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Writing your report The following sections describe how to prepare each chapter of a research report. Typically, research reports begin with a chapter titled "Introduction" or "The Problem." The problem Regardless of the title used, the purpose of the first chapter is to introduce the problem or topic being investigated and to provide the author's specific approach to the problem. For studies with a specific focus, this can be done by simply beginning with a heading such as "Statement of the Problem" and then beginning the first sentence with words like: "This study sought to investigate the relationship between variable A and variable B." or some other appropriate sentence. A different approach may be more appropriate for a study involving a large set of variables.For instance, an investigation may seek information about knowledge concerning contraceptives and their use, persons' attitudes toward using contraceptives, their actual use of them, and their view about possible further use. For such studies it might be better to list a set of objectives, one for each set of variables, rather than to try to state a single problem. The first chapter may also give reasons for selecting the problem under investigation, describe how hypotheses were derived, discuss the significance and limitations of the study, and provide an outline of the remainder of the report. When a hypothesis is used, the introductory chapter often contains sufficient information from other studies to serve as the basis for the hypothesis. In this case, authors frequently note that further details are provided in the section of the review of the literature. Definition of the problem or question being investigated leads to the second chapter, the Review of the Literature. Review of the literature By the time you are ready to write your review of the literature, you will have spent a lot of time reading and summarizing relevant research reports. Now your task is to tell your readers what you have learned and to do this in a way that is both interesting and informative. One way to do this is to provide a historical record of research on the problem or question you have selected. A review generally begins with the oldest research on the problem, identifies trends or themes in the research field, and provides the reader with an integrated summary of what has been discovered. An alternative approach is to organize the review around opposing sets of findings or views. Using this approach, you would summarize the findings or arguments on one side of the controversy, do the same for the other side, and then indicate how your study relates to the disagreement. You might propose a hypothesis that would resolve the controversy one way or the other and offer your study as a way of testing the hypothesis. The chapter on the review of literature can also be organized to reveal limitations or gaps in our knowledge about some topics. You might find that current research has led to certain conclusions, but the conclusions do not extend to the population you are studying. You could summarize the literature, indicate where its application stops, and then show how your study will extend current knowledge. The review of literature is often used as the basis for generating hypotheses. In this approach, the conclusions of previous studies are summarized to extract generalizations to form the theoretical basis for a hypothesis. Any of these approaches also can be combined. Within the context of the historical approach, for example, you could show the contradictions or gaps in research findings and then describe how your study will help resolve these. Regardless of the approach used, when a reader finishes reading this chapter, he or she should have a good understanding of the current knowledge related to your problem and a clear idea of how your study fits into the stream of scientific thought on that particular problem. |