Guidelines for Rapporteurs

As of March 31, 2022

This document outlines the basics of rapporteur work, as well as some general principles and
standards for documenting meetings and sessions.

Working as a Rapporteur
The rapporteur is tasked with documenting the meeting or session. This means providing clear
notes on what transpired, paying close attention to the nuances of the discussion. Doing so does
not entail transcribing the entire meeting, but instead collecting, organizing, and laying down the
important points that were raised.

The rapporteur is expected to draft notes. Notes are documents which reflect the events that
occurred during the meeting. They are not briefers or papers that need external technical
research. However, meeting notes will be used later to inform briefers, papers, or other outputs.

Good notes allow their readers to know and understand the meeting discussion without having to
attend. They are extremely useful for sharing the significant findings and outcomes of the session.
With good notes, researchers and decisionmakers need not watch the recordings to understand
what the participants are trying to say.

What Makes Good Notes?

Every rapporteur must work to make sure that their notes meet the following principles and
standards:

• Accurate – The notes should reflect the events of the meeting as closely as possible.
They should never include things that did not happen during the meeting, nor cause their
readers to be misled. Including the proper context as regards a certain point in the
discussion is a good way to secure accuracy. For example, direct or indirect quotes should
be preceded or followed by sentences which show (a) the question prompt or (b) the prior
discussion point to which it responds.

• Attributable – Notes should also properly attribute ideas. In other words, reader should
be able to easily determine who said what. This is important not only in maintaining
intellectual honesty and integrity, but also in allowing researchers and decisionmakers to
properly contextualize the participant’s inputs.

• Concise – It is not the rapporteur’s job to transcribe the meeting. Instead, the task entails
providing a succinct summary of what happened. This means weeding out unnecessary
words or turns of phrase in favor of presenting a clear message. This takes a bit of practice,
since the skill involves condensing ideas without losing specificity and nuance.

• Detailed – Issues and inputs which are surfaced in meetings present little value if they are
not accompanied with the necessary level of detail. The kind of relevant information
required varies across meetings, and it is the rapporteur’s job to calibrate the level of
sensitivity to detail which the discussion calls for. For example, if the session is a round
table discussion, it is important not only to take note of the exchange of ideas among the
participants, but also of how that exchange developed. If the session is a focus group
discussion, then the rapporteur needs to also pay close attention to non-verbal cues and

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reactions. A good way of doing this is including direct quotes, so that the idea and the
thinking process of the participant is sufficiently demonstrated. Sometimes it is also good
practice to note the way in which certain responses are delivered.

• Neutral – For the most part, the rapporteur is a fly on the wall. The notes should not show
the rapporteur’s personal bias for or against any idea. Even if the rapporteur disagrees
with a point or a particular segment in the discussion, such should not be omitted nor
minimized in the notes.

• Thematic – The hallmark of a good rapporteur is the ability to group similar and connected
ideas together. Points which were brought up, even at different points in time, are better
clustered under the same theme. This simultaneously reveals the scope of the discussion
and the depth at which it was explored during the meeting.

• Loosely chronological – Notes for LEAP prefer thematic cohesiveness over

chronological order. However, the ordering of the thematic areas and specific points
themselves are better presented in the sequence at which they were discussed. This
facilitates order in showing how the discussion developed. For example, the first key issue
raised in the meeting should be denoted as the first thematic area, while all separate and
subsequent key issues should be ordered accordingly.

• Reader-friendly – Perhaps the most important and overarching principle in making good
notes is making sure that they are reader-friendly. The rapporteur should have in mind the
end-users of the notes. Good notes do not frustrate their readers nor leave them with
unanswered questions about the meeting. They also make good use of signposting, which
let the readers navigate the document with ease by providing informative headings and
sub-headings. Notice that the sample template has been crafted with this framework.

Duties of a Rapporteur
According to a learning brief from the Impact Innovations Development Centre, there are three (3)
phases involved in documenting meetings or sessions. This section outlines the rapporteur’s
duties in each phase, drawing from some of the best practices identified in the IIDC brief.1

Before the Meeting

• Know the meeting or session for which you will work as the rapporteur, including its name,
its organizers, and its venue.
• Familiarize yourself with the meeting’s context, e.g., the objectives, the specific project
component for which it is being held.
• Secure a list of participants expected to attend.
• If this is a virtual meeting, find out if the platform can record the session and if the
organizers will let you record.
• If this is a face-to-face meeting, bring recording devices, e.g., audio recorder, camera, etc.,
if necessary,
• Prepare your copy of the Rapporteur template and set it to automatically save from time
to time.

