Producing a Report with TRAC

A Guide for Principal Investigators and Project Managers

Updated January 2005

The purpose of this booklet is to ease your task of producing a research report or other document.

These guidelines have been developed from years of experience in working with UW researchers. While you work to make your research relevant, accurate, and timely, we'll help you communicate it to others comprehensibly and attractively.

CONTENTS

The TRAC Support Staff

• Who We Are, What We Do

• Working with Us

Basic Production Process

• Production Process

Types of Reports

• WSDOT Reports
• Other Reports for Other Agencies
• Papers (TRB and Others)
• Theses

Text

• Organization
• Style Guides
• References

Word Processing

• Computer Programs
• Formulas
• Dos

Tables

• Using Tables

Graphics

• Computer Programs
• Kinds of Graphics
• Color
• Dos

THE TRAC SUPPORT STAFF

Who We Are, What We Do

Judy Felch—Senior Secretary (3-8690)

Office machine operation, files, mail system, travel reporting, supply orders.

Bev Green—Fiscal Specialist Supervisor (3-6522)

Project budgets, payroll, purchasing.

Mary Marrah—Designer/Illustrator (3-3337)

Web interface graphics and website design, poster sessions, page design and layout, technical and conceptual illustration.

Amy O'Brien—Technical Communications Specialist (5-2644)

Report organizational requirements, writing style, grammar, page layout, survey writing and layout.

Ron Porter—Systems Analyst (3-3341)

Word processing programs, methods, and conversions; bibliographic and other databases; Internet and Web deployment

Duane Wright—Systems Analyst Programmer (3-3342)

Software development for analysis of freeway data
Application of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for analysis of freeway and arterial movement
Graphics for displaying analysis results

Working with Us

Time

• We need to be able to plan ahead.
• Keep us posted, tell us your plans.
• More time than you think is necessary for editing, word processing, formatting, reproduction, and report submittal.

Funds

The more organized you are, the less costly we are to your budget.

Questions

If you have any questions, we're glad to answer them. We'd rather prevent a problem than solve one.

BASIC PRODUCTION PROCESS

1. Talk to Amy about report requirements and production.
2. Talk to Bev about the project's budget if you think that funds are low.
3. Work with Duane or Mary on graphics if you need them.
4. Submit your material. We can often handle it more easily if we receive a few chapters at a time.
5. WSDOT requires that all its reports be edited. TRAC requires that all reports for other contracting agencies also be edited. You can work with Amy to determine the appropriate level of edit based on the needs of the contracting agency, the needs of the material, and the remaining budget and time.

TYPES OF REPORTS

Many student theses are converted from TRAC reports. If you and a student will be producing a combination of these, please encourage your student to plan ahead carefully. A little advance thought can save weeks of work.

Please be warned-and warn your students-that because we are using project funds to produce the thesis, we must produce the project report first, the thesis second.

WSDOT Reports

• Over half of TRAC's projects are sponsored by WSDOT. WSDOT may require three kinds of reports from its researchers:
• Research Report (draft and final)
• Technical Report (draft and final)
• One-page Summary

Usually, a Technical Report is not necessary. Your project's contract specifies the kind and amount of reporting that is required. Consult with your WSDOT Project Manager if you are uncertain.

Research Reports

Consult the WSDOT Research Report Guidelines. All WSDOT research projects require a Research Report. The purpose of these reports is to provide a short (50 pages) final report that can be easily read by busy administrators and others who want the gist of the research without all the technical details.

These reports are sent to WSDOT, FHWA, state DOTs, universities, libraries, the National Technical Information Service, and other interested researchers.

Technical Reports

Consult the WSDOT Technical Report Guidelines.

These are usually not requested for WSDOT research projects. The purpose of these reports is to fully document all aspects of the project. They may be as long as needed; however, most of their length may be in technical appendices.

They are printed in limited quantities and distributed to the WSDOT library, WSDOT specialists, FHWA, and other researchers upon request.

One-Page Summaries

One-page summaries are required for all projects. They have a specific layout and organization. They are meant to be an easily readable summary for large distribution.

Other Reports for Other Agencies

Other agencies (e.g., FHWA, NCHRP, SHRP or local agencies such as Metro or the Washington State Energy Office) have different report requirements. If they have no requirements, we usually follow WSDOT's format.

Papers (TRB and Others)

TRAC routinely produces papers for TRB (first drafts are due each August before its annual meeting). We have also produced papers for other professional organizations such as ITE and ASCE.

