Reports and Proposals

1. Reports for monitoring and controlling operations are used to provide feedback and other information to aid in the decision making process.

2. Primary research is research that you gather for a specific new research project; interviews, surveys, and experiments are all types of primary research. Secondary research is research that has already been conducted for another purpose; books, newspapers, magazines, reports, and websites are all types of secondary research.

3. A survey is reliable if it would produce identical results when repeated. A survey is valid if it measures what it is supposed to measure. In order to make it reliable and valid, you should provide clear instructions, only ask information that participants can recall relatively easily, keep the survey short, ask specific questions, avoid ambiguous language, and don't use compound questions.

4. A conclusion is a logical interpretation of facts and other information; it is based solely on information that was provided in the report. On the other hand, a recommendation is a suggestion of what to do with the information contained in the report.

5. Proposal writers use RFPs to adhere to strict guidelines on what should be included in the proposal, including what type of work should be performed, and sticking to budgets, deadlines, and other requirements.

Persuasive Messages

1. In order to gauge the audience's needs while planning a persuasive message, you should ask for specific information about their demographics, psychographics, and their motivation. Also, you should ask what it is you want them to do, how might they resist, are there any alternative positions you need to examine, and what does the audience consider to be the most important issue.

2. Demographics and psychographics help the writer to understand and categorize the audiences needs; they provide information, such as age, gender, personality, income, lifestyle, and attitudes, that can help the writer gear his or her persuasive message to meet the needs of the audience.

3. Emotional appeals are used to call on audience's feelings and make them feel a certain way so they are more likely to accept your message. On the other hand, logical appeals are based on the audience's notion of reason.

4. The three types of reasoning in logical appeals are analogy, induction, and deduction.

5. The AIDA model is a common model of persuasion that mainly uses the indirect approach; it grabs the audiences attention, provides additional details to keep their interest, makes them desire your idea, and calls for a specific action. Its limitations are it is unidirectional meaning it talks at the audience and not with them, and it is built around a single event rather than used for building a long term relationship.