones. However, other undetermined components of dairy foods may also be responsible for the decreased risk. [15]

Food Sources

Calcium is widely available* in many foods, not just milk and other dairy foods . Fruits, leafy greens, beans, nuts, and some starchy vegetables are good sources.

Dairy (cow, goat, sheep) and fortified plant-based milks (almond, soy, rice)
Calcium-fortified orange juice
Winter squash
Edamame (young green soybeans ); Tofu, made with calcium sulfate
Canned sardines, salmon (with bones)
Leafy greens (collard, mustard, turnip, kale , bok choy, spinach)

*Bioavailability of calcium

For example, dairy foods have a bioavailablity of about 30% absorption so if a food label on milk lists 300 mg of calcium per cup, about 100 mg will be absorbed and used by the body. Plant foods like leafy greens contain less calcium overall but have a higher bioavailability than dairy. For example, bok choy contains about 160 mg of calcium per 1 cup cooked but has a higher bioavailability of 50%, so about 80 mg is absorbed. Therefore, eating 1 cup of cooked bok choy has almost as much bioavailable calcium as 1 cup of milk. Calcium-fortified orange juice and calcium-set tofu have a similar total amount of calcium and bioavailability as milk, while almonds have slightly lower total calcium and bioavailability of about 20%. This may be useful information for those who cannot eat dairy foods or who follow a vegan diet.

A downside to some plant foods is that they contain naturally occurring plant substances, sometimes referred to as “ anti-nutrients .” Examples of anti-nutrients are oxalates and phytates that bind to calcium and decrease its bioavailablity. Spinach contains the most calcium of all the leafy greens at 260 mg of calcium per 1 cup cooked, but it is also high in oxalates, lowering the bioavailability so that only 5% or about 13 mg of calcium can be used by the body. The takeaway message is not to avoid spinach, which contains other valuable nutrients, but not to rely on spinach as a significant source of calcium since most of it will not be absorbed by the body. You can also schedule your meals so that you do not eat “calcium-binding” foods like spinach at the same meal as calcium-rich foods or with calcium supplements.

If you are scanning food labels to reach a specific amount of daily calcium, continue to aim for the RDAs set for your age group and gender. The RDAs are established with an understanding of calcium bioavailability in food. Also keep in mind that the exact amount of calcium absorbed in the body will vary among individuals based on their metabolism and what other foods are eaten at the same meal. In general, eating a variety of calcium-rich foods can help to offset any small losses.

Signs of Deficiency and Toxicity

Blood levels of calcium are tightly regulated. Bones will release calcium into the blood if the diet does not provide enough, and no symptoms usually occur. A more serious deficiency of calcium, called hypocalcemia, results from diseases such as kidney failure, surgeries of the digestive tract like gastric bypass, or medications like diuretics that interfere with absorption.

Symptoms of hypocalcemia:

Muscle cramps or weakness
Numbness or tingling in fingers
Abnormal heart rate
Poor appetite

A gradual, progressive calcium deficiency can occur in people who do not get enough dietary calcium in the long-term or who lose the ability to absorb calcium. The first early stage of bone loss is called osteopenia and, if untreated, osteoporosis follows. Examples of people at risk include:

Postmenopausal women —Menopause lowers the amount of estrogen in the body, a hormone that helps to increase calcium absorption and retain the mineral in bones. Sometimes physicians may prescribe hormone replacement therapy (HRT) with estrogen and progesterone to prevent osteoporosis.
Amenorrhea —A condition where menstrual periods stop early or are disrupted, and is often seen in younger women with anorexia nervosa or athletes who physically train at a very high level.
Milk allergy or lactose intolerance— Occurs when the body cannot digest the sugar in milk, lactose, or the proteins in milk, casein or whey. Lactose intolerance can be genetic or acquired (not consuming lactose in the long-term may decrease the efficiency of lactase enzyme)

After a diagnosis of osteoporosis, your physician may prescribe over-the-counter calcium supplements. However, there are several points to consider when using calcium supplements.

