As an environmental student, the majority of your longform writing coursework is going to be reports. A great way to learn this structure is to take note of how sections are organized in the academic journal papers you’re assigned to read or read as a part of essay research. If you’re still struggling to understand the report style or have some of your first report coursework deadlines coming up, this is a guide on how you should structure your report:
Introduction
Your introduction should be about 10% of the length of your allotted word count, but it may be a little longer depending on how much you need to introduce. The job of the introduction is to provide links to the wider issues of your research topics (typically large scale issues like climate change or public health), a brief background on your research topic, and establish the importance of your research topic. In establishing the importance, you may also want to touch on any research gaps that your work is filling. Most introductions end with your research question and your research aims which are the ways in which you will go about answering your research question.
Literature Review/Background
The largest amount of reading will be dedicated to the literature review. In this section, you want to highlight the previous related work that has been done around your research topic. This may be general related academic journal studies, global/local initiatives, similar studies of different methodologies, or similar studies in different areas. You want to describe these works and be able to compare and contrast between them. A lot of published papers do not have a specific section titled “Literature Review” or “Background” because it is included in the introduction or under a different heading, but it is often required in coursework.
Methodology
Your methodology is where you describe what you did to achieve your research aims. It is very straightforward, but your methods must be justified by other papers, so make sure you are still citing other papers in this section and not just recounting your own work. If you used any secondary data, you must also briefly describe the methodology used to collect that data. Some methodologies use flow charts to help describe their work and this is most often seen with spatial data science methods. Your methodology may begin with a subsection describing your research sites and may end with a section on the limitations of your work. The limitations will be informed by what other research was able to achieve that you were not because of the nature of your methods, time constraints, or safety concerns.
Results
Your results are also very straightforward and almost completely quantitative with little to no interpretations of the results. This is where you will describe the mathematical findings of statistical testing, spatial data analysis, lab work, field work, and any of your other methods with tables, graphs, and maps. Don’t worry about this section being very dry to the reader because it is just meant to convey factual findings.
Discussion
The discussion is sometimes combined with the results which means the results are interpreted as they are dispelled or it can be its own section. This section is arguably the most important of the report and will be the bulk of the word count. This is where you interpret your findings to create a narrative around answering your research question. It is where you suggest reasoning for why your results are the way they are. This can be done by comparing it to previous research like that included in your literature review, assessing your methods and their limitations, and assessing the site. You may also want to draw in related theories, policies, and breakthroughs.
Conclusion
Conclusions are very important, but usually very short summaries of the entire paper. The research question and aims are restated and major findings are emphasized. It is not unlike the conclusion to an essay, but may also include suggestions for further research.