Steps 9-10: Writing the Report and Storing the Data
Two steps close the ten-step process, and between them they run to four sentences. One carries a sequencing rule that part-time researchers routinely break; the other names an obligation and hands the content of it to somebody else.
Two steps that close the ten-step process
The Week 3 material sets the research process out under ten numbered headings, and steps 9 and 10 are the last two. Together they run to four sentences of source text. That brevity is worth noticing before you lean on them, because the two steps are not equally substantial: step 9 carries a real rule, and step 10 carries an obligation with no content attached to it.
The full structure, including the mismatch between the source's two enumerations of it, is set out in The Research Process: The Ten-Step Thesis Model.
- Collate
- Interpret
- Conclude
- Summarise
- Communicate
Read as an instruction rather than a description, the passage does two things. It fixes an order, and it splits that order into a group of three and a group of two. The break between the third part and the fourth is the load-bearing element of the whole step.
Why the order is a constraint and not a style note
The three activities before the break produce the finding. The two after it produce the document. Start the document before the finding exists and you are not writing up research — you are assembling an argument and then looking for material that fits it.
This bites harder on a part-time researcher than on a full-time one. A study run alongside delivery work gets written in fragments, and the fragments get written in the order the deadlines fall rather than the order the research runs. A submission date for a draft chapter is a standing invitation to break the rule.
The conclusion itself is produced at the preceding step, where analysed data is set against the theory in the literature and you establish where and how your evidence supports or contradicts the field. That work is covered in Steps 7-8: Conducting the Research and Theorising the Data; step 9 assumes it has already happened.
The five parts, and what each one produces
The write-up sequence as the source sets it out
Collate your information
Bring every piece of evidence into one place and one order — the data you gathered, the literature you reviewed, and the record of how each was obtained. At this stage you are checking completeness, not arguing anything. A gap found here is recoverable; the same gap found in the final fortnight is not.
Interpret your information
Say what the evidence shows. This is the analytical work, and the source's related instruction is that it is done against the literature rather than in isolation — your data is read for where it supports and where it contradicts what the field already holds.
Reach some rational conclusions
State what the evidence means for the question you asked. The source's chosen word is "rational": the conclusion has to follow from the interpretation, and a reader has to be able to trace each part of it back to something you actually found.
Summarise your research project
Compress the whole project into a form a reader can hold at once — the question, the approach, the finding, and what it means. This is a separate act of writing, not an extract from the document.
Communicate your results to your specific audience
Present the work in the form the intended reader needs. The qualifier is the source's own: the audience is specific. A single generic write-up expected to serve every reader is not what this step describes.
Only the first three are constrained relative to the document. The last two are a presentation problem — and they are where most of the elapsed calendar time actually goes.
Summarising a project you have lived inside for a year
Summarising is the harder of the two presentation tasks, because you are the worst-placed person in the world to do it. Everything in the project is equally vivid to you, and the reader needs a version in which almost none of it appears.
The published volume of master's project management research shows the scale of the compression. Each of its seventeen chapters carries a single abstract, and the abstracts are collected together in the front matter — enough of the problem and the research design in each for a reader to judge the chapter without opening it. That is the size of the summarising task: one page carrying a year of work.
The structural conventions of the longer document are a separate subject, covered in Thesis Structures and Styles. What matters at this step is that the summary is written after the conclusion exists, rather than drafted early as a placeholder and never revisited.
Communicating to a specific audience
The step's closing phrase carries an obligation that is easy to skim past: results are communicated to your specific audience. In a project research project there are usually two audiences, and they want materially different documents.
The academic examiner
- Wants the methodology justified, not merely described
- Reads the literature chapter as evidence of what you know
- Checks that every conclusion is traceable to data you hold
- Expects limitations stated plainly and early
- Judges the work by its contribution to existing knowledge
The delivery decision-maker
- Wants the finding first and the method second
- Reads for what changes on Monday
- Checks whether your sample resembles their situation
- Treats limitations as risk information, not disclaimer
- Judges the work by the decision it improves
That division is a synthesis rather than source content — the source says only that communication is to a specific audience, and does not describe any audience. What it does say elsewhere supports the second column: the primary purpose of research, on its account, is to reduce the level of risk of a business decision. Where your reader is the person making that decision, the report is an instrument of the decision and should be built as one. See Why Project Managers Need Research Skills.
Where both audiences exist, the workable answer is one document and one derived brief — the brief written from the finished document, not in parallel with it. Written in parallel, the two drift, and the version circulating in your organisation ends up making a stronger claim than the version being examined.
Half your time is writing time
Two related instructions sit in the literature step and are worth carrying forward. Write down your thoughts as you go along — daily if possible, even if it is only a paragraph or two, and first thing in the day if you can. Note and date all your drafts and references as you go.
Neither conflicts with the rule about not writing the report before you have concluded. Daily writing produces material: notes, annotated readings, drafts of the theoretical framework. The report is the argument built on top of that material once the conclusion exists. See Step 3: Checking the Literature.