First, clarify with your physician how much total calcium you should take daily. This amount includes calcium from food and supplements. The RDA for adults is between 1,000-1,200 mg daily, depending on age. Taking more than 2,000 mg daily is not recommended for adults even with osteoporosis, as this can potentially lead to other health problems. It is not recommended to take more than 1,200 mg daily, even with a diagnosis of osteoporosis.
Taking too high an amount of calcium at one time, particularly from a supplement, can actually lower the absorption of the mineral. It is best to take no more than 500 mg at one time. If you are prescribed more than that, take each dose at least 4 hours apart. So if you are prescribed 1000 mg of calcium daily, you might take a 500 mg supplement with breakfast and then again at night with dinner.
The two most common types of calcium supplements are in the form of calcium carbonate and calcium citrate. The carbonate form needs to be broken down by stomach acid before it can be absorbed, so it is usually taken with food; the citrate form does not require stomach acid and can be taken without food.
If you are unsure about how much calcium you are getting from the diet, consult with a registered dietitian. You would subtract the estimated amount of calcium from food from the RDA or prescribed amount by your doctor; the remaining can be taken as a supplement. If you are eating a very high calcium diet f (e.g., several servings of dairy milk or fortified milk, cheese, tofu, etc. daily), inform your doctor so they can estimate that amount into your calcium prescription.

Too much calcium in the blood is called hypercalcemia. The Upper Limit (UL) for calcium is 2,500 mg daily from food and supplements. People over the age of 50 should not take more than 2,000 mg daily, especially from supplements, as this can increase risk of some conditions like kidney stones, prostate cancer, and constipation. Some research has shown that in certain people, calcium can accumulate in blood vessels with long-term high doses and cause heart problems. Calcium is also a large mineral that can block the absorption of other minerals like iron and zinc.

Symptoms of hypercalcemia:

Weakness, fatigue
Nausea, vomiting
Shortness of breath
Heart palpitations, irregular heart rate

Did You Know?

Certain nutrients and medications may increase your need for calcium because they either lower the absorption of calcium in the gut or cause more calcium to be excreted in the urine. These include: corticosteroids (example: prednisone), excess sodium in the diet, phosphoric acid such as found in dark cola sodas, excess alcohol, and oxalates (see Are anti-nutrients harmful? ).

Vitamins and Minerals

Institute of Medicine (US) Committee to Review Dietary Reference Intakes for Vitamin D and Calcium; Ross AC, Taylor CL, Yaktine AL, et al., editors. Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium and Vitamin D. Washington (DC): National Academies Press (US); 2011. 5, Dietary Reference Intakes for Adequacy: Calcium and Vitamin D. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK56056/ Accessed 12/16/2019.
Dickinson HO, Nicolson DJ, Cook JV, Campbell F, Beyer FR, Ford GA, Mason J. Calcium supplementation for the management of primary hypertension in adults. Cochrane Database Syst Rev . 2006 Apr 19;(2):CD004639.
Kopecky SL, Bauer DC, Gulati M, Nieves JW, Singer AJ, Toth PP, Underberg JA, Wallace TC, Weaver CM. Lack of evidence linking calcium with or without vitamin D supplementation to cardiovascular disease in generally healthy adults: a clinical guideline from the National Osteoporosis Foundation and the American Society for Preventive Cardiology. Annals of internal medicine . 2016 Dec 20;165(12):867-8.
Tang BM, Eslick GD, Nowson C, Smith C, Bensoussan A. Use of calcium or calcium in combination with vitamin D supplementation to prevent fractures and bone loss in people aged 50 years and older: a meta-analysis. The Lancet . 2007 Aug 25;370(9588):657-66.
Yao P, Bennett D, Mafham M, Lin X, Chen Z, Armitage J, Clarke R. Vitamin D and calcium for the prevention of fracture: a systematic review and meta-analysis. JAMA network open . 2019 Dec 2;2(12):e1917789-.
Kahwati LC, Weber RP, Pan H, Gourlay M, LeBlanc E, Coker-Schwimmer M, Viswanathan M. Vitamin D, calcium, or combined supplementation for the primary prevention of fractures in community-dwelling adults: evidence report and systematic review for the US Preventive Services Task Force. JAMA . 2018 Apr 17;319(15):1600-12.
Wactawski-Wende J, Kotchen JM, Anderson GL, Assaf AR, Brunner RL, O’sullivan MJ, Margolis KL, Ockene JK, Phillips L, Pottern L, Prentice RL. Calcium plus vitamin D supplementation and the risk of colorectal cancer. New England Journal of Medicine . 2006 Feb 16;354(7):684-96.
Weingarten MA, Zalmanovici A, Yaphe J. Dietary calcium supplementation for preventing colorectal cancer and adenomatous polyps. Cochrane Database Syst Rev . 2008 Jan 23;(1):CD003548.
Cauley JA, Chlebowski RT, Wactawski-Wende J, Robbins JA, Rodabough RJ, Chen Z, Johnson KC, O’Sullivan MJ, Jackson RD, Manson JE. Calcium plus vitamin D supplementation and health outcomes five years after active intervention ended: the Women’s Health Initiative. Journal of women’s health . 2013 Nov 1;22(11):915-29.
World Cancer Research Fund/American Institute for Cancer Research. Continuous Update Project Expert Report 2018. Diet, nutrition, physical activity and colorectal cancer. https://www.wcrf.org/sites/default/files/Colorectal-cancer-report.pdf . Accessed 12/21/2019.
Song M, Garrett WS, Chan AT. Nutrients, foods, and colorectal cancer prevention. Gastroenterology . 2015 May 1;148(6):1244-60.
Curhan GC, Willett WC, Speizer FE, Spiegelman D, Stampfer MJ. Comparison of dietary calcium with supplemental calcium and other nutrients as factors affecting the risk for kidney stones in women. Annals of internal medicine . 1997 Apr 1;126(7):497-504.
Sorensen MD, Kahn AJ, Reiner AP, Tseng TY, Shikany JM, Wallace RB, Chi T, Wactawski-Wende J, Jackson RD, O’Sullivan MJ, Sadetsky N. Impact of nutritional factors on incident kidney stone formation: a report from the WHI OS. The Journal of urology . 2012 May;187(5):1645-50.
Curhan GC, Willett WC, Rimm EB, Stampfer MJ. A prospective study of dietary calcium and other nutrients and the risk of symptomatic kidney stones. New England Journal of Medicine . 1993 Mar 25;328(12):833-8.

