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CHAPTER 9GUIDELINES FOR WRITING RESEARCHREPORTSFree download from www.hsrcpress.ac.zaINTRODUCTIONThis chapter aims at identifying the essential elements of good project reports.Different researchers will obviously deal with these elements in their own way,but it is important that all researchers should account for the specific elementsas explicitly as possible. Each research report should be a scholarly documentand it should therefore comply with general standards of social sciencesresearch. The exposition of criteria (theoretical, meta-theoretical,methodological and technical) which follows, can in fact be regarded as asummary of the most important methodological considerations discussed inChapters 1 to 7.THE CONTEXT OF REPORTINGRecent studies in the sociology of science (Kuhn, Barnes, Hägstorm, Knorr-Cetina, Ravetz, et al.) emphasize the social nature of scientific praxis. The bestknown view is probably that of Thomas Kuhn in which the social structure ofscientific research, as embodied in his paradigm concept, constitutes the coreof his conception of science. Kuhn emphasizes that scientific research isembedded in a context of social structures, values and rules, giving newmeaning to tradional concepts such as scientific progress, truth, objectivity,validity, etc. Methodological criteria are not without context: their contents189