(Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash)

Reports are read for the information.

Having an efficient strategy to read reports helps in browsing through the content quickly obtaining the information.

There are three stages to reading a report.

1.     Skim through the report, reading title, headings, and subheadings and looking for images and graphs.

This will help to understand what the report is about.

How it is presented?

What kind of information is provided?

2.     What do you know about the topic before you read?

Ask yourself what information you are knowing beforehand.

If you already know about the topic, you can skim through the report and leave.

3.     Look for the claims and evidence while reading the full report.

For example, observe this paragraph from the Guardian’s report. I have bolded the claim while the evidence is italicized.

There have been growing calls for a change in the law, with interventions from celebrities such as Esther Rantzen, who has described the UK government’s law on assisted dying as a “mess” as well as individuals like Paola Marra, who spoke to the Guardian last week before she ended her life at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland after suffering with terminal stage 4 bowel cancer since 2021.

In a nutshell, skim the report to have a general overview and look for claims and evidence to filter out key points from the report.