writing result and discussion in thesis

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• How to Write Discussions and Conclusions

The discussion section contains the results and outcomes of a study. An effective discussion informs readers what can be learned from your experiment and provides context for the results.

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. Highlighting these implications while not overstating the findings can be challenging, especially when you’re submitting to a journal that selects articles based on novelty or potential impact. Regardless of what journal you are submitting to, the discussion section always serves the same purpose: concluding what your study results actually mean.

A successful discussion section puts your findings in context. It should include:

• the results of your research,
• a discussion of related research, and
• a comparison between your results and initial hypothesis.

Tip: Not all journals share the same naming conventions.

You can apply the advice in this article to the conclusion, results or discussion sections of your manuscript.

Our Early Career Researcher community tells us that the conclusion is often considered the most difficult aspect of a manuscript to write. To help, this guide provides questions to ask yourself, a basic structure to model your discussion off of and examples from published manuscripts. 

Questions to ask yourself:

• Was my hypothesis correct?
• If my hypothesis is partially correct or entirely different, what can be learned from the results? 
• How do the conclusions reshape or add onto the existing knowledge in the field? What does previous research say about the topic? 
• Why are the results important or relevant to your audience? Do they add further evidence to a scientific consensus or disprove prior studies? 
• How can future research build on these observations? What are the key experiments that must be done? 
• What is the “take-home” message you want your reader to leave with?

How to structure a discussion

Trying to fit a complete discussion into a single paragraph can add unnecessary stress to the writing process. If possible, you’ll want to give yourself two or three paragraphs to give the reader a comprehensive understanding of your study as a whole. Here’s one way to structure an effective discussion:

Writing Tips

While the above sections can help you brainstorm and structure your discussion, there are many common mistakes that writers revert to when having difficulties with their paper. Writing a discussion can be a delicate balance between summarizing your results, providing proper context for your research and avoiding introducing new information. Remember that your paper should be both confident and honest about the results! 

• Read the journal’s guidelines on the discussion and conclusion sections. If possible, learn about the guidelines before writing the discussion to ensure you’re writing to meet their expectations. 
• Begin with a clear statement of the principal findings. This will reinforce the main take-away for the reader and set up the rest of the discussion. 
• Explain why the outcomes of your study are important to the reader. Discuss the implications of your findings realistically based on previous literature, highlighting both the strengths and limitations of the research. 
• State whether the results prove or disprove your hypothesis. If your hypothesis was disproved, what might be the reasons? 
• Introduce new or expanded ways to think about the research question. Indicate what next steps can be taken to further pursue any unresolved questions. 
• If dealing with a contemporary or ongoing problem, such as climate change, discuss possible consequences if the problem is avoided. 
• Be concise. Adding unnecessary detail can distract from the main findings. 

Don’t

• Rewrite your abstract. Statements with “we investigated” or “we studied” generally do not belong in the discussion. 
• Include new arguments or evidence not previously discussed. Necessary information and evidence should be introduced in the main body of the paper. 
• Apologize. Even if your research contains significant limitations, don’t undermine your authority by including statements that doubt your methodology or execution. 
• Shy away from speaking on limitations or negative results. Including limitations and negative results will give readers a complete understanding of the presented research. Potential limitations include sources of potential bias, threats to internal or external validity, barriers to implementing an intervention and other issues inherent to the study design. 
• Overstate the importance of your findings. Making grand statements about how a study will fully resolve large questions can lead readers to doubt the success of the research. 

Snippets of Effective Discussions:

Consumer-based actions to reduce plastic pollution in rivers: A multi-criteria decision analysis approach

Identifying reliable indicators of fitness in polar bears

• How to Write a Great Title
• How to Write an Abstract
• How to Write Your Methods
• How to Report Statistics
• How to Edit Your Work

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Writing your Dissertation:  Results and Discussion

When writing a dissertation or thesis, the results and discussion sections can be both the most interesting as well as the most challenging sections to write.

You may choose to write these sections separately, or combine them into a single chapter, depending on your university’s guidelines and your own preferences.

There are advantages to both approaches.

Writing 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 implications.This can focus your mind on what the results actually show and help you to sort them in your head.

However, many people find it easier to combine the results with their implications as the two are closely connected.

Check your university’s requirements carefully before combining the results and discussions sections as some specify that they must be kept separate.

Results Section

The Results section should set out your key experimental results, including any statistical analysis and whether or not the results of these are significant.

You should cover any literature supporting your interpretation of significance. It does not have to include everything you did, particularly for a doctorate dissertation. However, for an undergraduate or master's thesis, you will probably find that you need to include most of your work.

You should write your results section in the past tense: you are describing what you have done in the past.

Every result included MUST have a method set out in the methods section. Check back to make sure that you have included all the relevant methods.

Conversely, 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 well.

If you are unsure whether to include certain results, go back to your research questions and decide whether the results are relevant to them. It doesn’t matter whether they are supportive or not, it’s about relevance. If they are relevant, you should include them.

Having decided what to include, next decide what order to use. 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 hypothesis.

You also need to consider how best to present your results: tables, figures, graphs, or text. Try to use a variety of different methods of presentation, and consider your reader: 20 pages of dense tables are hard to understand, as are five pages of graphs, but a single table and well-chosen graph that illustrate your overall findings will make things much clearer.