Last reviewed March 2023

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The contents of this website are for educational purposes and are not intended to offer personal medical advice. You should seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. The Nutrition Source does not recommend or endorse any products.

Louisville police officer who arrested Scottie Scheffler had been previously suspended

The police officer who put world No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler in handcuffs has a lengthy disciplinary record that includes multiple suspensions, employment records revealed Thursday.

Detective Bryan Gillis took Scheffler into custody May 17 when the golfer sought to enter Valhalla Golf Club as police investigated a nearby fatal accident.

Scheffler has maintained he was following police directions on how to drive into the club. But arresting police said Scheffler did not follow directions.

Image: 2024 PGA Championship - Round Two

Further complicating the matter, city officials said Gillis did not activate his body worn camera when he encountered Scheffler.

The only footage, so far, appears to come from a squad car dashboard camera and a roadside pole and both sets of video don't clearly show what led to Scheffler being placed in handcuffs.

Louisville Metro Police Department released that footage and Gillis' personnel records Thursday.

Gillis was suspended for five days for "conduct unbecoming" for driving "an intoxicated civilian in your police vehicle" and "proceeding to doing 'donuts' in a business parking lot," according to a Sept. 18, 2013, memo by then-Chief Steve Conrad.

He was also disciplined for pursuing "a vehicle that did not commit a violent felony or wanted on a warrant," according to a June 9, 2021, memo by then-Chief Erika Shields .

Gillis was found "at fault" for accidents on May 22, 2021, and Aug. 6, 2019, that led to oral reprimands.

Gillis was also found to be "at fault" for a Dec. 1, 2013, accident that led to an oral reprimand and mandatory driver's training.

The officer was hit with one-day suspensions in both 2010 and 2011 for failing to show up to court. That was followed by a four-day ban in 2012 for continuing to miss court appearances, documents showed.

Gillis did, however, receive a commendation for being among seven officers who went "above and beyond" the call of duty in a "high-intensity traffic enforcement detail" that "culminated in you issuing a staggering 108 citations (114 charges, 1 DUI arrest) out of 201 citations issued during the four-hour operational period" on Sept. 16, 2021.

A representative of the River City Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 614, the union that would represent LMPD detectives, could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.

David K. Li is a senior breaking news reporter for NBC News Digital.

Maura Barrett is a correspondent for NBC News.

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The content of the methodology
Chapter four (the results and discussions of your research report)
Report Writing in Research Methodology