Step 10: store the data
The rationale is the one the source uses throughout: research adds to the body of knowledge, and a contribution nobody can find or check has not really been made. Storage is the mechanism by which the report stops being your document and becomes part of a field.
Treat the gap as an action rather than an excuse. The requirements exist somewhere — an institutional research data policy, a supervisor's instruction, an employer's information management rules — and they need to be obtained before you collect, not after you submit. Retention obligations frequently constrain how consent has to be worded, which makes this an input to the ethics application rather than a housekeeping task at the end.
Working backups are not archival storage
The source does give one concrete storage instruction, but it belongs to the literature step and it is about protecting work in progress: keep back-up copies of your writings and store copies in a separate location, for example a portable hard drive. It illustrates the point with a story about a researcher who lost a nearly finished doctoral thesis in a house fire. That is an illustrative anecdote, not evidence, and the lesson rather than the story is what carries.
TWO DIFFERENT STORAGE PROBLEMS, OFTEN CONFUSED
| Working backup | Archival storage | |
|---|---|---|
| Purpose | Protects you from losing work in progress | Makes the contribution findable and checkable afterwards |
| Covered by the source | Yes — dated, backed-up copies held in a separate location | Named as an obligation only |
| Who sets the rules | You | The institution; its requirements are not in the supplied source |
| How long | Until submission | Not stated |
| What it covers | Your writing, drafts and references | Report and data; "data" is not defined for this purpose |
The backup instruction appears in the literature step; the archival obligation is step 10. They are different requirements, and satisfying one does not satisfy the other.
Questions to put to your institution before you collect anything
- What must be retained — the report, raw data, transcripts, consent records, analysis files?
- For how long, and in whose custody?
- Where is it deposited, and in what format?
- Who may access it after submission, and under what conditions?
- Is a data management plan required as part of the ethics application?
- What are the rules for data gathered inside an employer's organisation?
- What must be de-identified, and at which point in the process?
The last two cause most of the trouble in research done inside your own workplace, and both interact with the ethics step — which the supplied source also defers. See Step 6: Seeking Ethics Clearance.
Before you open the document
Steps 9 and 10 close a process that began with an idea and a question. If the conclusion you are about to write does not answer the question you set at the start, the honest move is to say so in the document rather than quietly restate the question. See Step 4: Deciding Your Research Question.
What to carry forward
- Collate, interpret and conclude before you draft. The rule is about order of operations, not writing style.
- The source names those three verbs and defines none of them — adopt a reading, state it, and be consistent.
- Summarising and communicating are separate acts of writing, done after the finding exists.
- "Your specific audience" is an instruction: identify the reader and build the document for them.
- Plan half your total time for writing and rewriting, and set that budget at design time.
- Step 10 requires appropriate storage of both report and data, and specifies nothing about it. Get the requirements from your institution before you collect.
- Backing up your drafts is not the same obligation as archiving the research, and does not discharge it.
Frequently asked questions
Can I start writing chapters before the research is finished?
You can write material — literature notes, the theoretical framework, method descriptions — and the source actively encourages daily writing as you go. What the rule forbids is writing the report itself before you have collated, interpreted and reached rational conclusions. The distinction is between accumulating material and asserting a finding.
What does the source say about how to store research data?
Two sentences: the report and the data need to be stored appropriately so that the work adds to the body of knowledge, and the institution has specific requirements in the matter. Those requirements are not reproduced in the supplied material. No retention period, format, repository or data management plan requirement is stated anywhere in the source.
How much of my schedule should go to writing?
The source recommends planning half your time for doing the research and the other half for writing and rewriting. It gives this as advice at the research design step rather than as a rule, and the placement matters — the writing budget is a design decision, not something you discover at the end.
How do I write one report for both an examiner and my organisation?
Usually you do not. The step requires communication to a specific audience, and the two want different things — one wants the methodology justified, the other wants the decision implication first. The practical answer is one full document written for the examiner, and a derived brief written from the finished document for the organisation.
Is the abstract the same thing as the summary the step describes?
The source does not define the summarising output or name any format, so the two cannot be equated on its authority. In published practice the abstract is what performs the function: the exemplar volume carries one abstract per chapter, collected in the front matter, each giving enough of the problem and design for a reader to judge the chapter.
References and source attribution
- O'Leary, Z. 2017, The Essential Guide to Doing Your Research Project, 3rd ed., Sage Publications, London.
- Naoum, S. G. 2013, Dissertation Research & Writing for Construction Students, 3rd ed., Routledge.
- Bryman, A. 2016, Social Research Methods, 5th ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- An edited volume of master's degree research projects in project management, 2018, academic publisher, 378 pp. — the exemplar volume, whose front matter carries one abstract per chapter.
- The supplied teaching source: consolidated week 2 and week 3 teaching notes and slide material on developing a research topic, used here as the basis for all statements attributed to "the source".
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- Help me check whether my conclusions are actually traceable to my data before I start drafting.
- Turn my finished research report into a two-page brief for a delivery decision-maker.
- What should I ask my institution about data storage requirements before I collect data?
- Draft a summary of my research project that a reader can judge without reading the whole thing.
- How should I split my remaining schedule between analysis and writing?