Is there a standard format for presenting a data analysis report based on a questionnaire? I am doing some class work and I was wondering if there is a universally accepted format for analyzing and presenting the data in a Word document for data gathered from questionnaires.
 A: I'll do my best to interpret your question.
Style Rules


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*Many journals and disciplines adopt a style guide (e.g., APA, Chicago, MLA, etc.). 
If one applies to you, then you are likely to have many relevant rules to guide you in the presentation of tables, figures, and much more.


Table and Figure Design


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*There are many common tables and figures that I've seen for summarising information about responses of a sample to a questionnaire.
Much of it depends on the nature of the questionnaire items.

*If you have a bunch of likert items, it's common to present a table where for each item  percentages for each response option is given along with means.

*If you have categorical predictors (e.g., gender, race, income category, etc.) you might want to present a table comparing means for the groups along with tests of statistical significance.

*If you have scales (i.e., items are combined to form a composite), you may want to present a table of these means.

*If you have benchmarks or norms, you may want to incorporate these into the table to aid in interpretation.

*Much more could be said, but it depends a lot on your design, your research question, and other considerations.


File Formats and Document Creation Tools


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*Your question uses the term "word" document.
Arguably, this confuses two issues.

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*First, there is the issue of file formats. You could create your document using many file formats. Word is only one of a class of word processor file formats. I prefer to use LaTeX, Markdown, or HTML depending on my purpose and then, often, generate a PDF for sharing. Sweave (or some equivalent weaving format) in particular is worth considering if you want to make your report more reproducible.

*Second, there is the issue of the document creation tool. 
MS Word is only one tool. I prefer to use a good text editor to write one of the above mentioned plain text formats. 


*The main point is that regardless of your creation tool or file format, you should be able to produce a report that looks a certain way (although some tools and file formats facilitate given aims better than others; LaTeX in particular produces more attractive word spacing than MS Word, for example).

A: Jeremy has offered many constructive suggestions.  I'll add the point that 

"If there were one approach that was
  clearly superior, then the Law of the
  Statistical Jungle would dictate that
  it would survive, and all of the other
  techniques would exist only as
  historical footnotes. The continued
  survival of all of them, and the
  constant introduction of new ones,
  indicates that no clearly superior
  solution exists; hence, the
  unfortunate need to think about what
  we're doing." --- Geoffrey Norman and David Streiner

