Suppose, for example, your supervisor asks you to recommend a fleet purchase of 100 automobiles for your organization and tells you that the cars will be used by executive-level managers. What is the problem from your supervisor’s point of view? Would she or he be interested primarily in economy, prestige, or something in between? Would dealer service be an important issue? Should all the cars be identical in appearance and options, or should appearance and options vary depending on executive rank? What exactly will you need to know before you can proceed gathering the appropriate information?

Many report writing assignments are given orally, and even those given in writing do not always present the problem in clear, definite terms. As a report writer, your first task is almost always to state the problem clearly in writing so that

1. You can be sure that you are investigating the correct problem.

2. You can have your supervisor evaluate and approve your line of investigation.

3. You can refer to the specific statement when you need to clarify for yourself the direction and progress of the investigation.

If you choose to state the problem as an objective to be met, use an infinitive phrase:

• To recommend a fleet purchase of 100 automobiles for company executives.
• To analyze the high accident rate in the Production Department.
• To compare grocery store shelf space for ABC jellies and that of our competitors.

Or, if you prefer to state the problem as a question to be answered, begin by asking the principal question:

• Which fleet purchase of 100 automobiles would be best for company executives?
• What is causing the high accident rate in the Production Department?
• How does the grocery store shelf space for ABC jellies compare with that of our competitors?

Once the report-writing assignment is put into specific, workable form, the report writer needs to determine what areas or items to investigate. In some cases, defining the problem will be a major issue. For example, a company’s managers and members of its union might not agree on whether low productivity or low morale is the problem requiring investigation. In general, it is a good idea to have the person who assigns the report review and agree to a statement defining the problem before beginning an investigation.

Secondary sources provide information collected by other investigators. Such published materials as the following are examples of secondary sources with which you should be familiar:

	almanacs	documents (print and online)
	annual reports	encyclopedias
	articles (print and online)	newspapers
	books	pamphlets and monographs
	brochures	periodicals (magazines)
	dictionaries	yearbooks

A search of secondary sources will reveal whether anyone had investigated a similar problem previously and published the results. Libraries, online databases, and online search engines are the best places to check for secondary sources. In addition to checking the library’s card catalog or database of listings, consult with a reference librarian. Reference librarians are experts in locating print and electronic secondary sources and may save you many hours of searching.

In the last few years, online secondary sources have proliferated. Much of the information that used to be available in print only is now available online as well. Some online databases are proprietary: your organization must be a member to use them. Many of these proprietary databases are available through university and large public libraries. Check with your reference librarian to see what is accessible at your location.

A great deal of information, however, is available through public sites on the Internet. To find it, you will need to use one or more of the search engines designed to scour the web for documents, key terms, and their web addresses (URL, or Uniform Resource Locator). The following are among the best search engines:

• Alta Vista
• Ask Jeeves!
• Direct Hit
• Excite
• fast:Search
• Galaxy
• Google
• Hot Bot
• InfoSeek
• Lycos
• MetaCrawler
• Northern Light
• refdesk.com
• Switchboard
• Webcrawler
• Yahoo

Because different search engines use different search strategies, they will not always come up with the same list of sites for a given search. For this reason, consider using more than one search engine if you are uncertain about the number or quality of the sites being located. A different search engine, or a different search strategy, may produce very different results. Some search engines, such as Alta Vista, allow both basic and “advanced” search strategies.

Advanced strategies usually require knowledge of Boolean logic, which uses specific words called operators that permit the search to be defined more precisely. The common Boolean operators are and, or, not, adjacent, and near. In general, the operators work in the following way:

• Teleconferencing and productivity.  The use of and would result in a listing of all sites that included the words teleconferencing and productivity, that is, both words would need to be present.

• Teleconferencing or productivity.  The use of or would result in a listing of all sites that included either the word teleconferencing or the word productivity. Only one word would need to be present.

• Teleconferencing not productivity.  The use of not would result in a listing of all sites containing the word teleconferencing that did not also contain the word productivity.

• Teleconferencing adjacent productivity.  The use of adjacent would result in a listing of all sites containing the phrase teleconferencing productivity, that is, the words would be adjacent to one another.

• Teleconferencing near productivity.  The use of near would result in a listing in which the words teleconferencing and productivity appeared near one another (usually within the same paragraph). This would help ensure that the sites listed discussed the relationship between teleconferencing and productivity rather than discussing them as separate, unrelated subjects.

