Recommendations

If required, recommendations should emerge from the conclusions of the report. Recommendations tell the reader what to do: what decision to make, what course of action to take, what alternative solution is superior or what further work needs to be undertaken. Although subjective, that is the recommendations arise from your opinion and judgements, the recommendation section should never contain any new evidence and should arise from the information presented in the body and conclusion sections (Blicq, 1992: 152).

Recommendations should be feasible and appropriate to the problem; for example, their cost should be realistic to the budget and they should be ethical (Weaver & Weaver, 1977). The recommendations section provides your opinion on the course of action to be taken, you should not, therefore, hedge your bets by recommending all possible actions. Sometimes it may be the case that you recommend that no action be taken as this, in your opinion, is the best course of action to take (Weaver & Weaver, 1977).

Recommendations are written for action so they should be as concrete and specific as possible; they should read as a list of things the client should do. They can be written in prose, or can be presented as ‘bulleted’ information. Break each recommendation down into as many component parts as seems logical. Let your reader know why you are recommending an action by supplying the reasons for your decision drawn from the conclusions of the report. Include helpful and useful information in your recommendation such as how to implement the course of action suggested or other sources of information the reader may want to follow up (Weaver & Weaver, 1977).

Recommendations should usually be presented as a separate section from the conclusion but sometimes it is also appropriate to combine them as separately labelled subsections in a Conclusion & Recommendations section.