Results and discussion in research paper

The purpose of this guide is to provide advice on how to develop and organize a research paper in the social of research flaws to ndent and dependent ry of research terms. Choosing a research ing a topic ning a topic ing the timeliness of a topic idea. An oral g with g someone else's to manage group of structured group project survival g a book le book review ing collected g a field informed g a policy g a research results section is where you report the findings of your study based upon the methodology [or methodologies] you applied to gather information. The results section should state the findings of the research arranged in a logical sequence without bias or interpretation. A section describing results is particularly necessary if your paper includes data generated from your own ey, thomas m. Clinical chemistry 56 (july 2010): ance of a good results formulating the results section, it's important to remember that the results of a study do not prove anything. However, the act of articulating the results helps you to understand the problem from within, to break it into pieces, and to view the research problem from various page length of this section is set by the amount and types of data to be reported. Be concise, using non-textual elements appropriately, such as figures and tables, to present results more effectively. In deciding what data to describe in your results section, you must clearly distinguish information that would normally be included in a research paper from any raw data or other content that could be included as an appendix. In general, raw data that has not been summarized should not be included in the main text of your paper unless requested to do so by your providing data that is not critical to answering the research question. The background information you described in the introduction section should provide the reader with any additional context or explanation needed to understand the results. A good strategy is to always re-read the background section of your paper after you have written up your results to ensure that the reader has enough context to understand the results [and, later, how you interpreted the results in the discussion section of your paper]. Organization and most research paper formats in the social and behavioral sciences, there are two possible ways of presenting and organizing the results. Both approaches are appropriate in how you report your findings, but use only one format or the t a synopsis of the results followed by an explanation of key findings. However, speculating as to why this correlation exists, and offering a hypothesis about what may be happening, belongs in the discussion section of your t a result and then explain it, before presenting the next result then explaining it, and so on, then end with an overall synopsis. This is more common in longer papers because it helps the reader to better understand each finding. In this model, it is helpful to provide a brief conclusion that ties each of the findings together and provides a narrative bridge to the discussion section of the your :  just as the literature review should be arranged under conceptual categories rather than systematically describing each source, organize your findings under key themes related to addressing the research problem. A thorough explanation of the results] or a sequential description and explanation of each key general, the content of your results section should include the following:An introductory context for understanding the results by restating the research problem underpinning your study. This is useful in orientating the reader's focus back to the research after reading about the methods of data gathering and ion of non-textual elements, such as, figures, charts, photos, maps, tables, etc. Systematic description of your results, highlighting for the reader observations that are most relevant to the topic under investigation [remember that not all results that emerge from the methodology used to gather information may be related to answering the "so what? Do not confuse observations with interpretations; observations in this context refers to highlighting important findings you discovered through a process of reviewing prior literature and gathering page length of your results section is guided by the amount and types of data to be reported. However, focus only on findings that are important and related to addressing the research problem. It is not uncommon to have unanticipated results that are not relevant to answering the research question, and this is not to say that you don't acknowledge tangential findings, but spending time describing them only clutters your overall results section.

Short paragraph that concludes the results section by synthesizing the key findings of the study. Highlight the most important findings you want readers to remember as they transition into the discussion section. This is particularly important if, for example, there are many results to report, the findings are complicated or unanticipated, or they are impactful or actionable in some way [i. Problems to writing the results section, avoid doing the following:Discussing or interpreting your results. Save all this for the next section of your paper, although where appropriate, you should compare or contrast specific results to those found in other studies [e. Often the results of a study point to the need for additional background information or to explain the topic further, so don't think you did something wrong. Document them, then state in your discussion section why you believe a negative result emerged from your study. Note that negative results, and how you handle them, offer you the opportunity to write a more engaging discussion section, therefore, don't be afraid to highlight ing raw data or intermediate calculations. If it is important to highlight a particular finding, you will have an opportunity to emphasize its significance in the discussion ing figures with tables. S not unusual to find articles in social science journals where the author(s) have combined a description of the findings with a discussion about their implications. However, if you are inexperienced writing research papers, consider creating two distinct sections for each element in your paper as a way to better organize your thoughts and, by extension, your  paper. Think of the results section as the place where you report what your study found; think of the discussion section as the place where you interpret your data and answer the "so what? As you become more skilled writing research papers, you may want to meld the results of your study with a discussion of its ll, dana lynn and aleksandra kasztalska. Types of learning tanding your preferences to aid al thinking al thinking and fake g a dissertation or to write a research l issues in tation: the ching and writing a literature g your tation: results and tation: conclusions and g your dissertation or thesis of the skills you need guide for ng, coaching, mentoring and ability skills for ibe to our free newsletter and start improving your life in just 5 minutes a 'll get our 5 free 'one minute life skills' and our weekly 'll never share your email address and you can unsubscribe at any g your dissertation: results and also: writing your writing a dissertation or thesis, the results and discussion sections can be both the most interesting as well as the most challenging sections to may choose to write these sections separately, or combine them into a single chapter, depending on your university’s guidelines and your own are advantages to both g the results and discussion as separate sections allows you to focus first on what results you obtained and set out clearly what happened