Regardless of how you find your secondary sources, especially those you might find on the Internet, you need to be aware that not all of them are equally reliable and objective. Before you use a secondary source, you need to make sure that the information is sufficiently current to be helpful and that the information is unbiased. If you were working for a health care organization, for example, and needed to write a report on the long-term effect of smoking on health, would you feel comfortable relying on studies conducted by the tobacco industry? Because many organizations founded to support a particular view or interest have neutral-sounding names, you need to check to make sure that the information is unbiased.

What are the qualifications of the author(s) of the study, and how were the data collected? Is the information supported by other, independent studies? (Does the information seem “too good to be true”? If so, be suspicious).

How much secondary research you need to do and how well you will need to document it will depend entirely on the nature of the problem you are investigating. In general, secondary research is useful for two reasons: First, it reduces the need for primary research, which is much more expensive to conduct. Second, it provides you with external verification for your own primary research; if your own results are similar to those of other investigators, you can be fairly confident that they are correct. On the other hand, if your results are markedly different from those of others who have studied similar problems, you may wish to continue your investigation before reporting your results.

Experimentation

Although experimentation was originally the tool of scientists, business and industry are now using it more frequently. Of course, many business problems do not lend themselves to experimental research, but those in business can use experimentation to determine the effects of one variable on another under certain conditions. To test the marketing effectiveness of a new packaging concept, for example, an experimenter would change the packaging (the independent variable) to see how the change influenced sales (the dependent variable).

Observation

In research, observation means recognizing and noting facts. Unlike the experimenter, an observer does not manipulate the environment. In a bookstore, for example, you could determine book preferences by observing shoppers as they make their selections. Observation can also apply to certain kinds of studies of published documents. You might be interested, for example, in examining annual reports for the use of certain words and phrases, such as reengineering, to see when organizations first began using the expressions and the way in which the frequency of use increased over time.

One disadvantage of observation is that because we have a tendency to interpret what we see or hear based on our previous experience, information obtained by means of observation may not be totally accurate. Although it is often used alone to record facts—raw data—observation is more often used in conjunction with experimentation and surveys to help ensure accuracy and reliability and to help explain what the observations mean.

Surveys

Although what people say and what they do may not always be in perfect agreement, when you need information about what people think about a variety of issues, one of the best ways to obtain it is to ask. Most adults have completed a survey questionnaire at sometime in their lives. If you buy a car or have one serviced, you may receive a survey form from the dealership or the manufacturer asking about your experience. Or, you may have received a phone call soliciting your opinion about a product, service, or political issue.

Because it would be virtually impossible and certainly too expensive to find out what everyone thinks about a particular topic, surveys are conducted on samples of the appropriate population. The theory of sampling is that a sufficiently large number of items selected at random from a larger group will have the same characteristics as the larger group. Naturally, the larger the number included in the sample, the greater the chances that the results will accurately predict the results that would be obtained from the entire population.

Three common sampling techniques are random sampling, stratified random sampling, and systematic sampling:

• Random Sampling.  With random sampling, each item (and items can be people) in the population has an equal chance of being selected. To conduct a random sample, you need the identity of each item. For example, if you wanted to survey students at a particular college or university, you would need the names (and perhaps Social Security Numbers or other, more precise identification system). You could record the names and ID numbers on slips of paper, put the slips in a container, mix the slips thoroughly, and then withdraw a predetermined number of slips from the container.

  Or you could assign each student a number and then use a list of computer generated random numbers to select the students for your sample. Either way, because each student would have an equal chance of being selected, the sampling would be random.

• Stratified Random Sampling.  Random sampling, however, may not produce the best sample for some surveys. In the case of college students, for example, a random sample might result in too many freshman and too few seniors. When a population has subgroups, stratified random sampling is used to ensure that the number selected from each subgroup is proportional to the subgroup’s part of the whole.

  In the case of the college students, we might want to sample the group based on their year in school. In other cases, it might be more appropriate to sample based on gender, age, ethnic background, family or personal income, home town, major, minor, full- or part-time status, or other factors important to our study.

