FINAL PROJECT REPORT OUTLINE
Title page: Title must reflect the subject matter, prepared for whom, by whom, and date submitted.
Table of Contents: Used mainly to help readers find what they are looking for quickly and easily. If the report includes charts, graphs, or tablets, list them as appendix after the contents.
Executive Summary: The executive summary should not be more than three pages, summarizing what research questions were addressed, the methodology, major findings, and strategic implications.
Introduction: The reader must know exactly what the report addresses. Introduce how, when, and why the study came into existence. Next, briefly discuss the "big" research question this study intends to address and why it is an important question to address. Follow up with specific research questions/hypotheses that form the basis of a coherent story you want to tell potential beneficiaries. Discuss the important variables you have selected and the relationships, differences, and/or associations you expect to find. Specifically, state the hypotheses that you want to test and their rationale. Your report should also address both descriptive and inferential research questions.
Background Story: Provide a brief review of what has been said in the published literature about the issue you are addressing. Then, discuss how your study is connected to the earlier studies and how it builds upon them. Cite all references at the end of the report.
Methodology: This section should describe the research procedures that you employed. Focus on the following.
I. Research design: exploratory and descriptive research (what did you do, how did you do it)
II. Survey instrument: discuss how the questionnaire was designed and what constructs and measures (scales) were used in the instrument (include the questionnaire in an appendix)
III. Sampling: describe the nature of the population, sampling units, sampling frame, and time frame. Also discuss the sampling method and sample size.
IV. Data collection method: Discuss the data collection method.
Analysis: Discuss all the statistical methods you selected to answer the research questions and why they are appropriate.
Results: You must relate your findings to the selected research questions and interpret the statistical results correctly. You will discuss the hypothesis testing results.
Conclusions: Conclusions and discussion of the findings will be provided in this section. This section should also suggest appropriate strategies, preferably from a marketing angle, based on your findings. In other words, discuss the marketing implications of your findings.
Limitations: Discuss those aspects of the study that could have been done better and how. I am attentive to this section to see how you grew as a potential researcher over the semester.
References: All the secondary data sources (articles, news, websites, books, book chapters) will be provided in this section. I will check (1) relevance (2) citation records- importance (3) timeliness of the references.
Appendix: All the technical details (graphs, tables, charts) will be provided in this section. It is one of the most important sections in the report. You will place the survey questions here too... You will refer to the charts with the numbers when you are explaining the results... For example, according to Figure 1.1. there is a positive relationship between desire to affiliate and participative behavior. That means, people who would like to have an affiliation or desire to be a part of a recognized organization tend to participate more often...