in your experiments and/or investigations without worrying about their can focus your mind on what the results actually show and help you to sort them in your r, many people find it easier to combine the results with their implications as the two are closely your university’s requirements carefully before combining the results and discussions sections as some specify that they must be kept results section should set out your key experimental results, including any statistical analysis and whether or not the results of these are should cover any literature supporting your interpretation of significance. However, for an undergraduate or master's thesis, you will probably find that you need to include most of your should write your results section in the past tense: you are describing what you have done in the result included must have a method set out in the methods section. Check back to make sure that you have included all the relevant sely, every method should also have some results given so, if you choose to exclude certain experiments from the results, make sure that you remove mention of the method as you are unsure whether to include certain results, go back to your research questions and decide whether the results are relevant to them. You could choose chronological, which should follow the methods, or in order from most to least important in the answering of your research questions, or by research question and/or also need to consider how best to present your results: tables, figures, graphs, or text. If you have more than about two or three, it’s often helpful to provide lists of tables and figures alongside the table of contents at the start of your ise your results in the text, drawing on the figures and tables to illustrate your text and figures should be complementary, not repeat the same information. Statistical tests should include details of p values or confidence intervals and you don’t need to include all your primary evidence in this section, you should as a matter of good practice make it available in an appendix, to which you should refer at the relevant s of all the interview participants can be found in appendix a, with transcripts of each interview in appendix will, almost inevitably, find that you need to include some slight discussion of your results during this section. This discussion should evaluate the quality of the results and their reliability, but not stray too far into discussion of how far your results support your hypothesis and/or answer your research questions, as that is for the discussion our pages: analysing qualitative data and simple statistical analysis for more information on analysing your section has four purposes, it should:Interpret and explain your your research y your ally evaluate your discussion section therefore needs to review your findings in the context of the literature and the existing knowledge about the also need to demonstrate that you understand the limitations of your research and the implications of your findings for policy and practice. This section should be written in the present discussion section needs to follow from your results and relate back to your literature review. Make sure that everything you discuss is covered in the results universities require a separate section on recommendations for policy and practice and/or for future research, while others allow you to include this in your discussion, so check the guidelines people are likely to write this section best by preparing an outline, setting out the broad thrust of the argument, and how your results support may find techniques like mind mapping are helpful in making a first outline; check out our page: creative thinking for some ideas about how to think through your ideas. You should start by referring back to your research questions, discuss your results, then set them into the context of the literature, and then into broader is likely to be one of the longest sections of your dissertation, and it’s a good idea to break it down into chunks with sub-headings to help your reader to navigate through the ng out the you have your outline in front of you, you can start to map out how your results fit into the will help you to see whether your results are over-focused in one area, which is why writing up your research as you go along can be a helpful process.

For each theme or area, you should discuss how the results help to answer your research question, and whether the results are consistent with your expectations and the importance of understanding your results are controversial and/or unexpected, you should set them fully in context and explain why you think that you obtained explanations may include issues such as a non-representative sample for convenience purposes, a response rate skewed towards those with a particular experience, or your own involvement as a participant for sociological do not need to be apologetic about these, because you made a choice about them, which you should have justified in the methodology section. However, you do need to evaluate your own results against others’ findings, especially if they are different. A full understanding of the limitations of your research is part of a good discussion this stage, you may want to revisit your literature review, unless you submitted it as a separate submission earlier, and revise it to draw out those studies which have proven more de by summarising the implications of your findings in brief, and explain why they are important for researchers and in practice, and provide some suggestions for further may also wish to make some recommendations for practice. As before, this may be a separate section, or included in your results and discussion, including conclusion and recommendations, are probably the most substantial sections of your dissertation. Conclusion and g your g a literature review | writing a research g a dissertation: the @g a dissertation or s and skillsyouneed:A - z list of learning skills. Conclusion and g your g a literature review | writing a research g a dissertation: the @sity of southern zing your social sciences research zing your social sciences research paper: 8. An oral g with g someone else's to manage group of structured group project survival g a book le book review ing collected g a field informed g a policy g a research purpose of the discussion is to interpret and describe the significance of your findings in light of what was already known about the research problem being investigated, and to explain any new understanding or insights about the problem after you've taken the findings into consideration. The discussion will always connect to the introduction by way of the research questions or hypotheses you posed and the literature you reviewed, but it does not simply repeat or rearrange the introduction; the discussion should always explain how your study has moved the reader's understanding of the research problem forward from where you left them at the end of the ey thomas m. Clinical chemistry 56 (november 2010): ance of a good section is often considered the most important part of your research paper because this is where you:Most effectively demonstrates your ability as a researcher to think critically about an issue, to develop creative solutions to problems based upon a logical synthesis of the findings, and to formulate a deeper, more profound understanding of the research problem under t the underlying meaning of your research, note possible implications in other areas of study, and explore possible improvements that can be made in order to further develop the concerns of your ght the importance of your study and how it may be able to contribute to and/or help fill existing gaps in the field. If appropriate, the discussion section is