  If we were concerned about year in school, we would define what we meant by year in school (probably by a range of credit hours earned), and then see what percentage of the total school population fell in each designation. We might, for example, discover that 32 percent of the students were freshmen, in which case we would want to ensure that 32 percent of the sample were freshmen as well, as the following table illustrates:

  Year	Total	Percent of total	Number Selected
  Freshmen	496	32	48
  Sophomores	434	28	42
  Juniors	341	22	33
  Seniors	279	18	27
  Totals	1550	100	150

  
  

• Systematic Sampling.  Systematic sampling requires taking selections at constant intervals from a list of the entire population. If you have a list of the members of a professional association, for example, you could obtain a systematic sample by taking every 10th name on the list: 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, etc. With small lists, you might need to use a smaller number, or for large lists, a larger one.

  If you have a really large population, telephone users in New York City, for example, you might need to limit the sampling even further by selecting a limited number of names on a limited number of pages on the list (the NYC telephone directory in this case): every nth name from every nth page. When the number of the starting page and the number for name selection are selected by chance, a high degree of randomness will result.

Survey instruments need to be both valid and reliable. A valid instrument is one that measures what it is intended to measure; a reliable instrument is one that will produce the same results when repeated. Constructing survey questionnaires so that they will be both valid and reliable requires both skill and practice. It is easy, for example, to ask questions that lead the respondent to answer in a particular way. The questions you ask, and the way you ask them, will determine the quality and usability of the results.

Anticipate the kinds of responses you might receive to each question and determine whether the question is likely to produce useful results. If you have been asked to determine what people like and dislike about their automobile buying experiences, for example, and were tempted to ask, “What color car did you purchase?” you can quickly see that the list of probable answers won’t help you determine their likes and dislikes about the purchasing experience.

Common Question Types.  Questionnaires typically employ one or more of the following question types:

1. Either-or.  An either-or question gives a respondent a choice between two answers: yes or no, true or false, like or dislike, and so on. In many cases, a third option such as “don’t know” or “not sure” is added for those who aren’t sure of their opinion.

   Do you own a car?    Yes ______    No _____

   Would you favor a four-day work week?
      Yes ______    No _____    Not Sure _____

   Are well-developed reading skills essential for career success?
      True ______    False _____    Don’t Know _____

   What is your attitude toward traveling?
      Like _____    Dislike _____

    
   

2. Checklist.  A checklist provides the respondent with a list of possible answers to be checked. Checklists are common because they are easy for the respondent to complete and for the researcher to tabulate. In most cases, the respondent is asked to check all the items that apply.

   What communication activities do you engage in every day? Check all that apply.

   _____ Informal, face-to-face oral communication.
   _____ Formal, face-to-face oral communication (interviews).
   _____ Telephone conversations (two people).
   _____ Telephone conference calls.
   _____ Small group meetings (seven or fewer people).
   _____ Large group meetings (more than seven people).
   _____ Electronic mail (reading or writing).
   _____ Memos (reading or writing).
   _____ Letters (reading or writing).
   _____ Reports (reading or writing).
   _____ Video conferencing.
   _____ Other (please describe below).
   

    
   

3. Multiple-choice.  Multiple-choice questions present several options and require a respondent to select one.

   Which method of travel do you prefer? (Select one.)

   _____ Airplane
   _____ Bus
   _____ Train
   _____ Personal automobile
   _____ Rental car
   _____ Motor home
   _____ Other (please specify) _____________________________.
   

    
   

4. Ranking.  Ranking questions ask respondents to rank several choices in order of preference.

   Indicate the order of importance of the following writing skills for those working in your department by placing 1 (of most importance), 2 (of next most importance), 3 (and so on) next to each of the following:

   _____ Ability to write clearly (easy to understand)
   _____ Ability to write correctly (no errors in spelling,
         grammar, and mechanics).
   _____ Ability to write concisely (no wasted words)
   _____ Ability to write persuasively (able to convince
         others)
   _____ Ability to write under pressure (writes quickly,
         meets deadlines)

    
   To measure the intensity of respondent’s feelings about a particular issue, use some form of scaling. A rating scale (often called a Likert scale or a Likert-type scale after Rensis Likert who developed the 5-point rating scale) sets up a range of possible feelings about a topic (often using a semantic differential of polar opposites) so that a respondent can rate his or her feelings quickly and easily.

