How did you do the research?

This part needs enough detail to inform readers about your research process and to show that you were systematic. Address the following questions:

Who took part in the research? Introduce the research participants. (See Chapter 5 for discussion about representing participants). Include information as needed to help readers get a sense of the participants and their context:

What methods and tools did you use to collect data? As well as telling what methods you used (e.g., interviews), describe the tools and how you used them. For example, if you used interviews, did you prepare specific questions or outline topics to talk about? Include examples of your data collection tools, as they will help your readers understand how you collected data. Did you tape the interviews or take notes? If you kept a journal, when did you write and what did you write about?

How did you make sense of the data? Describe how you organized the data and how you did the analysis. Show how your analysis is connected to your data.

What did you learn or ind out?

This will be a main part of your report and is where you'll likely include excerpts from your data sources (quotes, paraphrases, summary of comments). You can organize this part in relation to your question and in terms of themes or categories you constructed.

What were some of the challenges you had as you did your research?

Describe these, as they may help others avoid similar problems (e.g., inviting participants, methods, tools).

What do your indings mean for your practice? What suggestions do you have for others?

Because research in practice usually involves small numbers of people, we can't usually make general statements or recommendations for other literacy practice. However, we can describe how the research has influenced or will influence our practice. As well, we may make some suggestions about what other practitioners might consider when doing similar work, depending on their context.