Semi-Formal Reports: Investigation and Evaluation Reports
Thus far in this course, we have discussed informal reports. These reports directly address your audience. Perhaps your audience is one person, in which case you might write it as a letter. Maybe it's addressed to an entire department. In that case, you may choose to write it as a memorandum. Whichever is the case, informal reports are more personal in their language, because you address your audience.
When you write a semi-formal or formal report, you will not address your audience. This means that your language becomes more formal. You won't use the pronoun "you" quite as often, since you're not speaking directly to your audience. Instead of writing to your audience, you are just writing what needs to go into the report.
It's the difference between:
Sometimes this helps:
- Imagine your audience is sitting across the kitchen table from you when you write an informal report.
- Imagine your audience is filling an auditorium when you write a semi-formal or formal report.
About Investigation Reports
Investigation reports are similar to proposals, in that they present a problem or situation, then look at solutions to correct the problem or improve the situation. The big difference between investigation reports and proposals is that an investigation report describes a problem or situation that has already been investigated.
In turn, an evaluation report is similar to an investigation report. The difference between an evaluation and investigation report is that an evaluation report evaluates alternatives. However, if it looks as if it is reasonable or practical to do something new or different, then it becomes a feasibility study.
These reports can be short, as in only one to two pages, but they can also be longer. Shorter reports can be written as memorandums. Longer reports can be written as titled documents. There are also investigation and evaluation reports that become so long that they are written as formal reports. In this lesson, as well as in the next few lessons that follow, you will start to see the difference in informal, semi-formal, and formal reports.
The Semi-Formal Investigation Report
The semi-formal investigation report should be written in titled document format. Titled document format has the name of your company at the top of the report, followed by the title of the investigation below it. You can even add the location of the investigation if it took place outside of your company's location.
The report pyramid for the semi-formal investigation report is pictured below.
- The Summary compartment briefly tells the purpose of the report, the main findings, and the outcome.
- The Background – or Introduction – tells the problem or situation. It then describes the purpose and scope of the investigation.
- The Investigation compartment has four sub-compartments.
- Approach describes what was done.
- Findings tells what was found out.
- Suggestions gives ways for fixing the problem or improving the situation.
- Evaluation discusses the effectiveness of the measures taken to correct the problem or improve the situation.
- The Outcome compartment has two sub-compartments
- Conclusions re-states what was written in the findings and suggestions compartment.
- Recommendations recommends the suggestions that should be taken.
- Evidence contains attachments.
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