   For each of the following statements, indicate whether you Strongly Agree (5), Agree (4), Don’t Know or Care (3), Disagree (2), or Strongly Disagree (1) by circling the appropriate number:

   Communication skills are important for career success.	5   4   3   2   1
   Well-developed writing skills are required for career success.	5   4   3   2   1
   Well-developed public speaking skills are required for career success.	5   4   3   2   1
   Well-developed telephone skills are required for career success.	5   4   3   2   1

5. Fill-in-the-blank.  Fill-in-the blank questions allow the respondent to supply short-answers to questions:

   How many years have you lived in El Paso? ________

   How many times have you visited Washington, D.C.? ________

   When was the last time you visited Washington, D.C.
   (month and year)? ________

    
   

6. Open-ended.  Open-ended questions give the respondent freedom to express his or her views at some length, which is sometimes suggested by the space made available. Answers to open-ended questions are difficult to tabulate, but they often provide valuable information about attitudes and opinions that can’t be obtained in other ways. Open-ended questions may be phrased as a question or as a statement for the respondent to complete.

   What do you think would improve office morale?

   The part of my job I like best is. . . .

   The part of the workshop I liked best was. . . .

Questionnaire Guidelines.  To help ensure that respondents will want to answer your questions, observe the following guidelines.

1. Focus on the essential questions. People are much more likely to complete your survey if they can do so in less than 10 minutes. Written questionnaires should be one or two pages at most unless the respondent has some special reason for wanting his or her opinion to be heard.

2. Make your questions easy to understand. Ambiguous words, vague expressions, technical words, and words with multiple meanings may confuse the respondent. Most people would find the following questions confusing:
   1. Why did you buy your house? [Too many possible reasons.]
   2. How do you write? [Too many possible interpretations.]
   3. Do you have a codicil on your will? [Not everyone will know the meaning of the word “codicil.” Not everyone will have a will.]
   4. Do you attend meetings regularly? [How often is regularly?]
   5. What type of car do you drive? [Too many interpretations for type.]
   
   

3. Make your questions easy to answer. When questions are easy to answer, respondents are more willing to spend the time required to answer them. People are typically not willing to look up information (how much they paid in property taxes for the last 10 years or how much they spent for groceries last year, for example), so attempt to limit yourself to questions a respondent can answer quickly and easily.

4. Limit each question to one topic. When respondents are asked questions that have two parts, they will not know how to respond and may respond to one part only. You may not know to which part they have responded.
   1. Do you own a house and a car? [A person may own a house, a car, or both.]
   2. Do you go to movies or rent videotapes regularly? [If the person says yes, how will you know which of those he or she does (or how often)?]
   3. Could you use an assistant in the afternoon? [A person may need an assistant in the morning.]
   
   

5. Avoid personal questions when possible. If you must ask them, provide ranges and ask them at the end of the questionnaire. Note that numbers in the ranges must be mutually exclusive, that is, numbers may not appear in more than one category.

   Please indicate your age bracket by checking one of the following:

   _____ under 21	_____ 21-29
   _____ 30-39	_____ 40-49
   _____ 50-59	_____ 60-69
   _____ 70-79	_____ 80 and over

   So that we can improve our customer service, please check one of the following categories to let us know the range of your annual income.

   _____ under $20,000	_____ $20,000 to $29,999
   _____ $30,000 to $39,999	_____ $40,000-$49,999
   _____ $50,000-$59,999	_____ $60,000-$69,999
   _____ $70,000-$79,999	_____ $80,000-$89,999
   _____ $90,000-$99,999	_____ $100,000 or more

6. Avoid leading questions. Leading questions suggest an answer and, for that reason, often produce inaccurate responses.
   Leading:  Is your favorite computer a Macintosh?
   Better:     What’s the brand of your favorite computer?

   Leading:  Should we have evening hours for your convenience?
   Better:     What time of day do you prefer to do your banking?

   Leading:   What did you dislike about your salesperson?
   Leading:   Was your salesperson courteous and friendly?
   Better:      What was your impression of your salesperson?

   
   

7. Arrange your questions in a logical sequence, beginning with simple questions and progressing to the more complex. If you ask difficult questions first, your respondent may become discouraged and quit. Demographic questions (age, income, and related personal information) should always be last.

8. Ask only those questions that will provide useful information. Anticipate the answers you might receive, and determine in advance how you will use the information. Delete or rephrase questions that will result in useless data.

