Overview of Informative Report

Community Informative Report

Your
Community Informative Report will be 5-8 double-spaced pages
(approximately 1500-2400 words) and written in a professional report
format. You will identify a community and blend together primary and
secondary research to make this community interesting and relevant to a
public or professional audience. You will need to explain what is
culturally and socially significant about your research and why it
should interest your readers. You should incorporate at least five
primary and secondary sources. When you complete your report, you will
write an abstract that will provide your readers with an overview of
your report, including the community you have investigated, your major
findings, and your points of significance. You will place the abstract
before your introduction.

There
are several purposes that you can explore for this report. For example,
you may conduct a mini-ethnography on your community, meaning that you
are interested in revealing how this community works for your readers:
who are the members, and how do they interact with each other? What
different roles do members have? How do new members learn to become
“experts” in this community? What are the values that unite these
members? Students have produced effective ethnographies on local daycare
centers, athletic teams, musical groups, and civic organizations, among
many other possibilities. Both face-to-face and online communities can
be good candidates for a mini-ethnography. For example, students have
explored how people have created online communities to learn and play
the card game, Yu-Gi-Oh!, or to inspire their creative writing.

You
can also research a community to respond to misconceptions that your
audience might have. For example, what misconceptions could you address
by researching such communities as the local chapter of the NRA, 4H, the
Flinthills Pagans, or the KSU Star Wars Club? What are some interesting
cultural or social points you could explore by addressing the
misconceptions about these groups?

Another
purpose angle could be to explore an issue in terms of a community. For
example, you may be interested in researching how a local company
trains its employees to address diversity-based controversies that
national chains, such as Starbucks, have experienced. Or, you may be
interested in researching the gender gap that exists in the College of
Engineering or another academic unit on campus.

As
you explore your purpose, you will more than likely discover that you
need to be adaptable and open to new possibilities as you conduct
additional primary and secondary research. Your community informative
report asks you to consider your research before you focus on a main
point of significance.

Informative Report

This
unit synthesizes and extends the research, analysis, and writing skills
that you have been practicing throughout the semester. You will
investigate a social problem, issue, or phenomenon related to race and
ethnicity in the United States. Your purpose will be to inform a reader –
a public official – who will find your research significant,
interesting, and satisfying. By researching the causes and consequences
of this issue, you allow your reader to understand the historical and
institutional reasons for why this problem persists and better
appreciate the consequences of the problem.

Your
Informative Report will be 5–8 double-spaced pages and will be
delivered, as many formal reports are, in extended memo format. You will
need to address a public official, who should also have something at
stake in the social problem that you are investigating. You must
incorporate at least five credible sources that you find through independent research.

The
purpose of an informative report is to synthesize information from
several sources and present it in an informative and readable fashion.
This type of writing is common in diverse settings, including
businesses, non-profits, and governmental organizations. For example,
Congress has an entire department, the Congressional Research Service
(CRS), that it directs to gather knowledge prior to informational and
policy-related hearings as well as when requested by individual
representatives and senators.

Here
is the first of many research tips in this unit: CRS reports are public
information available to you through the library and are an excellent
source of information for your own report. In rough terms, you will be
doing exactly what the CRS does when directed to research a topic. You
will assemble the best available sources and information. You will
objectively summarize those sources and that information. Then you will
synthesize your research and summaries into a single report containing
what you have learned. As we work on developing strong research
practices, we will discuss how to choose the best sources and how to
provide the best, most reliable evidence to your audience.

Topic:

Racism toward Asian People and communities after the outbreak of Covid-19.