You will produce a short research brief for a real work question in which every claim links to a checked source.
A useful research brief has three things. Every claim points to a source you have opened, the question is one your team actually needs answered, and what you don't know is written down as clearly as what you do. Set aside about forty-five minutes to write one, or longer if the question is a hard one.
At work, most research ends up as a few paragraphs in an email or a slide, and the sources get lost along the way. Later, when someone asks where a figure came from, nobody can say. The brief you write here is meant to do the opposite: anyone reading it can click through to the evidence behind each line. Use the methods from lessons 4.1 to 4.3 throughout.
Pick a question your team actually needs answered. Good types are how a competitor prices its main service, what a new regulation will mean for a process the team runs, how big a customer segment is in Singapore, and what the options are for a tool the team is considering.
The question must be specific enough to answer on one page. "What is happening in the wellness industry?" is too broad. "How do our three closest competitors price corporate wellness programmes for companies of 50 to 200 staff, and has that changed in the last two years?" is specific enough. The details in that second question are illustrative. Narrow your own question in the same way until one page could answer it.
Write the question at the top of the document. Below it, write one sentence on why the team needs the answer and what decision it feeds into. That sentence keeps the research pointed at something, and you can check each source you find against it.
Start a timer now and keep it running until the brief is finished. Use search or a research mode to gather material. Asking for a reading list first, as in lesson 4.3, often works better than asking for the answer straight away.
Open every source and check that it exists and is relevant to your question. For each claim you plan to use, apply the method from lesson 4.2, "Trace every claim back to a source you opened": find the passage, read it in context, check the date, and prefer the primary source wherever one exists.
As you go, keep a running tally of every AI-supplied claim you removed or corrected. Write a one-word reason beside each one: unsupported, wrong or outdated.
The brief is one page at most, in this order:
The question and why it matters, in two sentences A short answer in your own words, in two or three sentences Findings, each a sentence or two with its source linked directly after it What remains uncertain: gaps, conflicting sources, things that may have changed Time spent and the number of AI-supplied claims removed or corrected
Each finding needs a supporting link to the exact page that holds the passage. A link to the home page of the agency or organisation that published it doesn't count. If a claim rests on your own reasoning rather than a source, say so in the sentence.
The uncertainty section lists specific things you could not establish. It is not a place for general disclaimers such as "Information may change". A useful item reads like this: "Competitor C does not publish prices; the figure here is from a 2023 news article and may be out of date." The reader then knows exactly which figure to treat with care and why.
Record the time spent and the number of removed or corrected claims in your log as well as on the brief. Taken together, they show how much checking research takes for you.
Kavitha took the competitor pricing question from lesson 4.3. Her short answer said two of the three competitors priced per session, one had moved to annual subscriptions, and subscriptions were becoming common in the wider industry.
She linked each competitor's pricing to that competitor's own rate card page. For the industry trend, she linked an industry association survey and stated the survey's year and sample.
Her uncertainty section had three items. One competitor's rate card was undated. The industry survey covered the whole region and did not break out Singapore. A news article reported that one competitor was about to change its prices, and there was no confirmation on the company's own site.
Her note at the bottom of the page used these example figures: 160 minutes in total, and 23 claims supplied by the assistant across her searches and its research report. She removed 6 because she could not trace them and corrected 3 that were outdated or misquoted.
In the meeting, her director's first question was where the subscription trend came from. Kavitha had the answer in one click, because the survey link sat directly after that finding.
Choose your question now and write it, with its one-sentence purpose, at the top of a blank page.
Submit a one-page brief with linked sources for every claim, an uncertainty section, and a note of time spent and claims removed.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).