The Art of Writing Reports

I never thought I might say that about this course at CCAD, but today, we actually had a dry, theoretical topic. I would never have expected that to happen at an arts and design college, let alone in a film production course:

Today, we learned about report writing.

And while I can now fully understand the use and utility of report writing within the film and TV industry, the topic itself remained rather dry. Hey, no one can make that interesting, so if anyone of you knows a way to, please tell me and treat yourself to a cookie. Because you deserved it then.

However, report writing is a necessary task to master, and as I never ever was put into a position where I had to write a report, this lesson was crucial to me. I know how to write abstracts, presentations, essays, heck, even master theses, but I could not, for the life of me, produce a proper report.

Which is why you will be given a treat of my learning today:

For the first - and as you may have guessed right from the start - a report is no essay, neither in structure nor in language. It is a highly structured and concise body of text, presenting facts and pieces of information in a visualised and easily accessible way. Thus it is by nature designed to be read quickly and accurately. A report is usually based on primary and secondary research that is either quantitative or qualitative in nature. It is rather based on fact than on argumentation and a form of presenting information in businesses.

Coming to the structure and contents of a report, these are rather rigid, so I'll make it as concise as possible. A report is usually build in the following order:

1) Title page

2) Acknowledgements (if appropriate)

3) Contents list

4) List of illustration

5) Abstract (written last, put first)

6) Introduction

- Brief background of subject

- Objectives

- Methodology and Limitations

7) Main Body/Discussion

- Analysis and interpretation of data

- Explanation of significance

- Identification of important issues- Outline of problems encountered

8) Conclusion and Recommendations (if appropriate)

- Bringing together main issues

- keep it clear, logical flow of information

- list recommendations if appropriate

9) References and Bibliography (Harvard 2017 Referencing)

10) Appendices (additional and related information)

As you can see by that massive body of structure, reports (and subsequently, surveys) need to be planned carefully, with an open mind and without previous assumptions. This not only requires methodological reflections, but also methodical applications as well as detailed analysis and appropriate interpretation of any results acquired in order to achieve a balanced view.

Phew... After all that information, I felt that I had to devise a master plan and to stack up on tips in order to get a grip of what I need to do to fulfil these aspects.

So for my plan of action, I decided upon the following steps:

1. Deciding upon the issue

2. Brainstorming on relevant aspects

3. Collecting information

4. Structuring information

5. Writing a rough first draft

6. Spell-checking and redrafting

7. Creating illustrations, graphs, and charts

8. Finalising references and bibliography.

Browsing the internet and skimming through reports from various areas, I furthermore gathered a couple of ideas that should aid me in writing my report. These tips have been, in no particular order:

- Identifying the report's purpose

- Identifying objectives

- Identifying the target audience

- Using sub-headers to enable a quick orientation

- Making links linkable for quicker access and checks

- Using visualisations for an easier understanding

- Writing in bullet points for a quicker read

- Filtering by age and gender for demographic overviews

- Repeating key findings, and

- Creating catchy titles

This task will be a new challenge for me since I have never been in the position of writing a report and I did not know how to properly do it until today. And even though we just had a perfect introduction into that whole topic, I will need to internalise the rather strict and narrow structure as well as the process behind it in order to write a proper report.

Thus, I decided that I will read through a couple of reports to get a feeling for the style of language. I feel that the language aspect - besides doing the math - will be the most difficult aspect in writing the report, especially since the English used here is different from what I usually tend to read, hear, or speak. So this will - on top of it all - also be a larger lesson on language for me.

I furthermore do not know yet what to write my report on, even though I get an evermore increasing inkling that it will be about the gender gap and gender inequality within the industry, so that is another reason why reading third-party reports will be a good idea to take up. If I will be writing about the prevalent gender inequality, I will encounter another problem as well:

I do not know yet how I would be able to conduct a survey and what to ask for regarding that topic. Sexual harassment and discrimination are not always quantifiable phenomena, so questionnaires might most likely end up asking for subjective impressions, suggestions, and ideas, rather than hard facts, at least if done improperly. And I need to be careful in phrasing questions when adding facts to the mixture. After all, I don't want to set the survey up in a biased way.

However, with that master plan above, I should be able to work through that challenge. Keep your fingers crossed for my hand-in in April!

References:

Anonymous (n.d.) Untitled [online] Image taken from: https://bit.ly/2Hi4YT2 [Accessed on 8 November 2018]