COMMENTS

10.7 Body of the report
10.7 Body of the report The body of the report is of course the main text of the report, the sections between the introduction and conclusion. Illustrated below are sample pages. Headings. In all but the shortest reports (two pages or less), use headings to mark off the different topics and subtopics covered.
The Report Body
The body of the report shows what was done, how it was done, what the results were, and what conclusions and recommendations can be drawn. Introduction The introduction states the problem and its significance, states the technical goals of the work, and usually contains background information that the reader needs to know in order to understand ...
How to Write a Body of a Research Paper
The main part of your research paper is called "the body.". To write this important part of your paper, include only relevant information, or information that gets to the point. Organize your ideas in a logical order—one that makes sense—and provide enough details—facts and examples—to support the points you want to make.
Writing up a Research Report
If the assignment is a 2000-word essay, the introduction should be between 160 and 200 words, while a 3500-word report should be between 290 and 350 words. There is no absolute rule for the length. Be as reasonable about it as you can. The introduction contains the relevant background of the problem.
Section Ii of the Research Report: Body of the Report
The findings section is the longest part of the research report. It is where the results of the study are reported in detail. This section should include supporting tables and graphs. Tables and graphs make the report easier to read and more memorable. To avoid overwhelming the reader, the findings should refer the reader to the detailed data ...
PDF Writing a Research Report
Use the section headings (outlined above) to assist with your rough plan. Write a thesis statement that clarifies the overall purpose of your report. Jot down anything you already know about the topic in the relevant sections. 3 Do the Research. Steps 1 and 2 will guide your research for this report.
Body of the report
Bulleted and numbered lists. In the body of a report, also use bulleted, numbered, and two-column lists where appropriate. Lists help by emphasizing key points, by making information easier to follow, and by breaking up solid walls of text. Always introduce the list so that your audience understand the purpose and context of the list.
10.7: Body of the report
Bulleted and numbered lists. In the body of a report, also use bulleted, numbered, and two-column lists where appropriate. Lists help by emphasizing key points, by making information easier to follow, and by breaking up solid walls of text. Always introduce the list so that your audience understand the purpose and context of the list.
Research Reports
Research reports contain a standard set of elements that include front matter. body. end matter; The following research report illustrates report format and provides examples of the kinds of material contained in the various sections of an experimental document. Note that the report has been excerpted.
Writing a Research Report
There are five MAJOR parts of a Research Report: 1. Introduction 2. Review of Literature 3. Methods 4. Results 5. Discussion. As a general guide, the Introduction, Review of Literature, and Methods should be about 1/3 of your paper, Discussion 1/3, then Results 1/3. Section 1: Cover Sheet (APA format cover sheet) optional, if required.
Research Report: Definition, Types + [Writing Guide]
Examples of technical research reports include legal and medical research reports. ... As already stated above, one of the reasons for carrying out research is to contribute to the existing body of knowledge, and this is made possible with a research report. A research report serves as a means to effectively communicate the findings of a ...
Chapter 6: Components of a Research Report
What are the implications of the findings? The research report contains four main areas: Introduction - What is the issue? What is known? What is not known? What are you trying to find out? This sections ends with the purpose and specific aims of the study. Methods - The recipe for the study. If someone wanted to perform the same study ...
Research Report
Thesis. Thesis is a type of research report. A thesis is a long-form research document that presents the findings and conclusions of an original research study conducted by a student as part of a graduate or postgraduate program. It is typically written by a student pursuing a higher degree, such as a Master's or Doctoral degree, although it ...
6.6: Formal Report—Conclusion, Recommendations, References, and
All formal reports should include a reference page; this page documents the sources cited within the report. The recipient(s) of the report can also refer to this page to locate sources for further research. Documenting your information sources is all about establishing, maintaining, and protecting your credibility in the profession.
6.08: Chapter 30: Formatting the Report
Learning Objectives. By the end of this chapter, you should be able to: Distinguish between the three parts of your written report: the front matter, the report body, and the back matter. List out the 12 elements that are present within a written report. Identify the different requirements found in a summary and introduction.
Body Sections of a Report
In informational reports, this will be used when the purpose of the reports was to research costs of some item. Conclusion. The conclusion, as the header says, finishes the body of the report: it provides a summary of the major ... In sales or persuasive reports, include in your conclusion how you're going to go implement your ideas for the ...
Formal Report Sections
Front matter - the sections that come before the body of the report - establishes the authority of the report, intended audience, and key concepts. Front matter includes: letter of transmittal - to introduce the report to its audience. cover/title page of the report. table of contents/list of figures if needed (use if a report is longer ...
Writing a Research Paper Introduction
Table of contents. Step 1: Introduce your topic. Step 2: Describe the background. Step 3: Establish your research problem. Step 4: Specify your objective (s) Step 5: Map out your paper. Research paper introduction examples. Frequently asked questions about the research paper introduction.
Writing a Marketing Research Report
The body of the marketing research report includes the following sections: Introduction. ... The appendices of the marketing research report include all technical materials and data related to specific parts of the study. These materials may be of interest to only a few readers. Materials posted in one of the appendices may not deal directly ...
11 The Body of the Research Proposal
Drawing on guidelines developed in the UBC graduate guide to writing proposals (Petrina, 2009), we highlight eight steps for constructing an effective research proposal: Presenting the topic. Literature Review. Identifying the Gap. Research Questions that addresses the Gap. Methods to address the research questions.
How to Write a Literature Review
Examples of literature reviews. Step 1 - Search for relevant literature. Step 2 - Evaluate and select sources. Step 3 - Identify themes, debates, and gaps. Step 4 - Outline your literature review's structure. Step 5 - Write your literature review.
Vegetables and Fruits
A report by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research suggests that non-starchy vegetables—such as lettuce and other leafy greens, broccoli, bok choy, cabbage, as well as garlic, onions, and the like—and fruits "probably" protect against several types of cancers, including those of the mouth, throat ...
Writing up a Research Report
Provide details only in the body of your report. So, this is the foundation on which you build the logical next step to reach a conclusion that answers your research question. Try to keep the structure of the introduction simple. An effective way is to start with a rather general statement about the topic.
Antioxidants
There are hundreds, probably thousands, of different substances that can act as antioxidants. The most familiar ones are vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, and other related carotenoids, along with the minerals selenium and manganese. They're joined by glutathione, coenzyme Q10, lipoic acid, flavonoids, phenols, polyphenols, phytoestrogens ...
Whole Grains
A growing body of research shows that choosing whole grains and other less-processed, higher-quality sources of carbohydrates, and cutting back on refined grains, improves health in many ways. ... A report from the Iowa Women's Health Study linked whole grain consumption with fewer deaths from inflammatory and infectious causes, excluding ...
The impact of founder personalities on startup success
This new and growing body of research includes several reviews and meta-studies, which show that personality traits play an important role in both career success and entrepreneurship 15,16,17,18 ...
Site research infrastructure and institutional performance: A report
Questions included number of and types of RP [clinical research associates (CRA), nurses, and regulatory]. To measure performance, we used the 2022 Institutional Report Card from COG that reports open trials and enrollments at each site. Sites were categorized into 4 groups based on self-reported new oncology patients diagnosed per year.
Depression
Depression (also called major depression, major depressive disorder, or clinical depression) is different. It can cause severe symptoms that affect how a person feels, thinks, and handles daily activities, such as sleeping, eating, or working. Depression can affect anyone regardless of age, gender, race or ethnicity, income, culture, or education.
Calcium
The body gets the calcium it needs in two ways. One is by eating foods or supplements that contain calcium, and the other is by drawing from calcium in the body. If one does not eat enough calcium-containing foods, the body will remove calcium from bones. Ideally, the calcium that is "borrowed" from the bones will be replaced at a later point.
Louisville police officer who arrested Scottie Scheffler had been
The police officer who put world No. 1 golfer Scottie Scheffler in handcuffs has a lengthy disciplinary record that includes multiple suspensions, employment records revealed Thursday.