Make sure that each table and figure has a number and a title. Number tables and figures in separate lists, but consecutively by the order in which you mention them in the 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 dissertation.

Summarise your results in the text, drawing on the figures and tables to illustrate your points.

The text and figures should be complementary, not repeat the same information. You should refer to every table or figure in the text. Any that you don’t feel the need to refer to can safely be moved to an appendix, or even removed.

Make sure that you including information about the size and direction of any changes, including percentage change if appropriate. Statistical tests should include details of p values or confidence intervals and limits.

While 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 point.

For example:

Details of all the interview participants can be found in Appendix A, with transcripts of each interview in Appendix B.

You 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 section.

See our pages: Analysing Qualitative Data and Simple Statistical Analysis for more information on analysing your results.

Discussion Section

This section has four purposes, it should:

• Interpret and explain your results
• Answer your research question
• Justify your approach
• Critically evaluate your study

The discussion section therefore needs to review your findings in the context of the literature and the existing knowledge about the subject.

You 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 tense.

The 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 section.

Some 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 carefully.

Starting the Task

Most 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 it.

You 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 theory.

This 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 detail.

Fleshing Out the Detail

Once you have your outline in front of you, you can start to map out how your results fit into the outline.

This 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 literature.

The Importance of Understanding Differences

If your results are controversial and/or unexpected, you should set them fully in context and explain why you think that you obtained them.

Your 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 research.

You 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 section.

At 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 relevant.

Conclude 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 work.

You may also wish to make some recommendations for practice. As before, this may be a separate section, or included in your discussion.

The results and discussion, including conclusion and recommendations, are probably the most substantial sections of your dissertation. Once completed, you can begin to relax slightly: you are on to the last stages of writing!

Continue to: Dissertation: Conclusion and Extras Writing your Methodology

See also: Writing a Literature Review Writing a Research Proposal Academic Referencing What Is the Importance of Using a Plagiarism Checker to Check Your Thesis?

How to Write Your Thesis Discussion Section

The discussion section is the most critical aspect of your thesis. It is written after presenting your data in the results section. This article explains how to structure your thesis discussion section and what content is required.

What is the thesis discussion section?

The thesis discussion includes explanations and interpretations of your results in the context of your thesis question and  literature review , discusses their implications, acknowledges their limitations, and gives recommendations. In doing so, you make an argument to support your conclusion .

What should the thesis discussion section include?

• A summary of your key findings

This analysis does not support the theory that…

• The answer to your thesis question

These findings confirm our hypothesis that…

• An interpretation of your findings

Our findings agree with the theory proposed by Jones (2019)…

• The implications of your findings

The data provide new evidence of…

• The limitations of your findings (i.e., what can’t the results tell us)

This study only included individuals living in urban areas, and the results may not be generalizable to populations in rural areas…

• Suggestions of practical applications of your findings

X should be taken into consideration when…

• Recommendations for further scientific investigations

Further studies are necessary to…

What should the thesis discussion section not include?

• A restatement of all your results
• The introduction of new results . All results in the discussion section must have been presented in the results section.
• Speculations that can’t be supported by your data
• Results that do not directly relate to your thesis question or hypothesis
• Tables and figures (these are usually included in the results section)

How does the discussion overlap with other thesis sections?

The content in the thesis discussion section overlaps with the results section — the results section presents the data, and the discussion section interprets it. The structure of the discussion section differs according to the type of research ( quantitative vs. qualitative ). In qualitative research, such as in the Humanities and Social Sciences (HSS) domain, the discussion and results from sections are often combined. In thesis studies involving quantitative research, such as in the Sciences domain, these sections are usually written separately.

The content in the thesis discussion section also overlaps with the conclusion section — the discussion section presents a detailed analysis and interpretation of the data, and the conclusion section summarizes the main findings of the discussion. The discussion and conclusion sections may also be combined into a single section in some fields of study. If you are unsure of which structure to use, ask your supervisor for guidance and check the requirements of your academic institution.

How to write a thesis discussion

The discussion section of a thesis starts with an interpretation of the results and then places the findings in the general context of the field of study.

The discussion section is the most critical section of your thesis and will probably be the hardest to write. The discussion section of a thesis starts with an interpretation of the results and then places the findings in the general context of the field of study. This section also demonstrates your ability to think critically and develop innovative solutions to problems based on your findings, resulting in a deeper understanding of the research problem.

Because it can be daunting to write the thesis discussion section in one go, first prepare a draft according to the following steps:

• Prepare an outline that broadly states your argument and how your results support it.
• Strengthen your argument by mapping out how your results fit into the outline.
• Place unexpected or controversial results in context and describe what may have caused them.
• Go back to your literature review to identify any studies that you might want to delve into in greater detail given the findings of your study.
• Identify study limitations.
• Briefly summarize the importance and implications of your findings.
• Recommend any practical applications of your study findings.
• Suggest future work that could build on your findings or address study limitations.

