IRP Summary:

Think of this section as an abstract or overview of your research paper. This entire report should be four to six pages, including tables and charts. Try not to exceed ten pages. Everything that you put into this paper should have a purpose and add value to your analysis. In the first paragraph of this section, provide a brief overview of the analytical question you are trying to answer in this analysis. Try to quickly, but effectively answer the who, what, why, when, where questions of your topic and why we should care about the topic.

In the second paragraph of this section, discuss the SAS tools and tasks that you used to complete the analysis, and identify the nature (origins, date, owner – the “meta data”) of the data set you used for analysis.

In the third paragraph of this section, briefly summarize your findings, conclusions, and clearly communicate your recommendation. If the decision maker agrees, they may not read past this section of your report (but your instructor will).

Issue Identification:

In this section, discuss the issue that your analyzing. Consider more deeply the “who, what, why, where, when, and how?” questions as you discuss the issue, going into more detail than you did in the “IRP Summary” section. Make sure you identify the primary issue, not a symptom of your problem or opportunity. This can take some research, and critical thought to arrive at the primary issue.

Issue Analysis:

In the first part of this section, briefly discuss your analysis plan. How do you plan to answer the question you have about your issue? Make sure you clearly identify the question that you are hoping to answer.

Data:

Discuss in detail your data, where it came from, how you cleaned it, etc. Provide a table with descriptive statistics from SAS. This is the section that you fill in based on the “IRP Research Question and Data Set” assignment.

Analysis:

In this section, discuss your analysis in detail. Include any relevant tables and charts. Do not change the margins, and make sure all graphics fit on the page and do not break across pages.

Conclusion:

In this section, clearly identify the analytical conclusion you have reached after your analysis of the data. Make sure you interpret your findings, parameters, and what you learned from the analysis.

Course of Action Development

In this section, discuss at least three courses of action that could be used to improve a problem or take advantage of the opportunity identified by your analysis. Try to think of different ways to address the issue given the resources. Try to think “out of the box”. Consider expensive and inexpensive solutions, fast or permanent solutions, high quality versus low quality solutions for example.

Recommendation

In this section, discuss your recommendation on how to improve a problem or take advantage of the opportunity identified by your analysis. Defend your recommendation using the results of your analysis, but be brief and clear.