RESEARCH REPORTS FOR BUSINESS AND TECHNICAL WRITING
Wayne Losano
商業和技術研究報告的寫作
作者威勒勞沙勒

A surprising amount of ones time as a student and professional is spent reporting the results of ones research projects for presentation to teachers, managers, and clients. Indeed, without basic research skills and the ability to present research results clearly and completely, an inpidual will encounter many obstacles in school and on the job. The need for some research-writing ability is felt nearly equally by college students in all fields, engineering and science as well as business and the humanities. Graduate study often makes great demands on the students research-writing skills, and most professions continue the demand; education, advertising1 and marketing2, economics and accounting3, science and engineering, psychology4, anthropology5, the arts, and agriculture may all require regular reporting of research data.

作為一名學生和專業人士被需要花費讓人震撼之數目的時間報告他的研究項目的結果，以便提交給老師、管理職員和客戶。確實，沒基本的研究技術和明確而完整地提交研究結果的能力，一個人在學校和工作當中將遭遇很多障礙。對于一些研究報告寫作能力的需要，大學生幾乎在所有些專業范圍都能感覺到，工程學和科學也像商業與人文科學一樣需要。畢業研究在學生的研究報告寫作方法上常常有非常高的需要，而且大部分專業繼續這種需要。教育、廣告和銷售，經濟學和財會，科學與工程學，心理學，人類學，藝術，還有農業可能都需要周期的研究資料報告。

1、ELEMENTS OF THE RESEARCH PAPER
The standard research report, regardless of the field or the intended reader, contains four major sections. These sections may be broken down into a variety of subsections, and they may be arranged in a variety of ways, but they regularly make up the core of the report.

研究報告的要點
標準的研究報告，不管它的范圍或者指定的讀者是什么，都包括四個主要的段落。這類段落可以打散成變化的分段，而且它們可以一種變化的方法來排列，但它們有規律地組成了報告的核心。

Problem Section. The first required section of a research report is the statement of the problem with which the research project is concerned. This section requires a precise statement of the underlying6 question which the researcher has set out to answer. In this same section there should be an explanation of the significance--social, economic, medical, psychological, educational, etc.--of the question; in other words, why the investigation7 was worth conducting. Thus, if we set out, for example, to answer the question what is the effect of regular consumption of fast foods on the health of the American teenager? we must explain that the question is thought to have significant relevance8 to the health of this segment of the population and might lead to some sort of regulations on such foods.

問題段。一個研究報告第一需要的段落是對與被關注的研究項目聯系在一塊的問題陳述。這個段落需要對研究者已經著手回答的基本問題的確切陳述。在這個同樣的段落里，會有一個講解，即問題的社會的、經濟的、醫療的、心理的或教育等等方面的意義講解。換句話說，為何調查是值得進行。所以，假如大家開始了，比如，回答問題：周期的速食消費對于美國的少年人健康有哪些影響？大家需要講解這個問題被覺得對人口中這個年齡段人的健康有意義，而且應該推導出一些關于食品的規律。

A frequent subsection of this problem section is a review of past research on the TOPic being investigated. This would consist of summaries of the contributions of previous researchers to the question under consideration with some assessment9 of the value of these contributions. This subsection has rhetorical usefulness in that it enhances the credibility of the researcher by indication that the data presented is based on a thorough knowledge of what has been done in the field and, possibly, grows out of some investigative tradition.

這個問題段的一種常常的分段是一個關于被調查話題過去研究的回顧。這將由以前的研究者對于這個問題貢獻的概要所組成，并附有這類貢獻的價值的一些評估。這個分段有修辭上的作用，它通過指出被提及的資料打造在一個已經具備廣泛常識的范圍基礎上，加大了研究者的可信性。這個范圍已經做過調查，而且這類常識可能由一些調查的傳統產生。

Procedures Section. The second major section of the research report details, with as much data as possible, exactly how the study was carried out. This section includes description of any necessary equipment, how the subjects were selected if subjects were used, what statistical10 technique was used to evaluate the significance of the findings, how many observations were made and when, etc. An investigation of the relative effectiveness of various swim-strokes would have to detail the number of swimmers, the weather conditions at the time of the tests, and any other factors that contributed to the overall experiment. The goal of the procedures section is to allow the reader to duplicate the experiment if such were desired to /confirm/i, or refute, your findings.