Once you are happy with your draft, it’s time to finalize the thesis discussion section. Use the steps below as a guideline:

• First, restate your thesis question and hypothesis that were stated in the introduction.
• Then, use your findings to support the answer to your thesis question.
• Defend your answers by discussing other studies with correlating results.
• Explain how your findings consistently fit in with the current literature and mention how they address knowledge gaps in the field.
• Mention studies that conflict with your findings, and try to explain possible causes of these contradictions (e.g., population size, inclusion and excision criteria, differences in data collection and analysis methods).
• Address any unexpected findings. Describe what happened and then discuss the potential causes (e.g., a skewed response rate, sampling bias, or changes in the equipment used). Because they could have been caused by a flawed sampling method or an incorrect choice of methodology, carefully check that you have adequately justified your methodological approach. In extreme cases, you may need to restructure your hypothesis or rewrite your introduction.
• Research studies are expected to have limitations and weaknesses. Mention all of them and how they may have impacted the interpretation and validity of your findings. Some limitations could highlight areas that require further study.
• Summarize the practical applications and theoretical implications of your findings.
• Recommend potential areas for future research.

How do I interpret my results?

The thesis discussion section must concisely interpret the results and assign importance to them. This is achieved by:

• Identifying relationships, patterns, and correlations in the data
• Discussing whether the findings support your hypothesis
• Considering alternative explanations while also justifying your chosen explanation
• Emphasizing novel results and explaining how they fill knowledge gaps
• Explaining unexpected results and determining their significance

How do I discuss the implications of my results?

The discussion section of your thesis explains how your findings fit in with and contribute to the existing literature. This refers back to the literature review section of your thesis. The following questions should be addressed:

• Are your findings supported by other studies, and do they add to the body of knowledge or address a gap?
• Do your findings disagree with other studies? If so, determine or suggest the reason(s) why.
• Do your findings challenge or support existing theories?
• What are the practical implications of your findings?

How do I acknowledge the limitations of my study?

It is expected that all studies will have limitations. When discussing your study limitations, don’t undermine your findings . A good discussion of the limitations will strengthen your study’s credibility.

Examples of study limitations: sample size, differences in methods used for data collection or analysis, study type (e.g., retrospective vs. prospective), inclusion/exclusion criteria of the study population, effects of confounders, researcher bias, and robustness of the data collection method.

How do I make recommendations for future research?

Recommendations should either be included in the discussion or the conclusion section of your thesis, but not in both. This could include:

• Addressing questions related to your study that remain unanswered
• Suggesting a logical progression of your research study using concrete ideas
• Suggesting future work based on the study limitations you have identified

Example: Future studies using a larger sample size from multiple sites are recommended to confirm the generalizability of our findings. Example: We suggest that the participants are re-interviewed after 5 years to determine how their perception of this traumatic experience has changed.

Tips for writing the thesis discussion section

• Use subheadings to break down the discussion into smaller sections that identify key points.
• Maintain consistency with the introduction  and  literature review sections. Use the same point of view, tone, and terminology.
• Be concise .
• Be logical. Present the discussion in the same sequence as the results unless there is an unexpected or novel finding that should be emphasized first.
• Do not use jargon, and define all technical terms and abbreviations/acronyms.
• Cite all sources. The majority of references cited in the thesis discussion section should be recent (i.e., published within the past 10 years).
• Avoid plagiarism .

A thesis is the most crucial document that you will write during your academic studies. For professional thesis editing and thesis proofreading services , visit Enago Thesis Editing for more information.

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Review Checklist

Are your  key findings summarized in the thesis discussion section?

Have you  interpreted your findings in the context of your thesis question?

Have you shown how your findings fit in by  discussing differences and similarities with current literature as well as any gaps in the literature that your findings address?

Have you  explained the significance of your findings?

Have you  contemplated alternative explanations for your findings?

Have you  explained the practical and/or theoretical implications of your findings?

Have you identified and  evaluated the limitations of your study?

Have you  recommended practical actions or areas that require further studies based on your findings?

What tense is used to write the thesis discussion section? +

Use the present tense when referring to established facts. Use the past tense when referring to previous studies.

What is the difference between the discussion and conclusion sections of a thesis? +

The  discussion section is a detailed analysis and interpretation of the study results that place them in context with the associated literature. The  conclusion section is much shorter than the discussion section. It mentions the main points of the discussion section, tells the reader why your research is important, and makes recommendations based on your study findings.

What is the difference between the results and discussion sections of a thesis? +

The results section objectively reports the study findings without speculation. The discussion section interprets the findings, puts them into context, and assigns importance to them.

Writing the Dissertation - Guides for Success: The Results and Discussion

• Writing the Dissertation Homepage
• Overview and Planning
• The Literature Review
• The Methodology
• The Results and Discussion
• The Conclusion
• The Abstract
• The Difference
• What to Avoid

Overview of writing the results and discussion

The results and discussion follow on from the methods or methodology chapter of the dissertation. This creates a natural transition from how you designed your study, to what your study reveals, highlighting your own contribution to the research area.

Disciplinary differences

Please note: this guide is not specific to any one discipline. The results and discussion can vary depending on the nature of the research and the expectations of the school or department, so please adapt the following advice to meet the demands of your project and department. Consult your supervisor for further guidance; you can also peruse our  Writing Across Subjects guide .

