4 Micro-Tips for Writing Research Reports
Thursday, April 6, 2023
“I never read the reports.” — Research stakeholders
This short and sweet article is to help you communicate research insights to stakeholders who, quite frankly, don’t have a lot of time to read your kickass, full-length research reports.
Getting stakeholders to read research reports, top to bottom, is another story for another time. This behavioral change comes from continuous coaching, relationship building, and educating stakeholders on the importance of research. More on that later 😊
Here are some micro-tips to help get you started on your journey in communicating with stakeholders who consume your research.
Tip #1: Write in plain language.
Plain language, or plain writing, is communication designed to be understood by the audience the first time they read or hear it.
Make your writing easy on your audience — stakeholders should be able to understand your research insights and report without necessarily needing to understand science.
The Pudding put it best when talking about plain language:
Plain language is useful for everyone, but especially for those who are often denied the opportunity to engage with and comment on public writing.
This includes the 20% of the population with learning disabilities, a number of the more than 7 million people in the US with intellectual disabilities (ID), readers for whom English is not a first language and people with limited access to education, among others.
The tenets of good plain language include writing that is easy to read, to understand, and to use. Jargon and extraneous details are limited.
The more complexity you add to your research insights, the more you’re increasing your reader’s cognitive load. Do not increase their load.
The Pudding has a brilliant example of starting with a non-plain language draft, and a side-by-side comparison of how to rewrite the same insight with plain language. Check out this example on The Pudding website.
How to use plain language principles in practice:
- Write out your insight (or have ChatGPT do it — whatever!) and the details supporting your insight. Just let the information flow outward.
- Reread what you wrote and look to pare your initial writing down using plain language principles: simple, easy to understand, and to the point.
- Delete any jargon or difficult to explain concepts, and remove any extra details your audience does not need.
Tip #2: Write for skimming and scanning.
Nielsen Norman Group (NN/g) recently published a report, based on 23 years’ worth of online studies, on how people process information online and on websites. NN/g found that people scan for information, they don’t necessarily read.
Expect your stakeholders to skim emails, memos, or reports looking for the nuggets of information they really need to understand and leave it at that. Less is more.
How to write for scanning in practice:
- Leverage clear, concise headings and subheadings to draw attention to major topics and sections.
- Use white space between sections and break out quotes that help highlight your point. White space can help with readability and scanning.
- Design for scannable formatting by using short lists or bolding critical words help call attention to a central point you need to make in your report or research insight.
Tip #3: Write for primacy and recency effects.
Two well-observed phenomena in cognitive psychology include primacy and recency effects.
A primary effect occurs when new information is most easily absorbed and retained at the beginning of a list or learning period.
A recency effect occurs when new information is most easily absorbed and retained at the end of a list or learning period.
People will forget the middle — don’t worry too much about the middle (that’s why this is strategically Tip #3).
Leverage the primacy effect for understanding, leverage the recency effect for inspiring stakeholder action.
How to write for primacy and recency effects in practice:
- Place important, but perhaps less critical information in the middle of a report. Leverage Tips #1 and #2 to make research insights in the middle of a report stand out if you’re concerned about skimming in the middle of the report.
- Front-load the most important information in the beginning of a report, presentation, or email (to account for primacy effects).
- Write a recap, summary, or brief highlights and lowlights, at the conclusion of a report to help recap and solidify crucial information in the report (to account for recency effects).
Tip #4: Write for limited attention.
I reached deep into my academic background on attention, motivation, and engagement for this next tip!
Nearly 75+ years of research has demonstrated that our attention declines after about 30 minutes, often times much sooner (say 12 minutes).
Your research reports, presentations, or emails including research insights need to be short because of this natural, physiological attentional decline. More practically, stakeholder attention is usually split among several areas making attention a precious resource.
Stakeholders need to know what you found, why, and what actions can be taken to remedy what your research has uncovered quickly. Tips #1–3 should help with this.
Additional reading:
Etienne Fang has an excellent article on insight activation and writing clear, concise UX research insights. Highly recommend reading this article if you want to learn more about how to structure an insight.
My goal is that by leveraging micro-tips based on science, your research insights and reports can be better structured to capture stakeholder attention. Etienne’s work takes this one step further!
Resources used:
What makes writing more readable? (pudding.cool)
How People Read Online: New and Old Findings (nngroup.com)
