ACCA Articles

Guidance on preparing Oxford Brookes University RAP

In this article, Assad Pervaiz considers how to tackle the Oxford Brookes University Research and Analysis Project and offers some valuable guidance.

The Beginning

In preparing for the OBU Research & Analysis Project, most students spend a lot of time wondering as to what exactly the Research & Analysis Project (RAP) is all about. The reason for this is because they try to search the same amount and type of guidance as is available for the ACCA Exams. The starting point to work for the RAP is to clarify our understanding of what the RAP is all about.

Research & Analysis - as the name suggests -  is the applied research which we are required to carry out to meet our objectives.  Research is a part of academic studies in which you learn more than just models and theories.  You need to apply your professional knowledge in reaching an appropriate conclusion about your subject matter.

Oxford Brookes University requires you to prepare a 6,500 word report along with a 2,500 word Skills and Learning Statement (SLS). All information regarding the marking and grading of this report is available online on the ACCA website. You should download the “Basic Information Pack 2008” which will provide guidance on marking, the skills required in making the report and gives general guidance on the structure of your report.

In this article I will talk about few points we need to make clear while making the reports.

When preparing this report, you should keep in mind that you first need to set the objectives of the report i.e. what it is that you need to find out from your research. For example, if you select the topic of your research as ‘3 Years Financial and Business Performance of GE’,  then your objectives could be:

• What was the annual sales growth in 3 years period from 2006-08?
• What affect did rising oil prices have on the net profit for the year?
• How well did GE perform compared to its competitors?
• What impact did the ‘credit crunch’ have on the financial performance?
• What affect did new legislation have on the business performance of the company?

These are called ‘Research Questions’ or ‘Project Objectives’. You will note that in they all begin with ‘what’, ‘how’ , ‘did’ etc.

The primary objective of your research is to answer all these questions. From this, you should then get the information you would need for this i.e. the financial and business performance of your chosen company (GE in this case), competitors performance and financial and business news. To get all this information you could look at some of these sources:

• Company annual reports;
• Competitors annual reports;
• Journals;
• News Website (BBC, Financial Times, Economist etc.); and
• Internet (Google).

These are all secondary data, you may collect primary data to increase the quality of your report and present a better analysis, however it is acceptable to use secondary information which should be correctly referenced.

Conclusion
In this article, we have covered how to begin our project with a correct understanding. We will continue about the following parts in the next part of our guide.

Assad Pervaiz is an ACCA Student.