Both theses and reports are academic documents undertaken by students to complete course and degree program requirements. Reports are generally shorter than theses, but both are required and graded in undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degree programs.
Theses and reports are often written and formatted to academic style guidelines such as the American Psychology Association (APA) style or Modern Language Association (MLA) style. These style guides dictate how reference lists are formatted, page margins, font size, section headings and how in-text citations must appear. The guidelines apply uniformly to both theses and reports.
A title page generally opens both theses and reports, followed by a dedication, acknowledgements, an abstract (summary) and a table of contents. Properly formatted lists of tables, figures and illustrations are next, followed by the thesis or report content. Thesis and report content is segmented into chapters; however, what those chapters address in a thesis is different from what they address in a report.
Theses chapters are separated into an introduction, followed by a literature review, discussion, methodology, results and a conclusion section. Report chapters are organized based on natural breaks in the content such that a report on 1950s fashion might feature chapters on men's clothes, women's clothes, children's clothes, accessories, hairstyles and shoes.
The preparation for theses and reports is similar. Both require extensive research on what other published studies and authors have written about a given subject. Writers generally create outlines for each and generate a detailed paragraph that acts as a road map to guide the reader (and writer) through the paper. The longer the thesis or report, the more research is required to make the papers robust and meaningful.