9. When appropriate, assure the respondents of anonymity. If your respondents think that their answers to your questions will be made public, many of them will provide answers they know to be socially acceptable rather than their actual opinions.

10. If you distribute your questionnaire by mail, provide a stamped reply envelope for the respondents’ convenience in returning the completed form to you.

Mailed questionnaires require a cover letter. The organizational pattern for the cover letter should usually be that of a direct request because recipients are typically interested in the topic of a questionnaire. The cover letter is also a letter of transmittal because it transmits the questionnaire, explains its importance, and provides the necessary instructions for completing and returning the questionnaire.

When you believe that respondents would be reluctant to complete and return the questionnaire, prepare the cover letter as a persuasive request. A persuasive request may be required when you are seeking personal information or opinions about a highly-charged social issue.

Personal Interviews and Focus Groups

Personal interviews and focus groups—a group of people brought together to focus on a particular topic—are additional methods of obtaining primary information. The same care needs to be taken in developing questions for personal interviews and focus groups as for mailed questionnaires. Preparing questions in advance helps ensure that you will cover all the important topics. You may, of course, ask additional questions along the way, and that’s one of the principal advantages of personal interviews and focus groups.

Although personal interviews and focus groups allow greater flexibility for asking in-depth questions than mail questionnaires typically do, they can be both time-consuming and costly. They are best used when the population to be sampled is small and is in one geographic area. Another disadvantage is that in face-to-face situations people have an increased tendency to express a popular view of a subject rather than their own true attitudes and beliefs. Also, unless the interviewer is skilled in interviewing techniques, his or her own biases may influence the respondents’ answers.

Telephone Interviews

Telephone interviews are widely used because

1. They can provide a random sample when all members of the group being studied can be presumed to have telephones.

2. They are fast. You can reach a lot of people quickly and easily.

3. They are relatively inexpensive. When the calls are local, telephone interviews may actually cost less than mailed questionnaires, and they are certainly less expensive than personal interviews or focus groups.

4. They are flexible. Telephone interviews permit the same ability to ask follow-up questions as personal interviews with less risk that the interviewer’s own biases will influence the respondent’s answers.

The principal disadvantage of telephone interviews is that, because telephones are so often used for sales, people are inclined to hang up when they receive calls asking for a few minutes of their time. Even when they agree initially, people are impatient on the phone and are reluctant to answer more than just a few questions. For these reasons, most telephone interviews need to be brief, and the questions need to be easy to answer. The exceptions would be interviews about issues of extreme importance to the population being studied.

As with mailed questionnaires and personal interviews, the basic questionnaire needs to be prepared in advance, and the same care needs to be taken to ensure that answers to the questions will provide data that are reliable, valid, and useful.

Regardless of the form of the documentation, references to secondary sources should include as much of the following information as known:

1. Name(s) of author(s).

2. Title of book or titles of the article and the publication in which the article appears.

3. Place and date of publication.

4. Appropriate edition or volume and issue numbers.

5. Appropriate page references.

Numerous guides to preparing reports and manuscripts are available, and each presents a slightly different style of citation. The organization for which you work may have a preferred form. If so, use it. If not, use the form you like best, but be consistent and use the same citation style throughout the report.

The following are among the most often used guides to citation style:

• The APA Publication Manual. Published by the American Psychological Association, this guide to style is widely used in business. In addition to providing specific instructions for citing secondary sources, the APA Publication Manual provides useful advice on experimental methodology and documenting experimental results.

  For more information, see How to Cite Information From the Internet and the World Wide Web or Overview of the citation style recommended in the Chicago Manual of Style.

• The MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers. Published by the Modern Language Association, the MLA Handbook is often used by those who majored in the liberal arts. Because so much information is available on the Internet these days, you may also need Beyond the MLA Handbook: Documenting Electronic Sources on the Internet.

• University of Michigan Press Author’s Guide. Another online guide document preparation and citation of sources is the Author’s Guide made available by the University of Michigan.

1. Perceptual errors.  Have you taken the precautions necessary to ensure the accuracy of your perceptions?

2. Mechanical errors.  Have you added, subtracted, multiplied, and divided correctly? Have you transposed numbers while entering data? Have you double-checked percentages and decimal placements?

