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The Tension between Research Reports and Presentations

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At the 2011 AMA Applied Research Methods conference, Lawrence Gibson, a senior associate of Eric Marder Associates, and a professional researcher since 1949 (!), ran the workshop “Writing Research Reports and Creating Presentation Structures that Work”. As part of the workshop, he dissected research deliverables, highlighting common problems with them.

Larry showed presentations that looked like reports – text-heavy slides with detailed tables of numbers – and showed reports that looked like presentations – charts with little explanation. He argued that research reports and presentations are polar opposites of one another across six-different dimensions and can’t share a common structure. Here’s how they differ:

• Reports are read at the convenience of the reader, while presentations are scheduled in advance.
• Attendees to a presentation wait while it follows a set agenda, while readers are free to skip and skim a report.
• Reading a report is a solitary activity, where attending a presentation is a social one.
• Readers can’t interact with the writer of a report, but attendees can interact with presenters.
• Readers are often interrupted in their reading, and may have to read in fits and starts, while attendees typically attend most or all of a presentation.
• Reports are structured following the AP inverted pyramid style, showing recommendations first and then providing more and more detail. Presentations build to a dramatic conclusion; starting a presentation with the recommendations encourages attendees to leave early.

Larry cautioned attendees to avoid simply converting a report into a presentation deck or writing up a presentation deck in the order the slides were presented. Treat both audiences as having different needs and as using different modes of consumption, and structure your deliverables accordingly.

See also:

• Structuring Your Survey Report
• Speak Marketing Research with a Management Accent