1
“Learning Brief How to Build Rapporteuring Skills,” Impact Innovations Development Center Learning Series,
available at https://iidcug.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Best-Practices-for-Event-Rapporteuring.pdf (last accessed
Mar. 30, 2022).

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• Arrive at the venue or log in to the virtual platform 15-30 minutes before the meeting begins
and properly set up.
• For face-to-face meetings, find a good location from where you could:
o Clearly hear the facilitator and participants; and,
o Access an electrical outlet if you are using a device to record or take notes.

During the Meeting

• Seek permission from the participants to record the meeting, then proceed to record.
• Listen keenly and observe closely by taking preliminary notes.
• Ensure that you note the list of participants.
o For face-to-face meetings, ask for the list of participants in attendance from the
organizers.
o For virtual meetings, check the list of participants in the virtual platform.
o For both kinds of meetings, it is useful to privately take note of participants who
were late, and at what point they joined the meeting.
• If you are required to take notes while screensharing or presenting your work, try to
formulate full and coherent sentences to help guide the discussion.
o Be alert and responsive to clarifications made by the participants.
o Remember to properly attribute the ideas or questions raised during the discussion.
o Reserve a separate space for personal notes, such as a different window or your
own notepad.
• Pay special attention to questions, answers, and reactions.
o If you are not screensharing, feel free to put all of these in your preliminary notes.
o If you are screensharing, write down the participants’ observed reactions and other
non-verbal cues in your personal notes.
• If the auto-save is unavailable for your word processing application, make sure to
periodically save your draft.

After the Meeting

• Ask for copies of the materials presented or shared during the meeting.
• If you do not have custody of the meeting’s recording, secure a copy from the organizers.
• Immediately ask for key information which you were unable to capture, e.g., names,
acronyms, etc.
• Create the draft notes based on your preliminary notes and the recording.
o Watch or listen to the recording to vet, check, and complete your preliminary notes.
o Process the information gathered during the meeting by identifying thematic areas
or key questions for discussion, specific points which were raised, and
corresponding recommendations.
o Organize ideas, quotes, and other relevant information according to these thematic
areas.
o Keep in mind that the notes will simulate the reader’s attendance in the meeting,
so be sure to properly facilitate and replicate the discussion flow.
o Break up dense paragraphs and kilometric sentences; use sub-headings if
necessary.
o Use simple, clear words for non-technical discussions.
o Employ neutral and accurate descriptors when noting the reactions of the
participants.
o Make good use of the nested/tiered list format in the template by putting all related
points or ideas under the proper heading.

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• Take note of the following stylistic standards:

o Refer to each person according to their proper or preferred designation, following
the general format of [Appellation] [Surname], e.g., Atty. Dela Cruz, Dean Santos.
o When using an acronym for the first time, spell out its full name, followed by the
acronym enclosed in parentheses and quotation marks, e.g., Revised Model Law
Curriculum (“RMLC”). Use only the acronym in subsequent sentences. If the
acronym is sufficiently well-known, you may dispense with this requirement, e.g.,
UP Law, NOT University of the Philippines College of Law (“UP Law”).
o Dates should follow the [Month] [Date] [Year] format, with the month properly
abbreviated, e.g., Mar. 31, 2022. Follow the 12-hour system to show time, denoted
either by “a.m.” or “p.m.”
o For numbers below ten, spell out the number, followed by the Hindu-Arabic
numerals enclosed in parentheses, e.g., four (4), nine (9). This does not apply to
dates, timestamps, or headings and sub-headings.
o For numbers ten and above, or for decimals, fractions, and percentages, write the
1
Hindu-Arabic numerals without need to spell out the number, e.g., 23, 157.3, 1 2,
73%.
o For numbers in the millions and up, use the word “million,” “billion,” etc. as the case
may be instead of writing all the figures, e.g., 70.4 million, 5.1 trillion.
o Use the proper denotation for currencies, e.g., PhP, US$.
o After finishing your draft notes, check the page count and edit the footer
accordingly.
• Proofread your draft notes, then submit to your supervisor.
• Ask the participant to vet the draft notes.
• Incorporate comments or edits as needed, finalize the notes and affix your signature.

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