Your Final Report is essentially a thorough but concise writeup of your entire investigation, noting its successess, shortcomings and what you would suggest be pursued next.
The Final Report is meant to be a standalone report, which means you'll be including your Analysis Plan's literature review (though it might have been improved/expanded upon given feedback). You may have changed your investigative methods from what you proposed in your analysis plan. The big thing to remember: everything a reader needs to know to understand the Report should be found in the report.
The Final Report accounts for 35% of your final grade and should be a professional academic paper.
Your Final Report should follow a professional journal format with:
A concise standalone summary of the entire report that can be understood without reading the full paper. Your abstract should include:
Description of the reason you chose your analysis topic. In this section, you should provide some background research on the topic (this is the literature review), and a statement of your prior expectations for how your study would turn out.
This is a summary of the statistical analysis (the methods and the data used). Structure this section based on the questions of interest.
Note each investigative path (e.g., analysis method) explored and why it was selected (this may largely be a retread of the Analysis Plan).
Discuss the results of each analysis and include tables, graphs and other visuals as necessary. This is the most important part of this section. As long as you do what you say you are going to do in the Analysis Plan, this subsection encompasses almost all of the new work, and much of your grade will come from how well you do in explaining and visualizing your results.
All graphics and tables must be constructed according to the requirements on the Graphics page. Graphics should be elucidating and germane to your analysis — focus on model results and insights, not routine EDA unless illustrative. Tables should be formatted professionally and not look like raw software output.
At the end of this section, explain any changes from the initial Analysis Plan.
This is a statement of the subject matter implications of your study and discussion of further questions raised by your study.
Note which method yielded the best results and explain its relative success in the context of addressing the problem.
Explain the shortcomings of your findings and suggest what might be good next steps for further investigation.
This is an enumerated list, in APA-style, of the works you referenced throughout your Report.
This section contains paragraph-length summaries of each individual member's analysis and other relative contributions.
Note any team member who does not contribute at least 80% of what is expected for this deliverable. This appendix is required for all Final Reports.