Written Reports

1. Written Reports Guidelines

2. Basic Guidelines • The group projects are 35% of your course grade.  Half of this will be the group presentations made today, the remainder will be the write-up of your analysis.  Our guests from Alltel were very pleased with the quality of the survey and the presentations made. • Each group is limited to 8-10 pages of double-spaced (12 pt. Times Roman font, 1” margins), discussion concerning their group’s results—not the results of the overall project.  Make use of headings (Bold, left justified) to break up the discussion into the areas covered in your presentation. Don’t create any orphan headings, (one or two lines following it on the page)    • Be sure to refer to specific analysis by an exhibit number, as well as stating the type of analysis that produced it. • All accompanying exhibits (and all that are attached must be discussed) must be in pages of SPSS output (do not attempt to edit them as exhibits within an MS Word document).  Edit the “Title” portion of the output sequentially (Exhibit A, Exhibit B, Table 1, Table 2…).  Edit-out (delete) portions of SPSS output that you will not discuss, and do not submit exhibits that cannot be printed on a single page. • Do not use any special binders, use a heavy paper clip (and a title page) for this report.  Photocopies will be made for Alltel. • Due date: Thursday, May 11, 5:00

3. Executive Summary (30%) • Example, Executive Summary: Decision Process • Names of the group members. • Purpose of the report, i. e, each group’s focus area • Key “take away” point(s), major findings • Organization, overview of the analysis (subheadings found in the report). • Must remain solely on the first page, no exceptions • Hint: This should be the first and last area written.

4. Analysis (50%) • It may follow the organization of the in-class presentation, but because it’s a written format, can be different, but must follow the flow in the Executive Summary. • Should include discussion answering the purpose of the analysis or “why?;” Such as “Why did we use cluster analysis?” • Must discuss all SPSS output attached, (Alltel already has the nice graphics from presentation. Do not include any non-SPSS graphics, or merge graphics into text.) • Does it address a question(s) posed by David Bell and Sara Day on Tuesday? • David Bell asked questions about the significance of differences—be sure to include indicators of statistical significance when possible.

5. Quality of writing (20%) • Grammar • Spelling • Following group guidelines • Think of it as penalty on a “rogue” group, such as going with a smaller font, wider margins, etc.

6. Questions Posed by Sara and David: • Each group should examine one of the three questions posed by the Alltel executives: • This will require a new analysis that assesses the relevance of their question.

7. T-Mobile was the only brand to establish any form of association, what is the significance of this? • Is there a way to compare the responses of those that associate T-Mobile with celebrities with any other measure—what’s the benefit from creating this association?

8. When asked the importance of “choice of handset,” when selecting a wireless carrier, it wasn’t that important, but when asked about handset features, nearly everything scored high…

9. You’ve provided several analyses that examine the responses from the entire sample, but only about 1/3 of the respondents are the ones that actually chose their wireless carrier and not all of those are paying their wireless bill…