Essential Preliminary Pages in a Research Report

The first few pages of a research report rarely contain the original findings, yet they carry an outsized burden. They establish credibility, signal academic rigour, and help busy evaluators decide whether to keep reading. For students of population and family health studies, where reports often deal with sensitive demographic data, fertility patterns, or maternal health outcomes, these preliminary pages are the formal handshake that introduces your work to examiners, policymakers, and peers. Getting them right is not a cosmetic exercise but a structural one.

What preliminary pages actually do 🔗

Preliminary pages are everything that appears before the main text of a research report, typically numbered in lowercase Roman numerals (i, ii, iii) rather than Arabic numerals. They orient the reader, document authorship and approval, list contents, and provide a condensed overview of the study. According to the UNC-Chapel Hill Graduate School’s thesis and dissertation guide, the preliminary section typically follows a fixed sequence: title page, copyright page, abstract, dedication, acknowledgements, preface, table of contents, and lists of tables and figures. Each element has a job, and skipping or mishandling any one of them weakens the document as a whole.

These pages are also a navigation system. A reader interested only in your fertility-rate calculations should be able to jump straight to that table without scanning the entire report. A funder may read nothing beyond the executive summary. A future researcher might rely on your list of abbreviations to decode terms like TFR, NFHS, or MMR. The preliminary pages serve all these audiences simultaneously.

The title and cover page 🔗

The title page is the first physical impression of your report, and it carries more information than most students realise. A well-constructed title page communicates the subject, the people responsible, the institutional backing, and the academic purpose of the document, all without a single line of prose.

Crafting the title 🔗

The title should be a concise yet comprehensive description of the study’s content. The University of Utah’s Graduate School formatting guidelines recommend that titles be informative enough to support cataloguing and data retrieval, since search engines and library databases use these keywords to index your work. A vague title like “A Study on Women’s Health” is almost useless to a researcher searching for literature; “Determinants of Antenatal Care Utilisation Among Tribal Women in Jharkhand, 2019-2021” tells the reader exactly what to expect.

Good titles in population and family health studies usually combine the variable of interest, the population studied, the geographical setting, and the time frame. Avoid abbreviations and acronyms unless they are universally recognised, and resist the temptation to use clever or literary phrasings that obscure the topic.

Author details and institutional affiliation 🔗

Below the title, the author’s full legal name appears, followed by the degree being sought, the department, the institution, and the date of submission. For collaborative reports, all contributing authors should be listed, ideally with their roles or affiliations clarified. The title page typically also includes a formal statement of submission, for example, “A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Public Health.”

Institutional logos, if permitted, appear at the top. The supervisor’s name may also be included on the title page or on a separate approval page, depending on the institution’s conventions. Population studies departments in Indian universities often follow guidelines issued by the University Grants Commission for dissertations and theses, which prescribe specific formats for the cover and title pages.

The executive summary 🔗

The executive summary is one of the most read and least carefully written sections of any research report. Many decision-makers, particularly in government departments and NGOs working on family health programmes, may read only the executive summary before acting on a report’s recommendations. This makes it disproportionately important.

What an executive summary should contain 🔗

An executive summary is a stand-alone document that captures the essence of the full report. The University of Southern California’s research guide defines it as a thorough overview that synthesises key points so the reader can completely understand the contents of the main study without reading it. It typically covers the purpose of the study, the methodology, the principal findings, and the recommendations.

Unlike a research abstract, which is typically 150 to 300 words and aimed at an academic audience, the executive summary is longer, written for policymakers and administrators, and almost always includes explicit recommendations. The University of Maryland Global Campus Writing Center notes that the executive summary should mirror the structure of the full report, contain only the principal findings, and be capable of being read on its own without reference to tables or appendices.

Length and tone 🔗

The standard guideline is that an executive summary should be roughly 10 to 15 per cent of the full report’s length. For a 50-page dissertation on contraceptive use in rural Bihar, this means an executive summary of about five to seven pages. Keep the language clear and free of technical jargon, since the audience may include programme officers, health administrators, and journalists who are not specialists in demography. Use the active voice, write in the present tense for purpose statements, and lead with the most important findings rather than burying them.

The preface and the foreword 🔗

These two elements are often confused, and many students include both when only one is needed. They serve different purposes and are written by different people.

The preface 🔗

The preface is written by the author and provides personal context for the research. According to the Paperpal academic writing guide, a preface typically explains the author’s motivation for undertaking the study, the circumstances that shaped the research, the challenges faced, and a brief description of how the work unfolded. It is more personal in tone than the main text but should still maintain academic decorum.

A preface for a study on adolescent reproductive health, for example, might explain how the researcher first encountered the topic during field training in a primary health centre, how an internship with an NGO sharpened the research questions, and which mentors helped refine the methodology. It is not a place for unfounded background information or substantive arguments; those belong in the introduction.