Guide contents

As part of the Writing the Dissertation series, this guide covers the most common conventions of the results and discussion chapters, giving you the necessary knowledge, tips and guidance needed to impress your markers! The sections are organised as follows:

• The Difference  - Breaks down the distinctions between the results and discussion chapters.
• Results  - Provides a walk-through of common characteristics of the results chapter.
• Discussion - Provides a walk-through of how to approach writing your discussion chapter, including structure.
• What to Avoid  - Covers a few frequent mistakes you'll want to...avoid!
• FAQs  - Guidance on first- vs. third-person, limitations and more.
• Checklist  - Includes a summary of key points and a self-evaluation checklist.

Training and tools

• The Academic Skills team has recorded a Writing the Dissertation workshop series to help you with each section of a standard dissertation, including a video on writing the results and discussion   (embedded below).
• The dissertation planner tool can help you think through the timeline for planning, research, drafting and editing.
• iSolutions offers training and a Word template to help you digitally format and structure your dissertation.

Introduction

The results of your study are often followed by a separate chapter of discussion. This is certainly the case with scientific writing. Some dissertations, however, might incorporate both the results and discussion in one chapter. This depends on the nature of your dissertation and the conventions within your school or department. Always follow the guidelines given to you and ask your supervisor for further guidance.

As part of the Writing the Dissertation series, this guide covers the essentials of writing your results and discussion, giving you the necesary knowledge, tips and guidance needed to leave a positive impression on your markers! This guide covers the results and discussion as separate – although interrelated – chapters, as you'll see in the next two tabs. However, you can easily adapt the guidance to suit one single chapter – keep an eye out for some hints on how to do this throughout the guide.

Results or discussion - what's the difference?

To understand what the results and discussion sections are about, we need to clearly define the difference between the two.

The results should provide a clear account of the findings . This is written in a dry and direct manner, simply highlighting the findings as they appear once processed. It’s expected to have tables and graphics, where relevant, to contextualise and illustrate the data.

Rather than simply stating the findings of the study, the discussion interprets the findings  to offer a more nuanced understanding of the research. The discussion is similar to the second half of the conclusion because it’s where you consider and formulate a response to the question, ‘what do we now know that we didn’t before?’ (see our Writing the Conclusion   guide for more). The discussion achieves this by answering the research questions and responding to any hypotheses proposed. With this in mind, the discussion should be the most insightful chapter or section of your dissertation because it provides the most original insight.

Across the next two tabs of this guide, we will look at the results and discussion chapters separately in more detail.

Writing the results

The results chapter should provide a direct and factual account of the data collected without any interpretation or interrogation of the findings. As this might suggest, the results chapter can be slightly monotonous, particularly for quantitative data. Nevertheless, it’s crucial that you present your results in a clear and direct manner as it provides the necessary detail for your subsequent discussion.

Note: If you’re writing your results and discussion as one chapter, then you can either:

1) write them as distinctly separate sections in the same chapter, with the discussion following on from the results, or...

2) integrate the two throughout by presenting a subset of the results and then discussing that subset in further detail.

Next, we'll explore some of the most important factors to consider when writing your results chapter.

How you structure your results chapter depends on the design and purpose of your study. Here are some possible options for structuring your results chapter (adapted from Glatthorn and Joyner, 2005):

• Chronological – depending on the nature of the study, it might be important to present your results in order of how you collected the data, such as a pretest-posttest design.
• Research method – if you’ve used a mixed-methods approach, you could isolate each research method and instrument employed in the study.
• Research question and/or hypotheses – you could structure your results around your research questions and/or hypotheses, providing you have more than one. However, keep in mind that the results on their own don’t necessarily answer the questions or respond to the hypotheses in a definitive manner. You need to interpret the findings in the discussion chapter to gain a more rounded understanding.
• Variable – you could isolate each variable in your study (where relevant) and specify how and whether the results changed.

Tables and figures

For your results, you are expected to convert your data into tables and figures, particularly when dealing with quantitative data. Making use of tables and figures is a way of contextualising your results within the study. It also helps to visually reinforce your written account of the data. However, make sure you’re only using tables and figures to supplement , rather than replace, your written account of the results (see the 'What to avoid' tab for more on this).

Figures and tables need to be numbered in order of when they appear in the dissertation, and they should be capitalised. You also need to make direct reference to them in the text, which you can do (with some variation) in one of the following ways:

Figure 1 shows…

The results of the test (see Figure 1) demonstrate…

The actual figures and tables themselves also need to be accompanied by a caption that briefly outlines what is displayed. For example:

Table 1. Variables of the regression model

Table captions normally appear above the table, whilst figures or other such graphical forms appear below, although it’s worth confirming this with your supervisor as the formatting can change depending on the school or discipline. The style guide used for writing in your subject area (e.g., Harvard, MLA, APA, OSCOLA) often dictates correct formatting of tables, graphs and figures, so have a look at your style guide for additional support.

Using quotations

If your qualitative data comes from interviews and focus groups, your data will largely consist of quotations from participants. When presenting this data, you should identify and group the most common and interesting responses and then quote two or three relevant examples to illustrate this point. Here’s a brief example from a qualitative study on the habits of online food shoppers:

Regardless of whether or not participants regularly engage in online food shopping, all but two respondents commented, in some form, on the convenience of online food shopping:

"It’s about convenience for me. I’m at work all week and the weekend doesn’t allow much time for food shopping, so knowing it can be ordered and then delivered in 24 hours is great for me” (Participant A).

