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Aug 21, 2022 · The discussion section is where you delve into the meaning, importance, and relevance of your results. It should focus on explaining and evaluating what you found, showing how it relates to your literature review and paper or dissertation topic, and making an argument in support of your overall conclusion.
The discussion section can be written in 3 parts: an introductory paragraph, intermediate paragraphs and a conclusion paragraph. For intermediate paragraphs, a “divide and conquer” approach, meaning a full paragraph describing each of the study endpoints, can be used.
- Mariana Vale
- Introduction—mention gaps in previous research¹⁻² Here, you orient the reader to your study. In the first paragraph, it is advisable to mention the research gap your paper addresses.
- Summarizing key findings—let your data speak¹⁻² After you have laid out the context for your study, recapitulate some of its key findings. Also, highlight key data and evidence supporting these findings.
- Interpreting results—compare with other papers¹⁻² Here, you must analyze and interpret any results concerning the research question or hypothesis. How do the key findings of your study help verify or disprove the hypothesis?
- Addressing limitations—their potential impact on the results¹⁻² Discuss the potential impact of limitations on the results. Most studies have limitations, and it is crucial to acknowledge them in the intermediary paragraphs of the discussion section.
- Summary of results. This part of the discussion serves to remind the reader of key results, though care must be taken to avoid extensive summaries, keeping this section to a minimum.
- Critical analysis of results. This is where you go beyond a general description of the results to tell the reader what your results actually mean and what you learned from them.
- Relate results to the field. This is where you compare your work to previous studies, especially ones that inspired your work or brought up questions that you have addressed.
- Relate results to the gap in the field. This part is essential for any discussion, and its lack or absence is one of the biggest mistakes I see in discussion writing.
What makes an effective discussion? When you’re ready to write your discussion, you’ve already introduced the purpose of your study and provided an in-depth description of the methodology. The discussion informs readers about the larger implications of your study based on the results.
3 days ago · Definition. The purpose of the discussion section is to interpret and describe the significance of your findings in relation to what was already known about the research problem being investigated and to explain any new understanding or insights that emerged as a result of your research.
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Sep 15, 2023 · The discussion section of a research paper analyzes and interprets the findings, provides context, compares them with previous studies, identifies limitations, and suggests future research directions.
