how to write results and discussion in a research paper

Describe the nature of the knowledge gap you were trying to fill using the results of your study. Keep in mind good persuasive argument skills, such as explaining the strengths of your arguments and highlighting the weaknesses of contrary opinions. We develop a rhythm as we read and parallel structures facilitate our comprehension. Doing so might raise questions about your initial research design and protocols. Don’t repeat your Introduction. Limitations aren’t about listing your errors, but about providing an accurate picture of what can and cannot be concluded from your study. Are your findings very different from other studies? Clearly tell us what that piece of missing knowledge was. Make sure your suggestions aren’t ones that should have been conducted during your research! Whilst your results may not be enough to reject the null hypothesis, they may show a trend that later researchers may wish to explore, perhaps by refining the experiment. If your conclusions aren’t aligned with current literature, explain. Published on 21 March 2019 by Shona McCombes. How to Write the Results Section of a Research Paper. Discuss whether your findings agree with current knowledge and expectations. End with a concise summary explaining the big-picture impact of your study on our understanding of the subject matter. Interpretations: what do the results mean? This should be no more than one paragraph. The form of your interpretations will depend on the type of research, but some typical approaches to interpreting the data include: You can organise your discussion around key themes, hypotheses or research questions, following the same structure as your results section. In some types of qualitative research, such as ethnography, the results are often woven together with the discussion.. But in most cases, if you’re doing empirical research, it’s important to report the results of your study before you start discussing their meaning. Relevant literature and theory has been cited. The importance of the results has been emphasized. If you’re unsure of the best structure for your research, look at sample dissertations in your field or consult your supervisor. If so, what do they add to it? Focus on the significance of the most noteworthy results. Use the other checklists to further improve your dissertation. Let’s accept this: Writing a paper is daunting, and sometimes the most difficult and thought-provoking part is writing the ‘discussion’ section. Rather, discuss your findings in the context of answering your hypothesis. The first part of this post briefly described what to include in the introduction and materials and methods sections of a typical research paper written in the IMRaD format (Introduction, Materials and methods, Results, and Discussion). Ask yourself these questions: Your overall aim is to show the reader exactly what your research has contributed and why they should care. Revised on Alternative explanations of the results have been considered. Either you have uncovered something new, or you may have made a major flaw with the design of the experiment. If conflicting inferences can be drawn from your results, evaluate the merits of all of them. This project has received funding from the, Select from one of the other courses available, https://explorable.com/writing-a-discussion-section, Creative Commons-License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0), European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. In the discussion you should explain your results, how they relate to the literature and any implications they might have for future use. The meaning of the results might seem obvious to you, but it’s important to spell out their significance for the reader and show exactly how they answer your research questions. The study demonstrates a correlation between…, Identifying correlations, patterns and relationships among the data, Discussing whether the results met your expectations or supported your, Contextualising your findings within previous research and theory, Explaining unexpected results and evaluating their significance, Considering possible alternative explanations and making an argument for your position, Contrary to the hypothesised association…, The results contradict the claims of Smith (2007) that…. eval(ez_write_tag([[300,250],'explorable_com-banner-1','ezslot_5',361,'0','0']));Unless you made so many errors that the results are completely unreliable, you will; certainly have learned something. eval(ez_write_tag([[300,250],'explorable_com-box-4','ezslot_1',261,'0','0']));In an ideal world, you could simply reject your null or alternative hypotheses according to the significance levels found by the statistics. Writing a discussion section is where you really begin to add your interpretations to the work. Once writing the discussion section is complete, you can move onto the next stage, wrapping up the paper with a focused conclusion. For example, if your sample size was small or limited to a specific group of people, note that this limits its generalisability. For example, one of your graphs may show a distinct trend, but not enough to reach an acceptable significance level. Depending on your field, you might not include a separate results chapter. Published on Reducing wordiness is important when you only have a few paragraphs to devote to the Discussion section! The discussion chapter is where you delve into the meaning, importance and relevance of your results. Learn how to construct, style and format an Academic paper and take your skills to the next level. Please click the checkbox on the left to verify that you are a not a bot. Almost Everything You Wanted to Know About Making Tables and Figures. Take it with you wherever you go. How to write a discussion section. by Mainly, you want to remind us of how your research will increase our knowledge base and inspire others to conduct further research. Relevant recommendations have been made for further research or action. You should only mention limitations that are directly relevant to your research objectives, and evaluate how much impact they had on achieving the aims of the research. If your results are very different, why? Similarly, maintain a critical but unapologetic tone. You don't need our permission to copy the article; just include a link/reference back to this page. Do your results agree with previous research? The results section should aim to narrate the findings without trying to interpret or evaluate, and also provide a direction to the discussion section of the research paper. The discussion is logically ordered to show patterns or themes among the data. The practical and/or theoretical implications have been stated. Maintain an objective and analytical tone. Revised on 2 September 2020. When to write a results chapter. Finally, after saying all of this, you can make a statement about whether the experiment has contributed to knowledge in the field, or not. For most research paper formats, there are two ways of presenting and organizing the results. Like Explorable? If so, why might this be? Sprinkle with first person pronouns if needed, but generally, avoid it. Make sure to acknowledge any weaknesses in your conclusions and suggest room for further research concerning that aspect of your analysis. College Admissions Essay Editing Services, - University Assignments Editing Services, - Business and Corporate Editing Services, How to Write