Who is my audience and what will they expect?
It is important to consider your audience before you begin and while
you write your research report so that your report will adequately communicate
your research and its significance to your readers. For instance,
if you don't consider your readers' needs, you might use language that
they don't understand or you might explain the background of your work
in too much or too little detail. It is best to think of the audience
for your research report as peers in your immediate discipline or in a
discipline closely related to your subject. This is true even when
you write a report for a class that will be graded by an instructor rather
than read by other researchers.
If you are writing a research report for a teacher, the greatest challenge
you face in writing your report is to write as though the professor is
not your only reader. Imagine a broader audience of your peers and
colleagues who will not be grading your work. If you visualize an audience
of people with a similar background who are interested in your subject,
but who do not know as much about it as you do, you will likely make writing
your report easier than if you visualize your audience as a group of experts
or someone uninterested in your subject. Keep in mind that your
goal should be to write in such a way that someone skilled in the art
could reproduce your work precisely.
It can help to know why your readers will be motivated to read your research
report. Although they might read for a variety of reasons, in general
they will read :
- to learn about research related to their particular research interests
- to keep abreast of research in the discipline in general
- to keep current with research related to their teaching interests
- to keep informed about the scientific literature in related disciplines.
(Wilkinson 10).
It is also best to assume that your readers will be very busy people
and will want information to be presented to them clearly and concisely.
This does not mean that you don't need to be accurate or thorough, but
it does suggest that you should put information where readers will expect
to find it, and it places great emphasis on the abstract
of your report. While readers from your own discipline and area
of research might read your report closely and all the way through, many
other readers will read only the title and abstract. This helps
them to keep abreast of research but does not take up a great deal of
their time.
Once you have an idea of who your audience is and why they might read
your report, you can more easily imagine what their needs as readers are
and how you might meet these needs. You should try to think about
your research from the perspective of your audience, and ask what you
would like to see in your report if you were reading about your particular
research for the first time. Thinking about your audience before
you write your report can help you to determine the level of detail you
need to include in your report and how to organize information.
The following prewriting activity can help you to think about your audience.
Take out a piece of paper and write down the answers to these questions,
or copy and paste them into a text editor.
- Describe your audience. What is their position? Why will
they read your report?
- What does your audience already know about this topic?
- What information will be new to your reader?
- What is the most important thing for your reader to understand from
your report?
- List terms and/or procedures that are important to your research but
that your audience may not be familiar with. Include terms that
you are using in a new or unique way.
- Thoroughly report analytical data supporting your conclusions.
You might return to the issue of your audience after your report is written
to determine whether you have met your readers' basic needs. Considering
the first draft of your report from your audience's perspective can reveal
areas that need revision to you and can lead to your second draft.
Some questions you can ask about your report after it is written to determine
whether it has met your readers' basic needs are:
- Is my main point easy to identify early in the report?
- Have I carefully described the procedures used?
- Have I defined unfamiliar or technical
terms and clearly explained new concepts?
- Have I provided a context for the research or is more background
information needed?
- Have I used tables and figures to
represent data? Are these easy to read?
- Have I summarized my findings?
- Have I written clearly?
- Have I stayed on topic throughout the report?
These are some of the basic needs and expectations that your readers
will have. You may be able to think of others. What else do
you expect when you read a report? What things do you hope would
not be a part of a report you were reading? You can use these questions
as the basis for revision of your research report after you have a first
draft. The easiest way to understand what readers will expect is
to become a reader yourself if you aren't already one. It will be
helpful for you to read a variety of reports to determine the features
you particularly like and don't like before writing your own report.
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