An effective assessment document answers three sets of questions:
1. What is the topic or question? What is the problem and who cares? Why should an audience pay attention to this problem? Why is it interesting and important in theory or practice?
2. What do we know and what don’t we know about this problem? What are the main issues, underlying principles and concepts that have already informed the topic or question? What puzzle, controversy, or paradox does this assessment document address, and why does it need to be addressed?
3. What will we learn? How will the way you write this assessment document change or challenge readers’ understanding?

An effective assessment document contains five elements:

1. The Question – “what exactly am I trying to find out?”
Different questions require different approaches to answer them. Here is an example of a question that identifies a research problem:
Why do innovations not readily spread, even if backed by strong evidence? (Ferlie, Fitzgerald, Wood and Hawkins, 2005)


The question creates a perspective, a certain way to interrogate empirical phenomena or existing theories. Identifying what you are looking for is one of the most important elements for guiding an enquiry.


2. Outline – “what kind of focus on the topic do I want to achieve?”
The outline is a short, punchy, present-tense summary of your assessment document’s topic or theme (can be broad or more focused). Writing an outline provides a constructive framework for your assessment document, motivating you, and making sure you stay on track as you develop your ideas.
Here is the outline for a highly rated academic publication: (Ferlie, Fitzgerald, Wood and Hawkins, 2005)
The spread of innovations re-emerged as an important theme within the health care sector with the rise of the evidence-based medicine movement, according to which clinical practice should be based on rigorous evidence rather than on clinical opinion. This premise implies a need for innovations to realign existing clinical practice with evidence. The evidence-based medicine movement is evident in a number of health care systems, including those of America and Canada, and it is a policy focus in the U.K. National Health Service, whose policy makers and managers wish to understand more about the diffusion of evidence-based innovations.

Martin Wood 2018
3. Statement of Intent – “what will I do?”
Assessment documents often include one or more statements that provide a focus and a clear rationale and that engage in a broader discussion about contextual issues or ethics or research.
Here is a statement of intent from the above Academy of Management Journal article (Ferlie, et al, 2005):

We here report evidence that adds to Van de Ven and colleagues’ model of “messy” pathways: specifically, we argue that strong boundaries between professional groups at the micro level of practice slow innovation spread.

We develop an alternative theory of the impact of high professionalization that contrasts with the conventional theory in which high professionalization is seen as enhancing innovation spread. This new theory of the retarding impact of conditions of multiprofessionalization on the spread of innovations is useful in other settings, such as global organizations, in which there is a wish to share innovations across disciplines.


4. Engagement with Prior Research – “what key theoretical perspectives and empirical findings have already informed the topic or question?”
Various ideas and research streams are included in plans to position the assessment document in relation to related research, and engage the underlying theoretical narrative that is the foundation and a motivation for the enquiry.
Here are the research precedents motivating the aforementioned AMJ article (Ferlie, et al, 2005):

The literature on organizational change is immense, but some prior work has focused specifically on change in professionalized organizations. These organizations have been described as “negotiated orders” (Weick, 1979) in which ambiguous professional work is “enacted” in local groups.

Prior research has established distinctive features of change in the health care sector (McNulty & Ferlie, 2002; Pettigrew, Ferlie, & McKee 1992). Professionals have the power to block change in this sector, so they must be engaged in a change process for it to succeed.

A second distinctive characteristic of the health care sector is collective rather than individual leadership in change (Denis, Langley, & Cazale, 1996; Pettigrew et al, 1992). The distinct features noted in prior research led us to question rationalistic and managerialist perspectives on evidence-based medicine implementation in highly professionalized health care organizations.


Martin Wood 2018
5. Conclusions and Implications – “so what?”

Your conclusions and implications are a forum in which to strengthen your assessment document’s message, and in the process, convince readers of its larger, underlying value. Another is the opportunity to embed your contribution more fully in the existing literature.

This element is both an ending and a new beginning, realised concurrently. It constitutes an ending in the sense that discussion of implications helps to bring closure to an assessment document, illuminating its two or three most critical insights in a broad and reflective fashion. It also represents a new beginning in that it brings to light new and valuable ideas.

Critical here is a bridge between your assessment document and the larger literature. For example, in the above AMJ article, the results reconceptualised the nonspread of innovations within large, multiprofessional organisations:

Previous studies (Coleman et al, 1966; Rogers, 1995) contain the argument that professional networks spread innovations but represent a uniprofessional perspective. The dynamics are more complex in multiprofessional organizations. Many global organizations in the public and the private sectors contain multiple groups of professionals, specialists, and experts, so our results have implications beyond health care. Developing the work of Van de Ven and colleagues (1999), attention should now focus on the boundaries between professional groups, individual professionals, and associated communities of practice in the local enactment of innovations.

6. Reference
Ferlie, E., L. Fitzgerald, M. Wood and C. Hawkins. The (Non) Spread of Innovations: The Mediating Role of Professionals. Academy of Management Journal 48/1: 117-134*.

* This formative contribution was a rare non-US winner of the 2006 AMJ “Best Article” and has been identified as a point of reference in an editorial series.