a Research Paper Introduction, Which Verb Tenses to Use in a Research Paper, How to Write an Abstract for a Research Paper, Common Transition Terms in Academic Papers, Active and Passive Voice in Research Papers, 100+ Verbs That Will Make Your Research Writing Amazing. Make sure to factor in all results relevant to the questions (even if those results were not statistically significant). At the beginning of your Discussion section, you stated why. When you organize information the same way in each of these related parts of your journal manuscript, we can quickly see how a certain result was interpreted and quickly verify the particular methods used to produce that result. Within each subpart of a Discussion, the information should flow as follows: (A) conclusion first, (B) relevant results and how they relate to that conclusion and (C) relevant literature. After noting the limitations, you can reiterate why the results are nonetheless valid for the purpose of answering your research questions. It should focus on explaining and evaluating what you found, showing how it relates to your literature review and research questions, and making an argument in support of your overall conclusion. For this purpose, you should criticize the experiment, and be honest about whether your design was good enough. As well as giving your own interpretations, make sure to relate your results back to the scholarly work that you surveyed in the literature review. If not, suggest any modifications and improvements that could be made to the design. This means you're free to copy, share and adapt any parts (or all) of the text in the article, as long as you give appropriate credit and provide a link/reference to this page. Do the results confirm or challenge existing theories? First, there is a brief discussion of the problem, Don’t just repeat all the data you have already reported – aim for a clear statement of the overall result that directly answers your main research question. The Aske Stables, Aske, Richmond, North Yorkshire, U.K. 10F, 205, Teheran-ro, Gangnam-gu, Seoul, Republic of Korea, 2850, ShuBLDG, 2-28-10, Ebisu, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo, 150-0013, Japan, 01-102, 1F, Building 25, Hanhe Garden, Haidian District, Beijing, China. Writing a Discussion Section. The most important findings have been concisely summarized. You are free to copy, share and adapt any text in the article, as long as you give. No problem, save it as a course and come back to it later. This paper presents the likely results and findings of the proposed research on the social media selections and strategies of companies. You can also begin by highlighting the most significant or unexpected results. 2 September 2020. When you organize information the same way in each of these related parts of your journal manuscript, we can quickly see how a certain result was interpreted and quickly verify the particular methods used to produce that result. The first method is to present the results and add a short discussion explaining them at the end, before leading into the discussion proper. Instead, focus on why. The research questions have been answered. Do your results agree or disagree with previous research? Your suggestions should inspire other researchers to conduct follow-up studies to build upon the knowledge you have shared with them. Remember that no significance is not the same as no difference, and you can begin to explain this in your discussion section. You can use it freely (with some kind of link), and we're also okay with people reprinting in publications like books, blogs, newsletters, course-material, papers, wikipedia and presentations (with clear attribution). What types of MBA programs are available in 2020-2021? You want to instill confidence in your readers that you have thoroughly examined your results and have objectively assessed them in a way that would benefit the scientific community’s desire to expand our knowledge base. As there is not always a clear separation between the discussion and the conclusion, we have combined them into one checklist. You should always put your findings into the context of the previous research that you found during your literature review. If you left few interesting leads and open questions in the results section, the discussion is simply a matter of building upon those and expanding them. eval(ez_write_tag([[300,250],'explorable_com-medrectangle-4','ezslot_4',340,'0','0']));In this critical part of the research paper, you start the process of explaining any links and correlations apparent in your data. Check out our quiz-page with tests about: Martyn Shuttleworth (Mar 6, 2009). Based on the discussion of your results, you can make recommendations for practical implementation or further research. The analysis section is where the writer describes what was done with the data found. Shona McCombes. Writing the results section: The results section answers the question W-H-A-T. It is rarely clear-cut, and you will need to interpret your findings. Limitations might be due to your overall research design, specific methodological choices, or unanticipated obstacles that emerged during the research process. Do the results of the previous research help you to interpret your own findings? Limitations: what can’t the results tell us? Even the best research has some limitations, and acknowledging these is important to demonstrate your credibility. Retrieved Oct 04, 2020 from Explorable.com: https://explorable.com/writing-a-discussion-section. You'll show that your results can … The next big step is to write the discussion. We develop a rhythm as we read and parallel structures facilitate our comprehension. Suggestions for further research can lead directly from the limitations. Don’t rehash what you said earlier in the Results section. Notice how using parallel structure will eliminate extra narration in the Discussion part since we can anticipate the flow of your ideas based on what we read in the Results segment. The text in this article is licensed under the Creative Commons-License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). Any limitations of the research have been acknowledged and evaluated. Don't have time for it all now? There are a few common mistakes to avoid when writing the discussion section of your dissertation. In this critical part of the research paper, you start the process of explaining any links and correlations apparent in your data.. There are many different ways to write this section, but you can focus your discussion around four key elements: There is often overlap between the discussion and conclusion, and in some dissertations these two sections are included in a single chapter. 21 March 2019 Sometimes the recommendations appear in the conclusion. The discussion should show how your findings fit with existing knowledge, what new insights they contribute, and what consequences they have for theory or practice. Maybe the reason that you did not find a significant correlation is because your sampling was not random, or you did not use sensitive enough equipment. That is it. Use the present tense, which should also be employed in the Introduction. Try not to be too broad in your generalizations to the wider world - it is a small experiment and is unlikely to change the world. If you encountered problems when gathering or analysing data, describe these and explain how they influenced the results.

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