3. Semantic errors.  Have you reached the wrong conclusions because you are using language inappropriately?

Problems with Perception

Perceptual errors can stem from any aspect of the sender or receiver that interferes with their accurate perceptions of the external environment. Deficiencies may be physical or mental. Physical deficiencies occur during what is known as primary mediation, which is the act of perceiving the environment with our physical senses: seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, or smelling. If you are myopic, for example, and are not wearing corrective lenses, you will be unable to report distant visual perceptions accurately because you cannot observe them accurately. If you have a hearing impairment, you will have difficulty receiving oral messages accurately.

Some physical deficiencies are obvious and correctable, while others may be less so. Nevertheless, in terms of the accuracy, reliability, and objectivity of report data, problems caused by secondary mediation are more subtle and difficult to recognize. Our perceptions are influenced not only by the limitations of our physical senses, but also by our previous experiences, attitudes, beliefs, and expectations. Our minds select from and alter the information (stimuli) our senses perceive.

We never perceive anything in its entirety. We select from the whole those things that seem important to us; our minds work like a filter, refusing to recognize that which seems unimportant and that which runs counter to our existing beliefs. Because our perceptions seem so obviously correct to us, we are inclined to believe that others perceive the world the same way that we do. This psychological principle is known as projection.

Because no two people are alike, each person’s mental filter—based on experiences, attitudes, and expectations—selects different aspects of the environment. It is frequently difficult to remember that our own perceptions may not be complete and that the other person’s perceptions may be more complete or accurate than our own.

We also need to remember that everyone has a natural tendency to resist unpleasant perceptions. We find it difficult to accept ideas that do not agree with what we already think, believe, or feel. In days of old, bearers of bad tidings were frequently put to death. Even today, our tendency is to reject a sender of an unpleasant message—to kill the messenger—along with rejecting the message. Report writers would do well to remember this in preparing reports that convey bad news to upper management.

For more information on problems with perception, see the coverage of it in External Reality and Subjective Experience.

Problems with Mechanics

For data to be meaningful, they need to be correct. Numbers have to be entered correctly, and the correct mathematical and statistical operations need to be performed on them. Do you want the mean, median, or the mode? Is the range significant? Have you computed the standard deviation correctly?

Computers will, of course, perform most of the important mathematical operations for you, but for them to do so correctly, the numbers entered must be correct. Double-check the data as you enter them, and have someone else check them for you as well. Some business reports naturally make more extensive use of numerical data than others, and the more numerical data there are, the more they should be checked to ensure correctness.

Problems with Semantics

Semantics—the way we use language—can also cause communication difficulties. Because language, like mathematics, is a symbol system, language has meaning only in the minds of its users. Semanticists are fond of saying that the map is not the territory. Just as the map is not the territory but merely represents it, the words we use represent or symbolize our view of reality. We run into difficulty when we forget that our words and the words of others are symbolic rather than “real."

Problems with semantics are as much a matter of faulty thinking as they are of faulty communicating. We forget that the mere act of thinking something is true does not make it so. The following guidelines can help us focus on the symbolic nature of language.

1. No statement tells the whole story.   We cannot perceive totally or with complete accuracy; therefore, we cannot make statements that are completely accurate. By the time we have made a statement, we are twice removed from the actual event. When we think that we are telling the whole story, we are committing the allness fallacy.

   Consider, for example, any simple object around you—your desk, a chair, or a common No. 2 pencil. How many readily observable facts can you think of that apply to that object? Consider its uses, its measurements, its physical and chemical properties, its history, its evolution, its design and manufacturing processes, its marketing, and even its future. To say all there is about even the most common object would require volumes. Effective communicators need to remember that nothing is as simple as it seems.

2. No two things are identical.   The human mind works by a process of generalization and differentiation. When things are similar, we tend to class them together. We divide the world into groups of things by pigeonholing and stereotyping. These groupings are useful. But we run into difficulties when we forget that each thing in any group is different from every other thing in the group. The human mind tends to overlook small differences. We need to remember that because nothing is simple, the smallest differences between things may well be significant. A very small pinhole makes a ping-pong ball unusable—and unsalable. For this reason, analogies should be used only to illustrate and not to prove.

