Abstract
The abstract should be a concise summary, which includes only the essential information from all subsections of the report, i.e. explains what you did, why you did it, what you expected to find, what you found, what it means in approximately 150 words. Introduction
Background and rationale: The introduction should begin with a broad overview of the area and drill down into the specific areas to be researched in the study. You should provide a sound account of the theoretical framework of the study. Major studies in the area should be reviewed, understood and critically evaluated. These are not restricted to qualitative studies. It might be that an area has been primarily investigated from a quantitative perspective which might reveal a gap where qualitative studies could be useful to add to current knowledge.It should outline the issues and/or position you are arguing for. It should build up a clear rationale for the research.
All information in your report should be relevant to the topic of the report. There should be references and examples that clearly illustrate a theory, or approach to understanding the topic under investigation. Support your points with appropriate references from books and journal articles using the APA referencing style both in text and in the reference list at the end of the report.
Research questions: The introduction should develop like a funnel: you should start by referring to the general area of investigation which your study belongs to and then you should progressively narrow down to your specific aims and research questions. You should state clearly, correctly and fully your appropriate research questions and the specific aim of the research.
Method
The method should be divided into the following sub-sections:
Participants:
Who are your sample: gender, age, occupation, ethnic background (if known)? How many? How did you access your participants?
Data collection:
What does the data corpus consist of? What format do the data take? Analytic approach and procedures: You must provide a detailed description of the analysis technique used and your epistemological approach as well as an overview of the analytic process, e.g. your coding process including examples of codes created, how you arrived at themes or higher order categories, references to memos created (memos can be included as an appendix), a listing of the themes produced.