What is it?  A written summary of the research goals and key learnings. Sometimes it also includes other contextual information, such as links to pertinent study artifacts, details about the research team, the project’s background, methodology, respondent profile, key quotes, timeline and next steps. Oftentimes it is the only written output from a research project, other times it is followed by a full report and/or presentation and/or a video highlight reel.

When is it best used? Every research project should have a topline report as output that is shared following the research findings to be used as a reference for the stakeholders and for others in the future.

What does it entail? A topline report in market research most often captures the most important learnings from a qualitative or quantitative research study, without doing full analysis, to update the stakeholders on the learnings within a few days. Or, it can be authored after the full analysis, which is more typical in UX research. 

In both instances, it is based on the data collected and ideally discussions with other members of the research or the broader stakeholder team if they were present during the research study. Fast turnaround topline reports should include a disclaimer stating that it is not based on full analysis.

Interchangeable term: Summary report

Use in a sentence: The topline report took forever to compile because the stakeholders kept disagreeing with the findings as they did not confirm their hypothesis!

Related terms: Share out, synthesis, executive summary, debrief report

Visual: Yes

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