"It fits around my schedule, which is important for me and my family” (Participant D).

"In the past, I’ve always gone food shopping after work, which has always been a hassle. Online food shopping, however, frees up some of my time” (Participant E).

As shown in this example, each quotation is attributed to a particular participant, although their anonymity is protected. The details used to identify participants can depend on the relevance of certain factors to the research. For instance, age or gender could be included.

Writing the discussion

The discussion chapter is where “you critically examine your own results in the light of the previous state of the subject as outlined in the background, and make judgments as to what has been learnt in your work” (Evans et al., 2014: 12). Whilst the results chapter is strictly factual, reporting on the data on a surface level, the discussion is rooted in analysis and interpretation , allowing you and your reader to delve beneath the surface.

Next, we will review some of the most important factors to consider when writing your discussion chapter.

Like the results, there is no single way to structure your discussion chapter. As always, it depends on the nature of your dissertation and whether you’re dealing with qualitative, quantitative or mixed-methods research. It’s good to be consistent with the results chapter, so you could structure your discussion chapter, where possible, in the same way as your results.

When it comes to structure, it’s particularly important that you guide your reader through the various points, subtopics or themes of your discussion. You should do this by structuring sections of your discussion, which might incorporate three or four paragraphs around the same theme or issue, in a three-part way that mirrors the typical three-part essay structure of introduction, main body and conclusion.

Figure 1: The three-part cycle that embodies a typical essay structure and reflects how you structure themes or subtopics in your discussion.

This is your topic sentence where you clearly state the focus of this paragraph/section. It’s often a fairly short, declarative statement in order to grab the reader’s attention, and it should be clearly related to your research purpose, such as responding to a research question.

This constitutes your analysis where you explore the theme or focus, outlined in the topic sentence, in further detail by interrogating why this particular theme or finding emerged and the significance of this data. This is also where you bring in the relevant secondary literature.

This is the evaluative stage of the cycle where you explicitly return back to the topic sentence and tell the reader what this means in terms of answering the relevant research question and establishing new knowledge. It could be a single sentence, or a short paragraph, and it doesn’t strictly need to appear at the end of every section or theme. Instead, some prefer to bring the main themes together towards the end of the discussion in a single paragraph or two. Either way, it’s imperative that you evaluate the significance of your discussion and tell the reader what this means.

A note on the three-part structure

This is often how you’re taught to construct a paragraph, but the themes and ideas you engage with at dissertation level are going to extend beyond the confines of a short paragraph. Therefore, this is a structure to guide how you write about particular themes or patterns in your discussion. Think of this structure like a cycle that you can engage in its smallest form to shape a paragraph; in a slightly larger form to shape a subsection of a chapter; and in its largest form to shape the entire chapter. You can 'level up' the same basic structure to accommodate a deeper breadth of thinking and critical engagement.

Using secondary literature

Your discussion chapter should return to the relevant literature (previously identified in your literature review ) in order to contextualise and deepen your reader’s understanding of the findings. This might help to strengthen your findings, or you might find contradictory evidence that serves to counter your results. In the case of the latter, it’s important that you consider why this might be and the implications for this. It’s through your incorporation of secondary literature that you can consider the question, ‘What do we now know that we didn’t before?’

Limitations

You may have included a limitations section in your methodology chapter (see our Writing the Methodology guide ), but it’s also common to have one in your discussion chapter. The difference here is that your limitations are directly associated with your results and the capacity to interpret and analyse those results.

Think of it this way: the limitations in your methodology refer to the issues identified before conducting the research, whilst the limitations in your discussion refer to the issues that emerged after conducting the research. For example, you might only be able to identify a limitation about the external validity or generalisability of your research once you have processed and analysed the data. Try not to overstress the limitations of your work – doing so can undermine the work you’ve done – and try to contextualise them, perhaps by relating them to certain limitations of other studies.

Recommendations

It’s often good to follow your limitations with some recommendations for future research. This creates a neat linearity from what didn’t work, or what could be improved, to how other researchers could address these issues in the future. This helps to reposition your limitations in a positive way by offering an action-oriented response. Try to limit the amount of recommendations you discuss – too many can bring the end of your discussion to a rather negative end as you’re ultimately focusing on what should be done, rather than what you have done. You also don’t need to repeat the recommendations in your conclusion if you’ve included them here.

What to avoid

This portion of the guide will cover some common missteps you should try to avoid in writing your results and discussion.

Over-reliance on tables and figures

It’s very common to produce visual representations of data, such as graphs and tables, and to use these representations in your results chapter. However, the use of these figures should not entirely replace your written account of the data. You don’t need to specify every detail in the data set, but you should provide some written account of what the data shows, drawing your reader’s attention to the most important elements of the data. The figures should support your account and help to contextualise your results. Simply stating, ‘look at Table 1’, without any further detail is not sufficient. Writers often try to do this as a way of saving words, but your markers will know!

Ignoring unexpected or contradictory data

Research can be a complex process with ups and downs, surprises and anomalies. Don’t be tempted to ignore any data that doesn’t meet your expectations, or that perhaps you’re struggling to explain. Failing to report on data for these, and other such reasons, is a problem because it undermines your credibility as a researcher, which inevitably undermines your research in the process. You have to do your best to provide some reason to such data. For instance, there might be some methodological reason behind a particular trend in the data.