10.7 Body of the report

Bulleted and numbered lists

Graphics and figure titles

Conclusions

Information sources

Page numbering

Chapter Attribution Information

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The Report Body

Welcome to the Purdue OWL

Introduction

Summary or background

Methods/procedures

Discussion of results

Conclusions

Recommendations

What are the differences between Results, Conclusions, and Recommendations?

How to Write a Body of a Research Paper

Logical Order

How to Make Effective Transitions

Academic Writing, Editing, Proofreading, And Problem Solving Services

Writing Topic Sentences

Writing Transition Sentences

Transition Phrases for Comparisons:

Transition Phrases for Contrast:

Transition Phrases to Show a Process:

Phrases to Introduce Examples:

Transition Phrases for Presenting Evidence:

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36 Body of the report

Bulleted and numbered lists

Graphics and figure titles

Information sources

Page numbering

Share This Book

Margin Size

10.7: Body of the report

Bulleted and numbered lists

Graphics and figure titles

Conclusions

Information sources

Page numbering

Chapter Attribution Information

Uncomplicated Reviews of Educational Research Methods

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What is a Research Report?

Features of a Research Report

Types of Research Report

Nature of Research

Target Audience

Importance of a Research Report

Guide to Writing a Research Report

Structure and Example of a Research Report

Tips for Writing a Research Report

How to Gather Research Data for Your Report

Step-by-step guide on how to create an online questionnaire using Formplus

Conclusion

Assessment Tools: Types, Examples & Importance

21 Chrome Extensions for Academic Researchers in 2022

How to Write a Problem Statement for your Research

Ethnographic Research: Types, Methods + [Question Examples]

Formplus - For Seamless Data Collection

Chapter 6: Components of a Research Report

6.6: Formal Report—Conclusion, Recommendations, References, and Appendices

What Are the Remaining Report Sections?

Reference Page

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Margin Size

6.08: Chapter 30: Formatting the Report

Chapter 30: Formatting the Report

Transmittal Document

Front Matter

Cover/Cover Page

Report Body

Summary vs Introduction

Back Matter

References Page

A Sample Report

Formal Report Sections

Front Matter