1 - Vanderbilt-Meharry Community Engaged Research Core - Narrative Summary Guidelines
GUIDELINES FOR CREATING A
NARRATIVE SUMMARY
Researchers and clinicians play an important role in disseminating aggregate research findings to
participants in their studies. Recent research suggests that study participants desire to have
research findings returned to them, and that doing so can help build trust and encourage future
research participation. A Narrative Summary is a written summary of your study’s research
findings. It is a useful way to succinctly summarize the purpose, main findings, and impact of your
research study that is shared with research participants. Crafting a Narrative Summary can
accompany writing a scientific manuscript and abstract. You may also want to consider creating a
Public Summary aimed at disseminating study findings to the general public.
Use the guidelines below and the corresponding template to write a summary of your research
study and results to disseminate to study participants.
NARRATIVE SUMMARY GUIDELINES
1. Reading Level
Aim to write the summary at a 6th grade reading level. Keep in mind that including certain
scientific terms may be unavoidable and will raise the reading level. In these cases, be sure to
define these terms in plain language and/or use a simplified figure or picture to illustrate your
point.
Ways to lower reading level:
• Use short sentences (15 words or under) to improve the readability of the
summary.
• Whenever possible, use words that are no longer than two syllables.
Tip! Use tools in Microsoft Word to quickly and easily check readability
statistics!
2. Understandability
The Narrative Summary should be clear and understandable to a diverse audience of
varying levels of educational attainment and understanding of scientific findings.