Including raw data

You don’t need to include any raw data in your results chapter – raw data meaning unprocessed data that hasn’t undergone any calculations or other such refinement. This can overwhelm your reader and obscure the clarity of the research. You can include raw data in an appendix, providing you feel it’s necessary.

Presenting new results in the discussion

You shouldn’t be stating original findings for the first time in the discussion chapter. The findings of your study should first appear in your results before elaborating on them in the discussion.

Overstressing the significance of your research

It’s important that you clarify what your research demonstrates so you can highlight your own contribution to the research field. However, don’t overstress or inflate the significance of your results. It’s always difficult to provide definitive answers in academic research, especially with qualitative data. You should be confident and authoritative where possible, but don’t claim to reach the absolute truth when perhaps other conclusions could be reached. Where necessary, you should use hedging (see definition) to slightly soften the tone and register of your language.

Definition: Hedging refers to 'the act of expressing your attitude or ideas in tentative or cautious ways' (Singh and Lukkarila, 2017: 101). It’s mostly achieved through a number of verbs or adverbs, such as ‘suggest’ or ‘seemingly.’

Q: What’s the difference between the results and discussion?

A: The results chapter is a factual account of the data collected, whilst the discussion considers the implications of these findings by relating them to relevant literature and answering your research question(s). See the tab 'The Differences' in this guide for more detail.

Q: Should the discussion include recommendations for future research?

A: Your dissertation should include some recommendations for future research, but it can vary where it appears. Recommendations are often featured towards the end of the discussion chapter, but they also regularly appear in the conclusion chapter (see our Writing the Conclusion guide   for more). It simply depends on your dissertation and the conventions of your school or department. It’s worth consulting any specific guidance that you’ve been given, or asking your supervisor directly.

Q: Should the discussion include the limitations of the study?

A: Like the answer above, you should engage with the limitations of your study, but it might appear in the discussion of some dissertations, or the conclusion of others. Consider the narrative flow and whether it makes sense to include the limitations in your discussion chapter, or your conclusion. You should also consult any discipline-specific guidance you’ve been given, or ask your supervisor for more. Be mindful that this is slightly different to the limitations outlined in the methodology or methods chapter (see our Writing the Methodology guide vs. the 'Discussion' tab of this guide).

Q: Should the results and discussion be in the first-person or third?

A: It’s important to be consistent , so you should use whatever you’ve been using throughout your dissertation. Third-person is more commonly accepted, but certain disciplines are happy with the use of first-person. Just remember that the first-person pronoun can be a distracting, but powerful device, so use it sparingly. Consult your lecturer for discipline-specific guidance.

Q: Is there a difference between the discussion and the conclusion of a dissertation?

A: Yes, there is a difference. The discussion chapter is a detailed consideration of how your findings answer your research questions. This includes the use of secondary literature to help contextualise your discussion. Rather than considering the findings in detail, the conclusion briefly summarises and synthesises the main findings of your study before bringing the dissertation to a close. Both are similar, particularly in the way they ‘broaden out’ to consider the wider implications of the research. They are, however, their own distinct chapters, unless otherwise stated by your supervisor.

The results and discussion chapters (or chapter) constitute a large part of your dissertation as it’s here where your original contribution is foregrounded and discussed in detail. Remember, the results chapter simply reports on the data collected, whilst the discussion is where you consider your research questions and/or hypothesis in more detail by interpreting and interrogating the data. You can integrate both into a single chapter and weave the interpretation of your findings throughout the chapter, although it’s common for both the results and discussion to appear as separate chapters. Consult your supervisor for further guidance.

Here’s a final checklist for writing your results and discussion. Remember that not all of these points will be relevant for you, so make sure you cover whatever’s appropriate for your dissertation. The asterisk (*) indicates any content that might not be relevant for your dissertation. To download a copy of the checklist to save and edit, please use the Word document, below.

• Results and discussion self-evaluation checklist

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• Last Updated: Apr 19, 2024 12:38 PM
• URL: https://library.soton.ac.uk/writing_the_dissertation

What’s Included: Discussion Template

This template covers all the core components required in the discussion/analysis chapter of a typical dissertation or thesis, including:

• The opening/overview section
• Overview of key findings
• Interpretation of the findings
• Concluding summary

The purpose of each section is explained in plain language, followed by an overview of the key elements that you need to cover. The template also includes practical examples to help you understand exactly what’s required, along with links to additional free resources (articles, videos, etc.) to help you along your research journey.

The cleanly formatted Google Doc can be downloaded as a fully editable MS Word Document (DOCX format), so you can use it as-is or convert it to LaTeX.

PS – if you’d like a high-level template for the entire thesis, you can we’ve got that too .

FAQ: Thesis Discussion Template

What types of dissertations/theses can this template be used for.

The discussion chapter template follows the standard format for academic research projects, which means it will be suitable for the majority of dissertations, theses and research projects (especially those within the sciences).

Keep in mind that the exact requirements for the discussion chapter/section will vary between universities and degree programs. For example, your university may require that the discussion chapter and conclusion chapter are merged into one, or that the results and discussion are covered together (this is often the case with qualitative research). So, be sure to double-check your university’s requirements before you finalise your structure.

