REPORTWRITER

Developed By:
Dr. Judith Wiener
Dr. Peter Lindsay
Dr. Pat Harris
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT)
Revised Edition By:  Dr. Judith Wiener & Tanya Galway

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Welcome to ReportWriter.  A computer-based psychological report writing package.  ReportWriter is a computer-based psychological report writing package designed to address two important issues.  First, ReportWriter was developed to facilitate the consistent production of reports that are written in a manner research suggests leads to better comprehension.  Since psychological reports are used extensively for making decisions about the placement and programming of many students, it is important that participants in the decision making process (principals, teachers, and parents) be able to read these reports and understand their implications.  Second, ReportWriter was constructed in such a way as to decrease the amount of time required to produce reports.

If you are just learning about psychoeducational assessment, you will find all the basic information you need in this package to aid your writing of psychological reports that are clear and easy to read.  If you are already familiar with psychoeducational assessment and word processing, ReportWriter will outline new techniques and useful tricks to facilitate the efficient production of comprehensible reports. Wiener (1987) found that reports written in considerate text (i.e., text formatted in such a way that readers can access the information easily), were best comprehended by parents, teachers and principals.  As will be discussed in Chapter 3, the Question-and-Answer report format was found to be most consistent with the principles of considerate text.  The Guide to ReportWriter has been written in considerate text and the Question-and-Answer format in order to provide a model for the reader.  Thus, for each chapter, the goals of the chapter and the questions to be addressed are listed at the beginning of the chapter.  The questions are then converted into headings and the information presented under these headings.  The only technical terms we use are those that are familiar to people with a basic knowledge of psychology and of word processing. 

last updated October 2005