also where you state how the findings from your study revealed new gaps in the literature that had not been previously exposed or adequately the reader in thinking critically about issues based upon an evidence-based interpretation of findings; it is not governed strictly by objective reporting of ey thomas m. San francisco edit, ure and writing are the general rules you should adopt when composing your discussion of the results:Do not be verbose or concise and make your points a logical stream of thought; in general, interpret and discuss the significance of your findings in the same sequence you described them in your results the present verb tense, especially for established facts; however, refer to specific works or prior studies in the past needed, use subheadings to help organize your discussion or to categorize your interpretations into content of the discussion section of your paper most often includes:Explanation of results: comment on whether or not the results were expected for each set of results; go into greater depth when explaining findings that were unexpected or especially profound. If appropriate, note any unusual or unanticipated patterns or trends that emerged from your results and explain their meaning in relation to the research nces to previous research: either compare your results with the findings from other studies or use the studies to support a claim. This can include re-visiting key sources already cited in your literature review section, or, save them to cite later in the discussion section if they are more important to compare with your results instead of being a part of the general literature review of research used to provide context and background information. Note that you can make this decision to highlight specific studies after you have begun writing the discussion ion: a claim for how the results can be applied more generally. For example, describing lessons learned, proposing recommendations that can help improve a situation, or highlighting best esis: a more general claim or possible conclusion arising from the results [which may be proved or disproved in subsequent research]. This can be framed as new research questions that emerged as a result of your . Organization and the following sequential points in mind as you organize and write the discussion section of your paper:Think of your discussion as an inverted pyramid. Organize the discussion from the general to the specific, linking your findings to the literature, then to theory, then to practice [if appropriate]. The same key terms, narrative style, and verb tense [present] that you used when when describing the research problem in your by briefly re-stating the research problem you were investigating and answer all of the research questions underpinning the problem that you posed in the be the patterns, principles, and relationships shown by each major findings and place them in proper perspective. The sequence of this information is important; first state the answer, then the relevant results, then cite the work of others. The order of interpreting each major finding should be in the same order as they were described in your results section. This part of the discussion should begin with a description of any unanticipated findings, followed by a brief interpretation as to why you believe it appeared and, if necessary, its possible significance in relation to the overall study. The exception to discussing findings in the same order you described them in the results section would be to begin by highlighting the implications of a particularly unexpected or significant finding that emerged from the study, followed by a discussion of the remaining concluding the discussion, identify potential limitations and weaknesses if you do not plan to do so in the conclusion.

Comment on their relative importance in relation to your overall interpretation of the results and, if necessary, note how they may affect the validity of your findings. Discussion section should end with a concise summary of the principal implications of the findings regardless of significance. Give a brief explanation about why you believe the findings and conclusions of your study are important and how they support broader knowledge or understanding of the research problem. Reiterate the research problem/state the major y reiterate the research problem or problems you are investigating and the methods you used to investigate them, then move quickly to describe the major findings of the study. You should write a direct, declarative, and succinct proclamation of the study results, usually in one . After reading the discussion section, you want the reader to think critically about the results [“why didn't i think of that? You don’t want to force the reader to go through the paper multiple times to figure out what it all means. Relate the findings to similar study in the social sciences is so novel or possesses such a restricted focus that it has absolutely no relation to previously published research. The discussion section should relate your results to those found in other studies, particularly if questions raised from prior studies served as the motivation for your research. This is important because comparing and contrasting the findings of other studies helps to support the overall importance of your results and it highlights how and in what ways your study differs from other research about the topic. Note that any significant or unanticipated finding is often because there was no prior research to indicate the finding could occur. If there is prior research to indicate this, you need to explain why it was significant or . Consider alternative explanations of the is important to remember that the purpose of research in the social sciences is to discover and not to prove. When writing the discussion section, you should carefully consider all possible explanations for the study results, rather than just those that fit your hypothesis or prior assumptions and biases. Note any unanswered questions or issues your study did not address and describe the generalizability of your results to other situations. Make suggestions for further may choose to conclude the discussion section by making suggestions for further research [this can be done in the overall conclusion of your paper]. Although your study may offer important insights about the research problem, this is where you can address other questions related to the problem that remain unanswered or highlight previously hidden questions that were revealed as a result of conducting your research. You should frame your suggestions by linking the need for further research to the limitations of your study [e. Or to critical issues revealed from the data that were not considered initially in your : besides the literature review section, the preponderance of references to sources is usually found in the discussion section. A few historical references may be helpful for perspective but most of the references should be relatively recent and included to aid in the interpretation of your results or used to link to similar studies. If a study that you cited disagrees with your findings, don't ignore it--clearly explain why your research findings differ from theirs. An example would be: “in the case of determining available housing to single women with children in rural areas of texas, the findings suggest that access to good schools is important," then move on to explaining this endations for further research can be included in either the discussion or conclusion of your paper, but do not repeat your recommendations in the both sections. Think about the overall narrative flow of your paper to determine where best to locate this not introduce new results in the discussion section.