Is this template for an undergrad, Master or PhD-level thesis?

This template can be used for a dissertation, thesis or research project at any level of study. Doctoral-level projects typically require the discussion chapter to be more extensive/comprehensive, but the structure will typically remain the same. Again, be sure to check your university’s requirements and norms in terms of document structure.

How long should the discussion chapter be?

This can vary a fair deal, depending on the level of study (undergrad, Master or Doctoral), the field of research, as well as your university’s specific requirements. Therefore, it’s best to check with your university or review past dissertations from your program to get an accurate estimate.

Can I share this template with my friends/colleagues?

Yes, you’re welcome to share this template in its original format (no editing allowed). If you want to post about it on your blog or social media, please reference this page as your source.

What format is the template (DOC, PDF, PPT, etc.)?

The dissertation discussion chapter template is provided as a Google Doc. You can download it in MS Word format or make a copy to your Google Drive. You’re also welcome to convert it to whatever format works best for you, such as LaTeX or PDF.

Do you have templates for the other chapters?

Yes, we do. We are constantly developing our collection of free resources to help students complete their dissertations and theses. You can view all of our template resources here .

Can Grad Coach help me with my discussion/analysis?

Yes, we can provide coaching-based assistance with your discussion chapter (or any other chapter). If you’re interested, get in touch to discuss our private coaching services .

Research Skills

Results, discussion, and conclusion, results/findings.

The Results (or Findings) section follows the Methods and precedes the Discussion section. This is where the authors provide the data collected during their study. That data can sometimes be difficult to understand because it is often quite technical. Do not let this intimidate you; you will discover the significance of the results next.

The Discussion section follows the Results and precedes the Conclusions and Recommendations section. It is here that the authors indicate the significance of their results. They answer the question, “Why did we get the results we did?” This section provides logical explanations for the results from the study. Those explanations are often reached by comparing and contrasting the results to prior studies’ findings, so citations to the studies discussed in the Literature Review generally reappear here. This section also usually discusses the limitations of the study and speculates on what the results say about the problem(s) identified in the research question(s). This section is very important because it is finally moving towards an argument. Since the researchers interpret their results according to theoretical underpinnings in this section, there is more room for difference of opinion. The way the authors interpret their results may be quite different from the way you would interpret them or the way another researcher would interpret them.

Note: Some articles collapse the Discussion and Conclusion sections together under a single heading (usually “Conclusion”). If you don’t see a separate Discussion section, don’t worry.  Instead, look in the nearby sections for the types of information described in the paragraph above.

When you first skim an article, it may be useful to go straight to the Conclusion and see if you can figure out what the thesis is since it is usually in this final section. The research gap identified in the introduction indicates what the researchers wanted to look at; what did they claim, ultimately, when they completed their research? What did it show them—and what are they showing us—about the topic? Did they get the results they expected? Why or why not? The thesis is not a sweeping proclamation; rather, it is likely a very reasonable and conditional claim.

Nearly every research article ends by inviting other scholars to continue the work by saying that more research needs to be done on the matter. However, do not mistake this directive for the thesis; it’s a convention. Often, the authors provide specific details about future possible studies that could or should be conducted in order to make more sense of their own study’s conclusions.

• Parts of An Article. Authored by : Kerry Bowers. Provided by : University of Mississippi. Project : WRIT 250 Committee OER Project. License : CC BY-SA: Attribution-ShareAlike

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Thesis Helpers

Find the best tips and advice to improve your writing. Or, have a top expert write your paper.

Thesis Discussion Writing Guide For All Levels

A thesis discussion is the framing section of this paper. When writing this section, the author delves into the importance, meaning, and relevance of the results. The focus of this section should be on the explanation and evaluation of the findings. Here, you should show how your findings relate to the research questions and literature review. Your discussion should also make an argument that supports the overall conclusion.

The results and discussion in thesis form one of the most difficult parts to write. That’s because this section requires the author to think about the meaning and implication of their research. To be effective, the discussion chapter of a thesis should tell readers more about the meaning of the study and its importance. It should be well-written and organized to make it easier to read and understand.

Importance of Thesis Discussion

A discussion in thesis writing is a section that includes the interpretations and declaration of the writer’s opinions. It’s also the section where the writer explains the effects of their findings while making predictions and suggestions for future research. Here are some of the major reasons why the discussion section is important:

• It answers the questions posed in the thesis introduction
• It shows how the results of your research supported the answers to these questions
• It explains how those answers fit in the existing knowledge body about your research subject

A Ph.D. thesis discussion chapter can be maybe considered very important. Therefore, you might have to make several attempts when writing this chapter. Our thesis writers can help you out if you got stuck.

How to Write a Discussion Chapter in a Thesis

There are different ways of writing discussion for thesis. But, this chapter should start with the reiteration of the research problem and a summary of the major findings. All reported data should not be repeated in this section. However, the section should include a statement of the results that answers the research question. This introduction should not exceed a paragraph.

When writing a discussion, make sure that the introduction of your discussion chapter in thesis tells the readers what the results indicate or demonstrate. You can also tell your readers what the findings suggest or whether they support a certain theory. The discussion section of a thesis should essentially be focused on the following key elements.