The foreword 🔗

The foreword is written by someone other than the author, typically a senior academic, a domain expert, or an institutional head. Its purpose is to lend credibility to the report and to situate it within the broader field. The Better Thesis project notes that a foreword is optional and usually half a page to a page in length. In published research reports by institutions like the Indian Council of Medical Research or the National Health Mission, forewords are commonly contributed by directors or senior officials who endorse the work.

Student dissertations rarely include a foreword. If you are unsure whether your report needs one, check your institution’s submission guidelines or consult your supervisor.

Acknowledgements 🔗

The acknowledgements section is where the author thanks the people and institutions that contributed to the research. It is generally placed after the title page and before the table of contents, though some institutions place it after the abstract. It should be kept to one page in most academic reports.

Structure your acknowledgements hierarchically. Begin with formal academic contributors, your supervisor, committee members, and co-investigators. Move to institutional support, including funding agencies, research centres, and libraries. Then mention field staff, survey enumerators, and study participants. Close with personal acknowledgements to family and friends. Scribbr’s guide on thesis acknowledgements emphasises that this section permits a slightly more personal tone and the use of first-person pronouns, which are usually avoided in the main academic text.

Be specific. Instead of writing “I thank my supervisor for her guidance,” try “I am grateful to Dr Sharma for her detailed feedback on the sampling design and her patience during multiple rounds of revision.” Specificity makes acknowledgements meaningful rather than formulaic. For studies involving sensitive topics like maternal mortality or sexual health, be careful to maintain confidentiality when acknowledging participants, referring to them collectively rather than by name.

Lists in the preliminary pages 🔗

Lists serve as navigation tools and become indispensable in reports that contain many tables, figures, or specialised terms. Population and family health reports typically contain demographic tables, age-sex pyramids, fertility curves, regional comparison charts, and policy timelines, all of which need to be locatable.

Table of contents 🔗

The table of contents lists all chapters, sections, and subsections with their page numbers. It should not list anything that precedes it (the title page or acknowledgements, for example) but must include every part that follows, including appendices and references. Use a consistent indentation hierarchy so that chapters, sections, and subsections are visually distinguishable.

List of tables and list of figures 🔗

These appear on separate pages after the table of contents. Each table or figure is listed with its number, full caption, and page reference. The numbering usually follows a chapter-based system; for example, Table 3.2 is the second table in Chapter 3. This makes cross-referencing easier in long documents.

List of abbreviations 🔗

Population and family health research is dense with acronyms. A reader unfamiliar with NFHS (National Family Health Survey), SRS (Sample Registration System), CPR (Contraceptive Prevalence Rate), or IMR (Infant Mortality Rate) will struggle without a glossary. A list of abbreviations placed before the main text spares the reader from searching for definitions every time a term reappears. National surveys like the National Family Health Survey publish reports with extensive abbreviation lists precisely because their datasets touch dozens of demographic indicators.

List of appendices 🔗

If your report contains substantial supplementary material, like questionnaires, ethics clearance letters, raw data tables, or coding manuals, a separate list of appendices helps readers locate them. This is particularly useful in reports submitted for evaluation, where reviewers may need to verify the study instruments quickly.

The standard order of preliminary pages 🔗

While conventions vary slightly between institutions, the widely accepted order is: title page, copyright or declaration page, certificate of approval, dedication (optional), acknowledgements, preface (if used), abstract or executive summary, table of contents, list of tables, list of figures, and list of abbreviations. Pagination uses lowercase Roman numerals for the preliminary section, switching to Arabic numerals starting with the first page of the main text. Always verify the specific format prescribed by your university or funding agency, since deviations can cause reports to be returned for correction.

What do you think? If you had to read only the preliminary pages of a research report before deciding whether to fund a follow-up study, which element would carry the most weight for you, the executive summary, the institutional affiliations, or the depth of the acknowledgements? And in your own academic writing so far, which preliminary page have you found hardest to draft well?

References

1. https://gradschool.unc.edu/academics/thesis-diss/guide/ordercomponents.html
2. https://gradschool.utah.edu/thesis/handbook/preliminary-pages.php
3. https://www.ugc.gov.in/
4. https://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/executivesummary
5. https://www.umgc.edu/current-students/learning-resources/writing-center/writing-resources/professional-and-presentation/executive-summary
6. https://paperpal.com/blog/academic-writing-guides/what-is-a-dissertation-preface-definition-and-examples
7. https://betterthesis.dk/writing-process/lesson-1-structure-your-report/title-page-abstract-foreword-abbreviations-table-of-contents
8. https://main.icmr.nic.in/
9. https://nhm.gov.in/
10. https://www.scribbr.com/dissertation/acknowledgements/
11. https://rchiips.org/nfhs/