In the world of (applied) science we often focus heavily on how to get the research design, data collection, and analysis right. There are plenty of guides on specific methods with which we can gain powerful insights. But we often pay less attention to the last step of our research project: Turning the collected data into actionable knowledge. Decision makers do not only need to understand what the results are, but also what they mean: what can we learn from the data? Are our initial questions answered? What are the next steps to take?

Without good recommendations, we sell our work short: most people will not have the time to go through our carefully designed and executed study to find out how they can use this new knowledge. But, what are good recommendations and how do we come up with them? There are three basic questions that you need to address: Who, Why, and What.

• Who is your audience?
  Who do you want to give recommendations to? Your target group determines your recommendations!
• Why should people listen to you?
  How does the context of your research connect to your target group’s interests? Your recommendations must be tailored to their interests and needs! Ideally, your recommendations can help to fix a problem.
• What are you offering?
  You cannot show everything. You need to decide which of your results are (most) interesting and based on these insights provide guidance on next steps.

Once you have established what you want to recommend and to whom, you need to focus on the HOW. Powerful recommendations are clear, specific, evidence-based, and actionable in the real world. To formulate these, it is helpful to put yourself in the shoes of the main stakeholder receiving your recommendations.

Ask yourself the following questions:

Reading this recommendation,

1. …would I understand the precise course of action being recommended? (What are we to do?)
2. … would I understand the intended outcome of taking that action? (What will be the expected result?)
3. … would I understand why I should trust that the implementation will be successful? (What is the evidence?)

Tweak your recommendations until you can answer these questions confidently.

To write powerful recommendations we provide you with some hands-on advice: To capture the central argument of your recommendation, you usually only need two lead sentences:

You can then go on and build your argumentation around these two core sentences.

Click here or below to download the guide as pdf.

This content is part of Behavia’s training on applied research. If you want to know more about this training, please reach out to us.

Author(s): Daniel Ahrndsen & Esther Schuch