The plan of your research report is similar to your proposal, with the exception that your proposal is written in the future tense whilst the report is written in the past tense (Munhall&Chenail 2008).

The other major differences are that the research proposal does not contain sections on results and discussion, as well as recommendations, whilst the research report will need these in order to be complete.

The box is a plan for a quantitative research study.

Next is an example of the plan of a research proposal for a recent study into palliative care. The plan for the subsequent research report following the completion of the study appears in the third box.

If you work through the linked web program on writing a research proposal, you will see this proposal in full. In this chapter, only the headings are given.

This was a phenomenological qualitative research study looking at the perceptions of adults with cancer accessing palliative care services, their families and members of the palliative care teams in the area, regarding the needs of the patients and families, and whether the palliative care services were meeting those needs.

Another significant difference between a research proposal and a research report is their length. For example, for this study, the proposal is three pages long and the research report is 270 pages long, excluding the appendices, which themselves total 60 pages.

Research reports

Concentrating for now on the research reports, you can see from the two examples that the sections within the plans are very similar for both the quantitative and qualitative research studies; the major differences between them lie in the research findings sections, with the quantitative research study being concerned with the presentation and analysis of statistics, whilst the qualitative research study is concerned with the presentation and analysis of the text from interviews and focus groups.

So, let us look at the research reports in more detail.

Contents

This is simply a list of the chapters and sections in your report and the page numbers so that a reader can easily locate any chapter or section. For example:

Acknowledgements

This comes at the beginning of your report where you acknowledge the people who have helped with your research – particularly the participants. Others usually acknowledged are colleagues and people who have helped in any way.

Executive summary

This is a summary of your research which, although part of your research, can be detached and given to people who do not want to read the whole report. It usually includes the title of the study, the background to the study, the aim/hypothesis and objectives, a brief note on the methodology and, most importantly, the key findings and recommendations. This is also usually signed by the researcher(s). It can also be printed as a separate document because many of the users will be happy just to have the results, which should be given prominence in the executive summary.

Introduction

This includes the background to the study (in more detail than is found in the executive summary) and the aims/hypothesis of the study. A review of literature linked to the topic of the study is included, as is the methodology (much of this can be taken from the research proposal – although do remember to change the tenses of the verbs from the future to the past).

Research findings

This is usually a straightforward account and analysis of the findings from the study. It may be in the form of statistics or of whatever data you collected from a qualitative study. The statistical tests and the statistics themselves often follow on one from another, although they may be grouped in related sets. Qualitative data are often presented within the themes that you have identified from the data.

Discussion

This is the section where you discuss the results and try to make sense of them in the context of your research study. This is the crux of your report because it can include the conclusions from the report, recommendations arising from the data and analysis of data, and implications for practice. Reflections on the study – the way you carried it out, any problems or weaknesses (and strengths) with your research study and suggestions for further research that have arisen also come in this section.

References

As with any academic work, this is where you include the references you have cited in the text of your report. These references mainly appear in the introduction, review of literature, research methodology and discussion sections, although some may be found in the results section – but these are few, if they occur there at all. Remember to ensure that your references are given accurately and in full, and that none is missing.

Appendices

This is where you add (append) any important documents related to the research which you do not think are appropriate to include in the main body of the report (e.g. information sheets about the study, interview guides).

Summary

You can see that the first few sections can remain almost as they were in your research proposal, except for changes or alterations that needed to take place during the study itself (Munhall&Chenail 2008).

You can see now that the research proposal leads eventually to the research report, so it is very important that your proposal is as full and complete as possible – this will make it easy for you to write your final report. In the same way, if you write your report fully and accurately, and include a very good, comprehensive, but succinct, executive summary, this will help you when you come to disseminate your findings. You will be able to use sections of your report for publication or for presentations without having to change things too much.

This leads on to the next two sections – writing for publication and presenting at conferences.

Writing for publication is a worthwhile endeavour – indeed, for some healthcare professionals it is essential, as it forms part of their employment contract. However, writing for publication does not come naturally to everyone. To be successful, the twin attributes of practice and perseverance are important.

Before you commence writing, there are a few points to consider. These include the type of writing that you wish to pursue and could be:

• a research paper (also referred to as an article or a manuscript);
  
• a book;
  
• a report;
  
• a short article.

