258 Unit 4: Longer Business Messages

Appendix B discusses the common methods of documenting sources. Whatever method you choose, documentation is necessary for books, articles, tables, charts, diagrams, song lyrics, scripted dialogue, letters, speeches—anything you take from someone else, including ideas and information you’ve re-expressed through paraphrasing or summarizing. However, you do not have to cite a source for knowledge that’s generally known among your readers, such as the fact that Microsoft is a large software company or that computers are pervasive in business today.

4 LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain the role of primary research, and identify the two most common forms of primary

research for business communication purposes.

Surveys need to reliable, valid, and representative to be useful.

Provide clear instructions to prevent errors in answering.

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Conducting Primary Research

If secondary research can’t provide the information and insights you need, you may need to gather the information yourself with primary research. The two most common primary research methods for report writing are surveys and interviews. Other primary techniques are observations (including tracking the behavior of website visitors) and experiments (in special situations such as test marketing), but they’re less commonly used for day-to-day business research.

Conducting Surveys

Surveys can provide invaluable insights, but only if they are reliable (would produce identical results if repeated under similar conditions) and valid (measure what they’re supposed to measure). To conduct a survey that generates reliable and valid results, you need to choose research participants carefully and develop an effective set of questions. For important surveys on strategically important topics with lots at stake, you’re usually better off hiring a research specialist who knows how to avoid errors during planning, execution, and analysis. To develop an effective survey questionnaire, follow these tips:7

■Provide clear instructions to make sure people can answer every question correctly.

■Don’t ask for information that people can’t be expected to remember, such as how many times they went grocery shopping in the past year.

■Keep the questionnaire short and easy to answer; don’t expect people to give you more than 10 or 15 minutes of their time.

■Whenever possible, formulate questions to provide answers that are easy to analyze. Numbers and facts are easier to summarize than opinions, for instance.

■Avoid leading questions that could bias your survey. If you ask, “Do you prefer that we stay open in the evenings for customer convenience?” you’ll no doubt get a “yes.” Instead, ask, “What time of day do you normally do your shopping?”

■Avoid ambiguous descriptors such as “often” or “frequently.” Such terms mean different things to different people.

■Avoid compound questions such as “Do you read books and magazines?”

When selecting people to participate in a survey, the most critical task is getting a representative sample of the entire population in question. For instance, if you want to know how U.S. consumers feel about something, you can’t just survey a few hundred people in a shopping mall. Different types of consumers shop at different times of the day and different days of the week, and many consumers rarely, if ever, shop at malls. The online surveys you see on many websites potentially suffer from the same sampling bias: They capture only the opinions of people who visit the sites and who want to participate, which might not be a representative sample of the population. A good handbook on survey research will help you select the right people for your survey, including selecting enough people to have a statistically valid survey.8

Interviews can take place online, over the phone, or in person, and they can involve individuals or groups.

Conducting Interviews

Getting in-depth information straight from an expert, customer, or other interested party can be a great method for collecting primary information. Interviews can have a variety of formats, from email exchanges to group discussions. For example, the English supermarket chain Tesco invites thousands of customers to visit its stores every year for meetings

Take advantage of the Small Business Administration’s comprehensive guide to preparing a business plan. Go to http://real-timeupdates.com/bce6 and click on Learn More.

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259

known as Customer Question Time, when it asks customers how the company can serve them better.9

Ask open-ended questions (such as “Why do you believe that South America represents a better opportunity than Europe for this product line?”) to solicit opinions, insights, and information. Ask closed questions to elicit a specific answer, such as yes or no. However, don’t use too many closed questions in an interview, or the experience will feel more like a simple survey and won’t take full advantage of the interactive interview setting.

Think carefully about the sequence of your questions and the potential answers so you can arrange them in an order that helps uncover layers of information. Also consider providing each subject with a list of questions at least a day or two before the interview, especially if you’d like to quote your subjects in writing or if your questions might require people to conduct research or think extensively about the answers. If you want to record interviews, ask ahead of time; never record without permission.

Open-ended questions, which can’t be answered with a simple yes or no, can provide deeper insights, opinions, and information.

Arrange the sequence of questions to help uncover layers of information.

Planning Informational Reports

Informational reports provide the feedback that employees, managers, and others need to make decisions, take action, and respond to changes. As Figure 10.1 indicates, informational reports can be grouped into four general categories:

■Reports to monitor and control operations. Managers rely on a wide range of reports to see how well their companies are functioning. Plans establish expectations and guidelines to direct future action. Among the most important of these are business plans, which summarize a proposed business venture and describe the company’s goals and plans for each major functional area. Operating reports provide feedback on a wide variety of an organization’s functions, including sales, inventories, expenses, shipments, and so on. Personal activity reports provide information regarding an individual’s experiences during sales calls, industry conferences, and other activities.

■Reports to implement policies and procedures. Policy reports range from brief descriptions of business procedures to manuals that run dozens or hundreds of pages. Position papers, sometimes called white papers or backgrounders,

outline an organization’s official position on issues that affect the company’s success.

