RESEARCH REPORTS FOR BUSINESS AND TECHNICAL WRITING
　　Wayne Losano
　　商业和技术研究报告的写作
　　作者　威勒·劳沙勒

　　A surprising amount of one’s time as a student and professional is spent reporting the results of one’s 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 individual 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 student’s 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.

　　作为一名学生和专业人士被要求花费令人震惊之数量的时间报告他的研究项目的结果，以便提交给老师、管理人员和顾客。确实，没有基本的研究技术和清晰而完整地提交研究结果的能力，一个人在学校和工作当中将遭遇许多障碍。对于一些研究报告写作能力的需要，大学生几乎在所有的专业领域都能感觉到，工程学和科学也像商业与人文科学一样需要。毕业研究在学生的研究报告写作技巧上经常有很高的要求，而且大多数专业继续这种要求。教育、广告和销售，经济学和财会，科学与工程学，心理学，人类学，艺术，还有农业可能都需要周期的研究资料报告。

　　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.

　　研究报告的要素
　　标准的研究报告，不管它的领域或者指定的读者是什么，都包含四个主要的段落。这些段落可以打散成变化的分段，而且它们可以一种变化的方式来排列，但它们有规律地组成了报告的核心。

　　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.

　　问题段。一个研究报告首先需要的段落是对与被关注的研究项目联系在一起的问题陈述。这个段落需要对研究者已经着手回答的基本问题的确切陈述。在这个同样的段落里，会有一个解释，即问题的社会的、经济的、医疗的、心理的或教育等等方面的意义解释。换句话说，为什么调查是值得进行。所以，如果我们开始了，例如，回答问题："周期的快餐消费对于美国的少年人健康有什么影响？"我们必须解释这个问题被认为对人口中这个年龄段人的健康有意义，而且应该推导出一些关于食品的规律。

　　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.

　　这个问题段的一种经常的分段是一个关于被调查话题过去研究的回顾。这将由以前的研究者对于这个问题贡献的概要所组成，并附有这些贡献的价值的一些评估。这个分段有修辞上的用途，它通过指出被提及的资料建立在一个已经具有广泛知识的领域基础上，加强了研究者的可信性。这个领域已经做过调查，而且这些知识可能由一些调查的传统产生。

　　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, or refute, your findings.