The description of findings [results] and the interpretation of their significance [discussion] should be distinct sections of your paper. If you choose to combine the results section and the discussion section into a single narrative, you must be clear in how you report the information discovered and your own interpretation of each of the first person is generally acceptable. The anatomy of an article: the discussion section: "how does the article i read today change what i will recommend to my patients tomorrow? As such, you should always approach the selection and interpretation of your findings introspectively and to think critically about the possibility of judgmental biases unintentionally entering into discussions about the significance of your work. Of the most common mistakes that you can make when discussing the results of your study is to present a superficial interpretation of the findings that more or less re-states the results section of your paper. Obviously, you must refer to your results when discussing them, but focus on the interpretation of those results and their significance in relation to the research problem, not the data , beth. For example, if the purpose of your research was to measure the impact of foreign aid on increasing access to education among the poor in bangladesh, it would not be appropriate to speculate about how your findings might apply to populations in other countries without drawing from existing studies to support your claim or if analysis of other countries was not a part of your original research design. Be certain that you clearly identify your comments as speculation or as a suggestion for where further research is needed. Sometimes your professor will encourage you to expand your discussion of the results in this way, while others don’t care what your opinion is beyond your efforts to interpret the , beth. In psychology: experimental report t-specific g in the social work literature review g in psychology: experimental report g in psychology ical considerations and mental reports mental reports , appendices, footnotes and s for more sample paper: experimental psychology. How to navigate the new printing this page, you must include the entire legal notice at g the experimental report: methods, results, and y: written for undergraduate students and new graduate students in psychology (experimental), this handout provides information on writing in psychology and on experimental report and experimental article butors:dana lynn driscoll, aleksandra kasztalskalast edited: 2013-03-11 09:59: method section provides a detailed overview of how you conducted your research. Because your study methods form a large part of your credibility as a researcher and writer, it is imperative that you be clear about what you did to gather information from participants in your your methods section, as with the sections above, you want to walk your readers through your study almost as if they were a participant. The accepted term for describing a person who participates in research studies is a participant not a . Step-by-step listing in chronological order of what participants did during the results section is where you present the results of your research-both narrated for the readers in plain english and accompanied by : depending on the requirements or the projected length of your paper, sometimes the results are combined with the discussion ue with your story in the results section. You want to begin your discussion by reminding your readers once again what your hypotheses were and what your overall story is. The most important results should go inary discussion: sometimes it is necessary to provide a preliminary discussion in your results section about your participant groups. In order to convince your readers that your results are meaningful, you must first demonstrate that the conditions of the study were met. If you are using a non-conventional analysis, you also need to provide justification for why you are doing ting results: bem (2006) recommends the following pattern for presenting findings:Remind readers of the conceptual hypotheses or questions you are readers of behaviors measured or operations e the answer/result in plain e the statistic that supports your plain english ate or qualify the overall conclusion if s new to psychology and writing with statistics often dump numbers at their readers without providing a clear narration of what those numbers mean. Please see our writing with statistics handout for more information on how to write with discussion section is where you talk about what your results mean and where you wrap up the overall story you are telling. This is where you interpret your findings, evaluate your hypotheses or research questions, discuss unexpected results, and tie your findings to the previous literature (discussed first in your literature review). Your discussion section should move from specific to are some tips for writing your discussion by providing an interpretation of your results: what is it that you have learned from your research? Each hypotheses or research question in more not repeat what you have already said in your results—instead, focus on adding new information and broadening the perspective of your results to you s how your results compare to previous findings in the literature. If there are differences, discuss why you think these differences exist and what they could y consider your study's limitations, but do not dwell on its er also what new questions your study raises, what questions your study was not able to answer, and what avenues future research could take in this e: here is how this begins her discussion section by providing a sentence about her hypotheses—what she expected to find.

After discussing each of her major results, she discusses larger implications of her work and avenues for future nces should be in standard apa format.