1. A study is not complete until the researcher writes a research report to communicate his or her findings with others.
2. Following the scientific tradition of many disciplines, there are four major parts to the written quantitative research report: literature review, methods section, results section, and discussion.
3. The literature review is comprised of the literature the researcher sought and studied to design the research project; provides a brief historical background of the variables, issues, and topics studied; and goes beyond simple description of previous work to analyze and integrate this work into a coherent whole.
4. Literature reviews usually begin with a problem statement, can be organized in several ways, are written in third person, and present research questions and hypotheses.
5. The methods section describes how the research study was executed, and includes descriptions of the participants, the research procedures, and the research variables.
6. The results section presents the findings as information without interpretation.
7. In the discussion section, the researcher provides the interpretation and implications of the results to answer the question, "What do these results mean?"
8. Researchers include subsections on the limitations of their research design and methodology as well as recommendations for future research in the discussion section.
9. To complete a research report, the researcher must develop a title, finalize the title page, develop an abstract, and develop the reference list.
10. Most quantitative research reports are written in the APA style.
11. Researchers need to be very careful in their written work as their level of carelessness translates to lack of credibility for readers.
12. Researchers should be prepared to spend time in the revision process.
