Create a Final Checklist of What to Include and Exclude
Analysts should self-check their research to ensure they meet all requirements. A helpful tool some analysts use to review their work is a checklist. You can make a checklist within the editor, an external document, or make notes on paper. These final checklists list things you MUST check before submitting a job.
To customize the checklist, include the Research Criteria and highlight important things to remember. Below are examples of things that may not be included in the project outline yet are important to remember:
- Exclude data from a specific company, XYZ.
- Sources must be from the last 36 months.
- Report must include screenshots.
Let’s look at an example of how we can customize the checklist.
Example
Below is a research outline. What would your checklist look like for this assignment?
Research Outline
Provide 4-5 examples of how countries or states have used incentives or favorable terms to attract new industries into the region.
- Focus on examples where the industry was either not in the region or had a minimal presence. As necessary, the scope may be expanded to include what governments are doing, in general, to attract new companies (as opposed to new industries) to the region.
- For each, provide the following information:
- Location (state or country)
- Sector (e.g., agriculture, high tech, oil & gas). Be as specific as possible.
- Description: Provide an overview of the incentives or favorable terms noting, as found during the course of this research, the names of specific companies that were offered these incentives.
- As found during the course of this research, note any publicly available analysis on whether the government “overpaid” for those incentives (e.g., comparison with other comparable states/governments).
- Themes - as applicable, categorize the incentives by themes
- Source
- Geographic Scope: Global
Customized, the checklist might look like this:
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📖 An example of a checklist
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