3. Observations, assumptions, and opinions are not the same.   You have heard the phrase, “jumping to conclusions” and probably know that it is something to avoid. A fact or observation is something that has been verified by some form of measurement or sense data. (Keep in mind that perception is selective and that our sense data may not be entirely accurate.)

   Assumptions or inferences are conclusions based on certain observations. The more relevant observations we make, the greater the chances that our assumptions will prove correct. For example, our assumption that the sun will come up tomorrow has an excellent chance of being correct. If, on the other hand, we assume that it will not rain tomorrow because it did not rain today, we have jumped to a conclusion--made an assumption based on too little evidence.

   Opinions are based on observations and assumptions, but they are value judgments unrelated to fact. Opinions or value judgments are feelings or beliefs not substantiated by knowledge or proof. You may have observed in the past that you did not like Kool Kola. That is a fact. You may assume that you still do not like Kool Kola. This is an inference. But when you say, “Kool Kola tastes awful,” that’s an opinion. Your opinion has to do with you, not with Kool Kola.

4. Few things are either-or.   Most things are matters of degree rather than absolutes. The binary system of computers is an exception: bits in a computer’s memory are set either to zero or one—there is no in between. The states are said to be mutually exclusive. In life, however, there are few absolutes, and every day science reduces the number of things that can be considered absolute. A person is young or old, tall or short, smart or not-so-smart only in relation to other people. A solution to a problem is good or bad only in relation to alternative solutions.

5. Time changes all things—especially people.   You are not the same person today as you were yesterday. The changes in you from yesterday to today may not be dramatic or even significant, but you have changed. And the further back in time you go from your point of comparison, the more you have changed. Each day’s perceptions give you new experiences against which to evaluate each new perception. But people are not the only things that change: laws, interest rates, institutions, and even solid rock are subject to the influence of time.

   Be sure to consider your report-writing situation from the perspective of time—what changes have occurred since the data were collected or since similar studies were conducted in the past? How are things likely to change in the future? How, for example, will the subject of your report be influenced by the increasing influence of information technology and world-wide connectivity over the next 10 years?

6. Time sequence alone does not establish a cause-and-effect relationship.   Commonly known as the post hoc fallacy, cause-and-effect confusion can result when two events occur in sequence. Before you assume that the first event caused the second, you should eliminate the possibility that the events were unrelated, coincidental, or caused by a third event that you have not identified. One of the ways to do this is to replicate the study, duplicating the original event to see whether the second event occurs again.

Facts are valuable only in relation to other facts. The fact that one computer system might cost $5000, for example, does not mean much unless you know that a similar computer system able to perform the same functions costs $4000. To draw conclusions, you need to recognize relationships among different sets of facts.

What, for example would you conclude from the following set of facts:

• Employee turnover on the late shift (11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m.) is twice as high as that for the first shift (7:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.) and one and a half times as high as for the second shift (3:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.).

• Employees on the late shift receive no additional compensation for their less convenient work hours.

• Most workers with seniority request the day shift.

• A questionnaire revealed that 78 percent of the workers on the late shift would prefer either the first or second shift.

• The same questionnaire revealed that the two least popular supervisors were responsible for the late shift.

Would you conclude that the two unpopular supervisors were responsible for the high rate of turnover on the late shift? Or would you conclude that the unpopularity of the late shift influenced the employees’ attitudes toward the supervisors? Either of those assumptions could be correct, but further study would be required before you could make either with confidence. At this point, you do not have any evidence that indicates whether the supervisors’ unpopularity is the cause of the problem or merely a coincidental effect.

It is, of course, perfectly acceptable to include intangibles as facts. For example, a certain computer may “feel” better to you than another, and it is legitimate for you to use that fact in making your recommendation. You should, however, be careful to explicitly acknowledge the intangible nature of the fact and the influence it has on your conclusions and recommendations.

Not this: ABC computers have a better feel than XYZ computers.

Say this: In my opinion, ABC computers have a better feel than XYZ computers. I found the keyboard more responsive and the monitor easier to read.

If you haven’t been asked to provide recommendations; do not provide them. If you have been asked to provide recommendations, be sure to provide only those clearly indicated by the data you have actually collected—do not provide those that additional data collected in some other way at some other time might suggest. Focus on the conclusions and recommendations that stem directly from the data you have collected.

Once you have defined the problem, gathered the appropriate information, and organized and interpreted the data, you are ready to begin writing the report.