Theses

Researchers often choose to support the production of a thesis associated with a funded project.

Graduate students should know before they begin whether their theses will be converted from a project report and how the requirements of the two documents will differ. That way they can plan the organization of both documents so that their theses will require as little reorganization or rewriting as possible.

Remind students to consult the Style and Policy Manual for Theses and Dissertations, UW Graduate School.

TEXT

Organization

Most TRAC reports are WSDOT Research Reports. They must be organized as follows (see the WSDOT Research Report Guidelines for more detail):

Research Report

• Executive Summary
• Introduction or Background
• Review of Previous Work
• Research Approach/Procedures
• Findings/Discussion
• Conclusions
• Recommendations
• Application/Implementation
• Acknowledgment
• References
• Appendices

Technical Report

• Executive Summary
• Introduction and Research Approach
• Findings
• Conclusions
• Recommendations/Implementation
• Acknowledgment
• References
• Appendices
• References

Style Guides

References

Use an alphabetical reference list at the end of your report to indicate only documents cited in the text. Denote references at the appropriate place in the text by the author's name and publication date in parentheses. Example: (Reed 1993)

Bibliographies may be used in addition to a reference list to document sources you have consulted but not directly cited. A bibliography should be alphabetical by author's name.

If you have many references, consider using a bibliographic software package such as ISI Researchsoft's ProCite or Reference Manager. Ask Ron if you need help.

WORD PROCESSING

Computer Programs

• MS Word (PC or Macintosh)—we are able to convert text from other word processing programs into Word.
• Excel (PC or Macintosh)—other spreadsheet files can be converted to Excel.
• Adobe Acrobat (PC or Macintosh)—in addition to paper copies, all WSDOT and TRAC reports are now converted to pdf for publication on the TRAC and WSDOT Web sites.

Formulas

For mathematical formulas, use MS Word's built-in equation editor or MathType. Do not save formulas as graphic files and paste them into a Word document, as they cannot be edited.

Word Processing Dos

Do

• Feel free to ask questions about the programs and how they work.
• Assign and use “styles” to format paragraphs, headings, and other special text such as figure captions. This makes consistent formatting much simpler.
• Break up large document files, or those with many graphics, into smaller (chapter) files, rather than providing us with one gigantic (and electronically unwieldy) file.
• Provide us with the separate source files embedded in your Word file, including those for graphics, tables, and references.
• Keep your formatting as simple as possible.

TABLES

Consider using spreadsheets to enter large amounts of tabular information. Spreadsheet data can be easily converted to word processing text later.

Use Word's Table features, rather than creating tables solely with tabs or spaces.

GRAPHICS

Many authors are now successfully creating their own report graphics, but we have years of experience with many communication challenges and many graphics programs, and we are happy to help.

Computer Programs

• Adobe Illustrator-a powerful freehand drawing program.
• Adobe Photoshop-a program for altering and editing digital or scanned photographs.
• MS PowerPoint-the standard program for slide preparation.
• Adobe InDesign-a page layout program used for specially formatted documents.
• Excel-creates graphs and tables from spreadsheet data.

Kinds of Graphics

• Charts—You don't have to construct your own charts. You can furnish the graphics staff with electronic data, and they can make the plots. Many styles of charts-pie, column, bar, scatter-are available.
• Maps—Before you create a map, talk with the graphics staff. They may already have a computerized base map you need (such as of the state of Washington or the greater Seattle area). If not, they can create a base map. From there, you can add the details.
• Illustrations—The staff can create a wide array of illustrations, technical, abstract, artsy, comical, or mundane.
• Slides—If you need text slides, you can give the electronic text to the staff. If you have existing report graphics on file, they can generally be converted to slides (including adding color) with minimal time or trouble.

Color

Color hard copy (on paper or overhead transparency) is available. However, although WSDOT now makes all its reports available as pdf files on the Web, most clients, including WSDOT, still do not print their reports with color. Therefore, carefully consider your use of color and whether any information will be lost if your graphic is reproduced and viewed in black and white.

Graphics Dos

Do

• Feel free to give us your ideas in any format-talk to us, write them down, draw them out.
• Give us camera ready originals, or the electronic source files, when TRAC staff have not produced the graphics.
• Remember: Our purpose is to help you produce a top quality report.

Washington State Transportation Center
University of Washington,
Box 354802 University District Building
1107 NE 45th St, Ste 535 Seattle, Washington 98195
(206) 543-8690 FAX (206) 685-0767