{"id":3330,"date":"2013-07-16T07:15:37","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T14:15:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/?p=3330"},"modified":"2013-08-01T11:24:35","modified_gmt":"2013-08-01T18:24:35","slug":"how-to-read-and-summarize-a-20-page-research-report-in-20-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/how-to-read-and-summarize-a-20-page-research-report-in-20-minutes\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Read and Summarize a 20-Page Research Report in 20 Minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You were just handed a 20-page research report with the assignment to write a headline and four-paragraph summary that will entice your target audience of business and IT executives to read it. Where do you begin?<\/p>\n<p>Marketing professionals face this problem all the time. They have to take a voluminous amount of data and analysis on a topic about which they may know very little and make it not only accessible but sexy. Often they opt for the two paths of least resistance:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Copy the executive summary verbatim.<\/li>\n<li>Use vague language to disguise the fact that they don&#8217;t understand what the report says.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>It doesn&#8217;t have to be that way. With a few tricks demonstrated here, you can skim a 20-page report, identify key points and write a summary that can easily be adapted for different audiences in about 20 minutes. The key is to let the authors of the document do most of the work.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll use the big data analytics study from IBM that&#8217;s embedded below as an example. The annotations I&#8217;ve made in the red boxes show some of the highlights you&#8217;ll use to create your summary (if the annotations aren&#8217;t showing up on your browser, click the link below the embed to download the PDF).<br \/>\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" style=\"border: 1px solid #CCC; border-width: 1px 1px 0; margin-bottom: 5px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/slideshow\/embed_code\/22933587\" height=\"511\" width=\"479\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div style=\"margin-bottom: 5px;\"><strong> <a title=\"Annotated IBM Big Data Study\" href=\"https:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/pgillin\/big-data-analytics-study-4-13annotated\" target=\"_blank\">Annotated IBM Big Data Study<\/a> <\/strong> from <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.slideshare.net\/pgillin\" target=\"_blank\">Paul Gillin<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<p>As you skim the document, look for signposts that point to important information and label them. Here are some labels I use. You can copy these or make up your own.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Key Point<\/strong> &#8211; Essential information for one or more of the audiences you need to reach, this is one of the two or three most important findings.<\/p>\n<p><strong>New Insight<\/strong> &#8211; Analysis by the report&#8217;s authors that challenges convention or indicates new ways of thinking about a trend or problem. In many cases, new insights are the principal value a research study offers.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Important Data<\/strong> &#8211; Statistics that support key points or that validate the quality of the research.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Takeaway<\/strong> &#8211; Useful information that tells how key points and important data can be put to practical use.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Summary Trend<\/strong> &#8211; Attitudes, practices or behaviors that research has identified are common to a large number of people or organizations\u00a0 and that may indicate change in the market.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Important Sub-Theme<\/strong> &#8211; Trends or findings that are not essential to the main topic but which are interesting nonetheless. Important sub-themes are often surprising or unintentional discoveries.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Potential Gotcha<\/strong> &#8211; in behaviors or beliefs usually involve risks or tradeoffs. Gotchas are what people worry about. They&#8217;re critical to story-telling because they introduce dramatic tension, which makes stuff interesting.<\/p>\n<h2>Outsource the Work<\/h2>\n<p>The secret to skimming a report without digesting it in its entirety is to let the authors do the work for you. After all, they know a lot more about the topic than you do and they want to show off their best stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t just copy the executive summary and walk away, though. The authors may be addressing a different audience than you are, or they may have downplayed a point that you think is really important. You still have to perform due diligence.<\/p>\n<p>Look for signposts that point you to important information. Here are a few:<\/p>\n<p><strong>Executive Summary<\/strong> &#8211; This is what the authors think is most important, and they&#8217;re probably right. It&#8217;s critical that you read it,<\/p>\n<p><strong>Data<\/strong> &#8211; Look for numbers in the body of the report, percentages in particular. These may be Important Data that supports Key Points or Sub-Themes, or they could just be interesting factoids. \u00a0Look in particular for percentages of 50 or more. This indicates a majority of the people surveyed \u00a0agree on something.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Charts and Graphs<\/strong> &#8211; When the authors go to the trouble of extracting data and turning it into an image, they must think it&#8217;s pretty important. The information in charts is often critical validation for Key Points. You can extract important numbers to sprinkle throughout your summary or press release.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Callouts<\/strong> &#8211; Those are the paragraphs or quotes that usually appear in larger type and are set off from the rest of the text by hairlines or boxes. Page 4 of the IBM report has a callout at the bottom of the page. Callouts are commonly used to add visual variety, but the passages or quotes they contain are usually points the authors think are important.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Subheads<\/strong> &#8211; When done right, these denote breaks in the narrative that either take it in a new direction or organize information into categories. The subhead &#8220;Defining big data&#8221; on page 2 of the IBM study is a change-of-direciton subhead, while &#8220;The pattern of big data adoption&#8221; subhead on page 10 is the beginning of a whole subsection of the document in which the authors discuss a typical staged approach to deployment. Each subhead within that section denotes a different stage. They&#8217;re good bullet points for your summary.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Summary recommendations<\/strong> &#8211;\u00a0Most reports conclude with a summary of the findings. Again, the authors are doing your work for you by telling you what they think matters.<\/p>\n<p>Copy the sections of the report you just highlighted and paste them into a document. You now have all the important elements to work with. In my next post I&#8217;ll talk about how to boil that information down into a good summary.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Next:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2013\/08\/how-to-summarize-content-for-a-business-audience\/\">How to Summarize Content for a Business Audience<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You were just handed a 20-page research report with the assignment to write a headline and four-paragraph summary that will entice your target audience of business and IT executives to read it. Where do you begin? Marketing professionals face this &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/2013\/07\/how-to-read-and-summarize-a-20-page-research-report-in-20-minutes\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":""},"categories":[643],"tags":[645,644,234],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pTy95-RI","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3330"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3408,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3330\/revisions\/3408"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3330"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3330"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gillin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3330"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}