In this section we focus on issues pertaining to writing a research article for a peer- reviewed journal. The discussion is divided into three sections:

• getting started;
  
• developing a detailed structure of your work;
  
• issues associated with healthcare professionals and publication.

Getting started

Among the first things to do is to decide on the area in which you are interested and the line you wish to take – what aspect of the topic you want to write about and for whom exactly it is intended.

Albert (2009) suggests developing a broad plan of what you intend to write about, so, using landscape orientation (i.e. the longer measure being used as the width) A4 paper (or larger), draw a large circle in the middle of the sheet. Write the theme of your topic in the centre of the circle. Working outwards from this circle, draw lines to connect four smaller circles, two on each side of the larger circle. In each of the small circles, write:

• Why did we start?
  
• What did we do?
  
• What did we find?
  
• What does it mean?

To answer these questions, use lines and arrows to make connections with items or points in your paper. This is known as ‘mind mapping’ (Buzan 1993). Continue until you believe that you have enough information to formulate major headings for your paper. At this preliminary stage, you may wish to discuss your ideas with colleagues.

During this start-up period, you should set yourself feasible goals and stick to them.

Murray&Moore (2006) advocate viewing the writing of your article as a project which should have specific activities, accompanied by instructions to yourself for each of the activities.

Decide on your audience and journal

You should think carefully about your target audience and choose a suitable peer- reviewed journal that you know is read by them. A peer-reviewed (or refereed) journal is one which subjects all articles that are submitted to it for publication to critical assessment by independent scholars working in the same area as the author before it is even considered for acceptance for publication. A common practice is for an article to be double-blind peer-reviewed. This means that the names of the author and the reviewers are not revealed to each other. The reviewers recommend whether the article should be accepted, revised or rejected based on specific criteria set by the journal. The process is the accepted method for ensuing fairness, high quality information and contribution of new knowledge to the field. However, do be aware that some articles which appear in peer- reviewed journals may not have undergone peer review; these include book reviews, news items and editorials. However, basically anything that you submit will be peer- reviewed.

Peer-reviewed journals have Instructions for Authors. These are the house style of how articles should be written and are sometimes found in the journal, but are certainly found on the journal’s webpage. It is important that you familiarise yourself with these instructions and also with the layout of articles which appear in your selected journal and adapt your work accordingly so that it fits in with the journal’s house style, for example:

• Presentation style: do they use ‘Introduction’ or ‘Background’? Are there any limitations on the number of tables, figures or references? What are the font requirements?
  
• What referencing style do they use? Do they have a particular variation on the style?
  
• What types of articles are accepted – research-based, evaluation or service development?
  
• Familiarise yourself with the submission details – e.g. length, turnaround time.
  
• Your covering letter to the editor(s) should ‘sell’ your article – but note, you do not usually get paid; the prestige of being published is supposed to be sufficient reward. Also make sure that you send your article to one journal at a time – do not mass mail it to all the journals you can think of, because the journals do communicate with each other and will discard any article that has been sent to another journal.

There is an increasing expectation that healthcare professionals will disseminate their work and so contribute to improving practice and patient care, as well as forming an increasingly important part of their professional development. Nelms (2004) considers that writing for publication is essential to the advancement of the nursing profession (and other healthcare professionals), whilst Paul (2002) sees that a body of researched and evidence-based knowledge is the key to a developing academic profession.

However, writing for publication is a skill and requires time. Unfortunately, many healthcare professionals may not have these qualities or may not have had any formal training in academic writing (Murray&Moore 2006). Other barriers to writing include:

• lack of confidence in their skills and in their research;
  
• fear of rejection – by the journal initially, but also by peers, who may be critical of their paper once it is published;
  
• a lack of understanding about the writing process and procedures;
  
• too many other commitments.

However, writing and getting a paper published is a rewarding exercise. Service redesign as a result of government policy (Department of Health 2006a, 2006b, 2008) offers opportunities for healthcare professionals to communicate and disseminate new ways of working (Offredy et al. 2008), which may then be used to revise and improve patient care.

Publication has other advantages, such as informing clinical intervention and assisting in the journey to ensure that healthcare theory is applied to practice, so further increasing the research and evidence base of clinical and academic practice (Clarke 2000).