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PRACTICAL RESEARCH 2
Quarter 2: Module 15-16
Research-Report Writing

Polytechnic College of Botolan · Botolan, Zambales

Senior High School Department
 Republic of the Philippines
POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE OF BOTOLAN
(Formerly Botolan Community College)
Botolan, Zambales
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: pcbzambales.com
Contact number: 0949-155-3113

GENERAL
INSTRUCTIONS:

1. READ THE DIRECTIONS CAREFULLY.

2. DO NOT WRITE ANYTHING ON THIS MODULE.
3. PROVIDE AN ADDITIONAL SHEETS FOR YOUR ANSWERS.

LEARNING
OBJECTIVES:
1. Explain the meaning of research-report writing
2. Compare and contrast research writing and report writing
3. Familiarize with the standard research-writing format

PRE-TEST/ MOTIVATION
What kind of writing have you already experienced? Write your answers in the table
by checking the right column representing your thoughts and feelings about the kind
of writing you have already experienced.

LESSON PROPER

RESEARCH-REPORT WRITING

Basic Concept
The first things you do in research are: mulling over a research problem that will lead
you to the final topic of your research, obtaining background knowledge about your
topic by reviewing related literature, formulating research questions, collecting and
analyzing data, drawing conclusions, and making recommendations. Going through
all these research stages make you perform all levels of thinking especially the HOTS

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or higher-order thinking strategies of interpretative, critical, interactive, and creative
thinking.

Moving on after all these cognitive-driven research activities, you reach the final stage
of your research study which is the presentation of your research output. This is the
time when you have to think of how to give a formal account of what and how you
discovered something about your research topic. Central to this last stage of your
research study is sharing information or making known to people the results of your
several-month inquiry of a certain topic. However, it is not telling the readers of how
you found out truths in any way you want. Your study is an academic work that has to
abide by some rules or standards in research-report writing.

You learned that there are different kinds of writing: technical writing, expository
writing, fictional writing, and academic writing, among others. Research-report writing
is an academic writing, in that, its focus is on reporting or telling about the results of
your investigation of a specific subject matter. It is not simply communicating your
opinions, but doing this in a controlled way; that is, you have to follow socially
determined and discipline-specific rules in terms of language, structure, and format or
style. Governed by several writing rules and standards, research-report writing is the
most challenging and demanding kind of writing among learners in higher education
institutions. (Russell 2013; Corti 2014; Punch 2014)

Research Writing vs. Report Writing

How would you compare and contrast research writing and report writing? Both
depend on various sources of data or information, but they differ from each other as
to what kind of data they present. Research writing presents facts and opinions of
other people about a particular subject matter. It also includes your own
interpretations, as the researcher, about these known facts. Report writing, too,
presents facts and opinions of others; however, it does not claim that these opinions
originally come from the writer, for the reason that some reading materials like books,
journals, magazines, and other reading materials have already published these facts
and opinions. This is where the main difference between the two lies.

The research paper gives you what other people think of a certain topic in addition to
what you, the researcher, think about this topic, while report just presents facts and
information about a subject matter without adding something new to this existing body
of facts and opinions. Further, a genuine research paper does not only shed a new
light on a subject by finding new facts and opinions, but also aims at saying something
original by re-evaluating or using these known facts and opinions. (Litchman 2013;
Babbie 2013; Punch 2014)

Guidelines in Research-Report Writing

Now, you know that research-report writing is not plain writing of a report where you
just present facts and opinions of other people that you got from varied reading
materials. It is a special kind of writing that communicates not only declarative
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knowledge or discovered ideas, but also procedural knowledge or the processes you
did in discovering ideas. Hence, to make your research report communicate all these
forms of knowledge to readers, you need to apply the following guidelines in research-
report writing.

1. Organize the parts of your research report based on the standard research report
structure that consists of the following sequential components:
a. Title. This part of your research paper gives information and descriptions of the
things focused on by your research study.
b. Abstract. Using only 100 to 150 words, the abstract of a research paper, presents
a summary of the research that makes clear the background, objectives, significance,
methodologies, results, and conclusions of the research study.
c. Introduction. Given a stress in this section of the paper are the research
problem and its background, objectives, research questions, and
hypotheses.
d. Methodology. This part of the research paper explains the procedure in collecting
and analyzing data and also describes the sources of data.
e. Results or Findings. There’s no more mentioning of analysis of data or not yet
analyzed data in this section. What it does is to present the research findings that are
expressed through graphics, statistics, or
words.
f. Conclusions. This section explains things that will lead you to significant points,
insights, or understanding, or conclusions that derive their validity, credibility or
acceptability from the factual evidence gathered during the data-collection stage.
Stated here, too, is the significance of the results; that is, whether or not these are the
right answers to the research questions or the means of hypotheses acceptance or
rejection. Your assessment of the data in relation to the findings of previous research
studies is also given a space in this section of the research paper.
g. Recommendations. Due to teachers’ instructions or discipline-specific rules, this
section tends to be optional in some cases. Done by some researchers, this section
gives something that will expand or extend one’s understanding of the conclusions
raised earlier, such as suggesting a solution to the problem or recommending a further
research on the subject.
h. References. It is in this part where you display the identities or names of all writers
or owners of ideas that you incorporated in your research paper.
i. Appendices. Included in this section are copies of materials like questionnaires,
graphs, and letters, among others that you used in all stages of your academic work,
and are, then, part and parcel of your research study.

