Module: (FY028) Inquiry Based Learning

Topic: (Title: Research Title)

Student’s Name: Student ID: Lecturer’s Name: Due Date:

Table of Contents

Page

Introduction

In this section you should state:

what your research/project/enquiry is about,

why your topic is important? (Motivation),

what your main research question is

what you are trying to show or prove (Your Hypothesis/assumed answer),

what your secondary objectives are,

what your main findings are (very brief),

What the structure of your report is ? For instance, you can say: “The rest of the report is organised as follows. Section 2 presents the related literature review. Section 3 shows….”

Literature Review

In this section, you should report the studies that have already been done on your topic. You can find the literature on books, journals, scholarly articles, industry & trade publications, NHS and other UK government websites etc. You should select five (5) previous studies.

For each study, give a summary of each study and explain how other people’s research is relevant to yours. Write in 3rd person and academic writing style. You should evaluate the literature, compare and contrast. You could consider

– Quality, accuracy and depth of the literature

– Use of primary and secondary sources

– Relevance to your hypothesis and objectives

Methodology

In this section you should clearly state how you carried out your investigation. You need to describe what you did to conduct your investigation and the step-by-step procedure you followed.

Explain:

Your data (whether they are primary, secondary, qualitative, quantitative),

The resources that you used in order to collect the data and whether you have limited your resources. (e.g., have you conducted primary research, or your study is based on literature only secondary research.)

How do you elaborate the data for your report.

Results/Discussion

This is the section you interpret and explain your results, offering possible reasons as to why you got the findings you did, providing evidence to back up your explanations.

You should strictly focus on the results directly relevant to answering your research question, the objectives and your hypothesis.

You may find that you use phrases such as, “This seems to support…..”, “It appears that…….” “This may be due to…..” This is called academic hedging and as your findings may be generalised, it attempts to explain your findings within the limitations of your investigation.

Present your finding of your research. You can use text, graphs or diagrams.

Analyse – breaking the data/topics into parts and discussing each part in detail.

Synthesise – integrating data from several sources to produce new insights.

Discuss the meaning of your findings using the secondary data.

Do not forget to give each graph/table a title and provide a description of the information demonstrated.

Conclusions

Summary of the main points of your research, the key points you have made, telling the reader why your findings are important, in one paragraph, ending with the message that you want to leave your readers with. This is where you ask yourself “So what do my findings show, what does this mean and why should the reader care?”

State whether you achieved research objectives and whether you can confirm your hypothesis.

Suggestions for future research.

Recommendation

Let reader know what they should do as a result of the investigation.

References/bibliography

List all your sources in alphabetical order, using the Harvard Referencing style.

Appendix

In this section, you can provide additional information related to your topic such as data, graphs, etc.