Executive Summary

​Executive Summary/Final Report for NACA® Research Grant Recipients

These reports should be submitted at the conclusion of the study.

An executive report is a short document that summarizes research results in such a way that readers can rapidly become acquainted with your body of material.

An executive report usually contains a brief statement of the problem and/ or purpose of the research, background information, concise analysis and main conclusions.

Your executive report should:

• be written in language appropriate for the target audience [in this case, visitors to the NACA website, so easy to understand by a wide variety of people]. 
• consist of short and concise paragraphs
• start with the reason the research was conducted
• describe the methodology:
  • setting (University, department, program, etc.)
  • participants (how many, things about them such as gender, race, year in school, position, etc.)
  • data collection methods (did you use an instrument?  A guide?  A survey?  Observation?  Etc.)
  • data analysis methods (how did you figure out what that data meant? Did you code survey or interview or focus group? Who did the analyses?) 
• continue with:
  • Results (quantitative) and findings (qualitative).  What does the data tell us (in a raw way)? 
  • Conclusions:  What do the results and/or findings mean?
  • Implications for practice and future research. What is next in terms of the application of conclusions?  What research may be next?
  • Limitations (things that went wrong, unintentional oversights, low response rates, finding out that the data collection method didn't work the way you wanted it to, etc.)
• make effective use of graphics (if there are any)
• include acknowledgements
• include the contact information of the researchers in case readers have questions