■Reports to demonstrate compliance. Businesses are required to submit a variety of compliance reports, from tax returns to reports describing the proper handling of hazardous materials.

■Reports to document progress. Supervisors, investors, and customers frequently expect to be informed of the progress of projects and other activities. Progress reports range from simple updates in memo form to comprehensive status reports.

Organizing Informational Reports

In most cases, the direct approach is the best choice for informational reports because you are simply conveying information. However, if the information is disappointing, such as a project being behind schedule or over budget, you might consider using the indirect approach to build up to the bad news. Most informational reports use a topical organization, arranging material in one of the following ways (see Figure 10.5 on the next page):

■Comparison. Showing similarities and differences (or advantages and disadvantages) between two or more entities

■Importance. Building up from the least important item to the most important (or from most important to the least, if you don’t think your audience will read the entire report)

■Sequence. Organizing the steps or stages in a process or procedure

5 LEARNING OBJECTIVE

Explain how to plan informational reports and website content.

Informational reports are used to monitor and control operations, to implement policies and procedures, to demonstrate compliance, and to document progress.

The messages conveyed by informational reports can range from extremely positive to extremely negative, so the approach you take warrants careful consideration.

260 Unit 4: Longer Business Messages

The report title establishes the ACA’s stance, that it is sensitive to climate change concerns and is taking steps to address those concerns.

This brief synopsis (see page 295) offers a brief overview of the report’s most important points.

Figure 10.5 Effective Informational Report (excerpt)

This Issue Backgrounder from the American Coatings Association (ACA), an organization that represents the paint and coatings industry, conveys ACA’s position on pending legislation.

Source: Copyright © 2012 by American Coatings Association. Reprinted with permission.

This subheading makes two strong statements, that the industry already has a comparatively small carbon footprint and that it has already taken steps to minimize it.

Notice the effective use of topic sentences.

This modified table of contents offers an overview of what can be found inside this four-page report.

■Chronology. Organizing a chain of events in order from oldest to newest or vice versa

■Geography. Organizing by region, city, state, country, or other geographic unit

■Category. Grouping by topical category, such as sales, profit, cost, or investment

Organizing Website Content

Many websites, particularly company websites, function as informational reports, offering sections with information about the company and its history, products and services, executive team, and so on. Most of what you’ve already learned about informational reports applies to website writing, but the online environment requires some special considerations:

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■Web readers are demanding. If they can’t find what they’re looking for in a few minutes, most site visitors will click away to another site.10

■Reading online can be difficult. Studies show that reading speeds are about 25 percent slower on a monitor than on paper.11 Reading from computer screens can also be exhausting and a source of physical discomfort.12

■The web is a nonlinear, multidimensional medium. Readers of online material move around in any order they please; there often is no beginning, middle, or end.

In addition, many websites have to perform more than one communication function and therefore have more than one purpose. Each of these individual purposes needs to be carefully defined and then integrated into an overall statement of purpose for the entire website.13

Moreover, many websites also have multiple target audiences, such as potential employees, customers, investors, and the news media. You need to analyze each group’s unique information needs and find a logical way to organize all that material. Website designers use the term information architecture to describe the structure and navigational flow of all the parts of a website (see Figure 10.6). As you develop the site architecture, you can begin to simulate how various audiences will enter and explore the site. Accommodating multiple entry points is one of the most difficult tasks in site design.14

To organize your site effectively, keep the following advice in mind:

■Plan your site structure and navigation before you write.15

■Let your readers be in control by creating links and pathways that let them explore on their own.

■Help online readers scan and absorb information by breaking it into self-contained, easily readable chunks that are linked together logically.

The six major sections of the information hierarchy are identified in the top navigation bar.

The page shown here is the top-level page of the first of these six major sections, “Starting & Managing a Business.”

This graphic directs users to four general topics that are likely to be

on the minds of site visitors: thinking about starting a business, starting a business, managing a business, and growing a business, represented visually by the seed,

the sprout, the sapling, and tree.

The bulk of the section’s content is accessed through these two content lists, each representing

half of “Starting & Managing a Business.”

Notice how two-thirds of the screen (the left and middle columns in this three-column layout) are devoted to static information and one-third to dynamic information and special features.

When planning online reports or other website content, remember that the online reading experience differs from offline reading in several important ways.

The information architecture of a website is the equivalent of the outline for a paper report, but it tends to be much more complicated than a simple linear outline.

Social media and community features are grouped in this corner, where they are accessible but not in the way.

Tabbed boxes such as this are a handy way to provide one-click access to a variety of lower-level pages. Rankings such as “most visited” and “top rated” let new visitors know what other people like them find valuable.

“SBA Direct” is another user-focused feature of the information architecture that lets visitors jump to the information that pertains specifically to their local areas.

Another tabbed box offers access to news stories, blog posts, and other updates.

Figure 10.6 Information Architecture

The website of the U.S. Small Business Administration uses clearly defined and labeled navigation choices to help site visitors quickly find the information they need.

Source: Courtesy of SBA.gov.