14 What is an Issue-Analysis Report?
The core of an issue-analysis report is that it reports information, which is something that we do all the time in our daily lives. “What’d you do this weekend?” “Nothing much. Went to the lake. Played some Tears of the Kingdom. Watched a movie.” That’s a report, a word that comes from the Latin root portare meaning “to carry”[1] and the prefix re- meaning “back.” Essentially, then, a report is where you “carry back” information that you got from one place to someone in another. So, for this paper, it’s your job to go get information from somewhere[2] and “carry” it back to your readers in the form of a written report.
The other half of the assignment title—the “issue analysis” part—tells you what kind of report you’re going to be putting together. For this essay, you’re going to choose an issue, ask a question about it, and thoroughly analyze the issue in an effort to find an answer. Ideally, this issue will be a difficult one—one that’s not easy to understand, agree on, or come up with a solution for, which is why you’ll need to rely on the answers you find in reputable research sources. Your job is to try and understand the issue as completely as you can and present a summary of all sides of the issue in your report. It doesn’t matter what you think about the issue—you have to present a complete view of the information without allowing your personal opinions to influence how you write about it. In other words, your readers should not be able to figure out how you actually feel about the issue you’ve chosen to write about, even if you include information that you agree with as part of the analysis you write.
Let’s be really clear about that last point. Objectivity is the name of the game for this paper, which means you have to work extra hard to hide your true feelings on the issue. Let’s consider an example of an issue that is complex and has people with passionate feelings about it on both sides: gun control. Let’s assume you feel very strongly about the second amendment and an American citizen’s right to bear arms without interference from the government. If you choose to write about the current situation with firearms in the US, you have to be able to report that there are also people who feel very threatened by guns, that there is data showing that increased gun ownership leads to gun violence, and that there are countries that have resolved the issue within their own countries and reduced the incidence to nearly zero.
Now, if you feel like guns are a critical safety issue and should be removed from the hands of American citizens, you also have to be able to write that there are people who feel that hunting is a part of their culture that millions of people participate in without problems every year, that government overreach is a serious threat to their freedom, and that the removal of guns from law-abiding citizens would just leave them in the hands of criminals who wish to do them harm, leaving them defenseless.
No matter which side you personally stand on, you have to be able to write about both sides in such a way that your reader cannot tell which side you agree with. That’s the meaning of writing objectively.[3]
