Discussion question – investigative reports

 Part 1:

“Investigative Reports“ Please respond to the following:

• Assess what makes reading investigative reports difficult or fatiguing or both. Then, recommend how a writer can address your findings.
• Analyze the parts of investigative reports to determine what part you feel is the most critical that could often be miscommunicated. Explain your reason(s).

Part 2:

Respond to one student in a substantive post that furthers the discussion. At least 150 words. (choose one)

a.  

• Analyze the parts of investigative reports to determine what part you feel is the most critical that could often be miscommunicated. Explain your reason(s).

When writing an investigative report, it can be broken down into several sections.

1. The initial summary
2. The conclusion
3. Recommendations
4. Main body of the report

I believe the initial summary is an extremely important part of any investigative report, and as it is the very nature of a summary to keep it brief, it leaves it open to being miscommunicated or interpreted. The summary needs to be clear and concise but can’t leave out key information that could lead the reader to misunderstand the writing. You can go into greater detail in the main body of the report, but you can not provide partial or fully forget key information from the summary and assume the reader will finish the report and get the remaining information from the main body.

b.  

Investigative reports can be difficult and fatiguing as they can be very extensive in the information they provide. It’s a detailed document that covers an investigation in great detail from start to finish, thus several occurrences may have occurred throughout the entire investigation and need to be covered. A writer can address findings by looking specifically under sections of interest, i.e, summary, conclusion, or main body points. This will allow for finding of pertinent details as opposed to the entire investigation.

The most important part of an investigative report is the main body as it will hold the bulk of the details to help determine cause, impact, outcomes, reasoning and other important information in regards to the investigation.

c.  

Investigative reports describe events that took place in detail and with high level of accuracy.  These reports need to stay clear from unnecessary information and language fillers.   It can make the technical reports very saturated with facts and take more time to read and comprehend.    Investigative reports must not convey emotional or personal bias.   

Logical organization may make reading the reports less difficult and fatiguing.   Being able to easily locate the portions of the text that are of interest will be helpful, for example, organize using sections and section headings.   As suggested by the 10 Investigative Report Samples and Examples article (n.d.), the investigative report needs to be brief, to the point and simple and clear,   Also, well organized and ultimately serve its intended purpose.

All parts of the report have the potential of miscommunication.   In my opinion, conclusion may be the most likely to be miscommunicated   Mainly because the conclusion is usually a subjective choice.  Presenting the same facts to different people would lead to different conclusions.   The investigative reports should focus on presenting the facts objectively.   However, the report conclusions may or may not be useful for all readers.

Reference

10 Investigation Report Samples and Examples. (n.d.). Retrieved from:

Hello professor and class,

In the first part of the discussion, investigative reports tend to be extremely technical and very detail oriented.  What a regular report may list in one page, an investigative report may take four or five. There are many reasons for this, some of which include details that may be needed for legal issues or accounting purposes.  The wording is all written very precise , and in moist details, no details are left out.  The best way for a do obtain the information they want from this type of a paper is to take notes and specifically pay attention to the main body of the text.  Combining these two ideas should be of significant help in this case.

In the second part of the discussion, The parts of an investigative report are:

Summary .  This is the abbreviated version of the incident.  

Description.  This will include the full and detailed description of what has happened. It will be very detail oriented and long and hard to read in most cases.

Outcomes: This section tells the audience what has been  done or solved in wake of the report.  

Conclusions:  The conclusion is, in my opinion, the part of this report that can be interpreted incorrectly and cause miscommunication.  The conclusion is the authors opinion, based on what they have seen or heard.