2. Familiarize yourself with the language of academic writing.

Research-report writing is an academic writing and central to this kind of writing is the
expression of ideas, viewpoints, or positions on issues obtained through learned or
trained methods of producing sound evidence to support your claims or conclusions
about something. Geared toward bringing out what are generally true, valid, and
acceptable, the language of research-report writing uses rich-information vocabulary
and adopts an objective, formal, or impersonal tone or register.
Module 15-16 ‖ Page 4
Here are some ways to maintain an objective and an impersonal tone in academic
texts such as your report about your research study:

a. Dominantly use passive voice than active voice sentences.

b. Use the third-person point of view by using words like his or her, they, or the user,
instead of the personalized first-person point of view like I,We, Me, Our, etc.
c. De-emphasize the subject or personal nature of the academic text by avoiding the
use of emotive words like dissatisfied, uninteresting, or undignified.
d. Use modality (words indicating the degree of the appropriateness, effectiveness,
or applicability of something) to express opinionated statements that are prone to
various degrees or levels of certainty.
For instance, use low modality when you think your opponents have strong chances
to present their valid reasons against your argument, or high modality, when you are
sure you have sufficient basis to prove your point. High modality expressions like
could, should, must, definitely, absolutely, surely, necessarily, and essentially are
usually used for recommending solutions to problems or for specifying reasons for
some actions.

3. Observe the mechanics of research-report writing which are as follows:

a. Physical Appearance. Use white bond paper having the size of 8 ½ x 11 in. and
provide 1 ½ in. left-right margin, plus 1 in. top-bottom margin. Unless your teacher
instructs you to use a particular font style and size, use the standard Times Roman,
12 pts.
b. Quotations. A one-line, double-spaced quotation is in quotation marks; 4- to 5-line,
single-spaced quotations are indented further from the margin to appear as block
quotation.
c. Footnotes. Footnotes appear at the bottom of the page and are numbered
consecutively stating with number one (1) in each chapter.
d. Statistics and Graphs. Use tables, charts, bar graphs, line charts,pictograms,
flowcharts, schematic diagrams, etc. in connection with the objectives of the study.
e. Final Draft. Subject the final form of the research report to editing, revising,
rewriting, and proofreading.
f. Index. Alphabetize these two types of index: subject index and author index.

Research-Report Writing Styles or Format

Depending on the requirements of your teacher or the area of your discipline, adopt
any of the following research-report writing styles or format:
1. APA (American Psychological Association)
2. MLA ( Modern Language Association)
3. CMS (Chicago Manual of Style)
The first two styles—APA and MLA—are the most commonly used styles or format.
Prone to objectivity, those in the fields of Science, Psychology, Business,
Economics,Political Science, Anthropology, Engineering, and Law go for APA; to
subjectivity, Humanities (Religion, Literature, and Language) go for MLA.

Module 15-16 ‖ Page 5

 ACTIVITY 1:

Directions: Without going back to the text, compare and contrast each given pair of
expressions.

ACTIVITY 2:

Directions: Check the column that represents your view about the given statement.
Justify your choice in the last column.

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 ACTIVITY 3:

Directions: Find out if the following abstract of a research paper is in keeping with your concepts about
abstract writing. Write the results of your critical evaluation on the lines provided.

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 ACTIVITY 4:

How much I have learned in

research report writing?

ACTIVITY 5:

Identification.

1. This section gives something that will expand or extend one’s understanding of the
conclusions raised earlier, such as suggesting a solution to the problem or
recommending a further research on the subject.
2. It is in this part where you display the identities or names of all writers or owners of
ideas that you incorporated in your research paper.
3. Given a stress in this section of the paper are the research problem and its
background, objectives, research questions, and hypotheses.
4. This part of the research paper explains the procedure in collecting and analyzing
data and also describes the sources of data.
5. This section present the research findings that are expressed through graphics,
statistics, or words.
Module 15-16 ‖ Page 8
6. This part of your research paper gives information and descriptions of the things
focused on by your research study.
7. Using only 100 to 150 words, this section of a research paper, presents a summary
of the research that makes clear the background, objectives, significance,
methodologies, results, and conclusions of the research study.
8. This section explains things that will lead you to significant points, insights, or
understanding, or conclusions that derive their validity, credibility or acceptability from
the factual evidence gathered during the data-collection stage.
9. Included in this section are copies of materials like questionnaires, graphs, and
letters, among others that you used in all stages of your academic work, and are, then,
part and parcel of your research study.
10. It appears at the bottom of the page and are numbered consecutively stating with
number one (1) in each chapter.

ACTIVITY 6:

Organize the parts of the research report based on the standard research report
structure.

SUMMARY

Research-report writing is an academic writing, in that, its focus is on reporting or

telling about the results of your investigation of a specific subject matter. It is not
simply communicating your opinions, but doing this in a controlled way; that is, you
have to follow socially determined and discipline-specific rules in terms of language,
structure, and format or style. Governed by several writing rules and standards,
research-report writing is the most challenging and demanding kind of writing among
learners in higher education institutions. (Russell 2013; Corti 2014; Punch 2014)

Difference between Research Writing and Report Writing

Research writing presents facts and opinions of other people about a particular
subject matter. It also includes your own interpretations, as the researcher, about
these known facts. Report writing, too, presents facts and opinions of others; however,
it does not claim that these opinions originally come from the writer, for the reason
that some reading materials like books, journals, magazines, and other reading
materials have already published these facts and opinions. This is where the main
difference between the two lies.

GENERALIZATION

Answer the following.

1. In your own words, explain the meaning of research-report writing.
2. Compare and contrast research writing and report writing
3. What are the standards in research-writing format ?
Module 15-16 ‖ Page 9
 REFERENCES

 Baraceros, E. 2016 , RBS Practical Research 2, First Edition, Rex Book Store,
Inc.
 Abadiano, M. 2016. Research in daily life 2: Quantitative Research Method,
Cronica Bookhaus

Prepared by: Reviewed by:

CRISCIA D. DE LEON, LPT MYRNA S. PANGAN

SHS Teacher SHS PRINCIPAL

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Module 1 ‖ Page 12