• Identify patterns, correlations, and relationships of the data
• Discuss whether the findings supported the expectations you had or your hypothesis
• Contextualize the results within the existing theory or research
• Consider alternative explanations while arguing for your stance
• Explain the unexpected results and evaluate their significance
• Do your findings agree with the previous research and what addition do they have?
• Are your results different from those of previous studies and if so, why?
• Do the findings challenge or support the existing theories?
• What are the practical implications of your study?

The methodologies and research design that you use can cause limitations to your study. Unanticipated obstacles can also limit your study. Nevertheless, mention limitations only if they have direct relevance to the objectives of your research. Also, evaluate the impact of those limitations on the achievement of your research goals.

Good results and discussion thesis example can highlight a limited or small sample size as a limitation. This is a relevant limitation because it hinders the generalization of the findings.

Similarly, a discussion section can explain the problems encountered when analyzing or gathering data and how this influenced the findings. The effects of possible confounding variables that can’t be controlled should also be acknowledged in this section.

• Recommendations In some cases, the results and discussion sample thesis can feature recommendations for further research or practical implementation. However, there are cases where recommendations are featured in the conclusion.But, you can suggest further research immediately after stating the limitations of your study and their impact. Instead of just stating that further research is necessary, provide concrete ideas for future work. Show the readers how future studies can be built on the areas that your study couldn’t address.

What to Discuss in Discussion Thesis Chapter

Many learners want to know how to write discussion chapter in Ph.D. thesis because they don’t know what to discuss. Some learners are even confused between the discussion and conclusion chapters of a thesis. But, these chapters are different and they should have varying content.

Here’s what the discussion chapter should cover:

Interpretation of the research results Comparison of the results with those of the previous studies Contributions of your research to the existing knowledge body Limitations of the study Unexpected results How the results support or refute a certain theory or findings of the previous studies

On the other hand, a conclusion should mainly restate the hypothesis and the most important results. It should also highlight the limitations and significance of the study while suggesting a future direction.

How to Make Your Discussion More Effective? Avoid These Things!

Your discussion chapter should look like an inverted pyramid. Ideally, you should start from a general perspective and then narrow down to the specifics. But, make sure that your findings are linked to the literature, theory, and practice if possible. However, many learners don’t know how to do this. This is one of the major reasons why they want to learn how to write discussion thesis section.

For even better discussions, follow these tips to help with dissertation or thesis and to make it the best it can be:

• Restating your findings If you must remind your readers of the results of your study, use bridge sentences. For instance, tell your readers what a certain finding suggests instead of just re-stating it.
• Repeating recommendations Do not include recommendations in both the discussion and the conclusion parts of your paper. Instead, include recommendations either in the conclusion or discussion section of your thesis.
• Introducing new results Be careful to avoid introducing new results or information when trying to interpret a finding.
• Over-using first person This is one of the most important things to note when learning how to write a thesis discussion. You can use the first person in your thesis. However, using it excessively will distract your readers from your major points.

Learning how to write discussion section of thesis can make all the difference in terms of the grade that you graduate with from college or university. Stylistically, this section should read like bulleted points that have been written in paragraph form. Subheadings can be used if that makes sense. And, the length of this section should also depend on the scope of the study.

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Now that you got all the rules, you have to write your thesis discussion. It might take awhile, and perhaps you have a lot of other things to take care of. Let us help you! Our professional custom dissertation services include some of the best writers in the biz. They are experts in their respective fields and help you succeed in your thesis writing. Research, editing, writing, whatever you might need, we can help you.

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How to Write an Effective Thesis Discussion

Writing an effective thesis discussion can be challenging because it is so open ended. The purpose of the discussion is to (1) interpret your results, (2) discuss the significance of your results, (3) place your work in the context of previous work, (4) discuss the limitations of your study, and (5) suggest next steps to advance understanding and/or to improve real-world situations. The discussion section should expand upon ideas presented in the introduction, literature review, and results, and sometimes even the materials and methods. It should convince the reader that your work was worthwhile.

General considerations

Throughout a thesis or other scholarly manuscript, the results of completed studies should be described in the past tense (e.g. "36 of 43 patients showed improvement with treatment A, while only 25 of 44 patients showed improvement with treatment B"). In contrast, present tense is used to describe ideas that currently appear to be true based on available evidence (e.g. "treatment A is more effective than treatment B for most patients"). A good thesis discussion will typically progress from discussing specific results to discussing broader concepts that currently appear to be true.

You should include citations and modifying statements as needed (e.g. "Previous work by Lee et al. (2017) found no difference in the effectiveness of treatment A compared to treatment B. However , their study was limited to patients in advanced stages of the disease."). You will also need to include suggestions for further research, which can be described in present tense (e.g. "Additional studies are needed to determine. . .") or future tense (e.g. "Future studies will determine . . .").

I will now move into more detailed suggestions for each part of the discussion. Notice the occasional use of first-person pronouns (e.g. "I suggest. . ." or "We believe. . ."), which is now generally acceptable in many fields if used sparingly. Check the specific guidelines provided by your graduate program (and target journal). Also notice the use of subheadings to break the text into shorter sections on specific topics, which is recommended for any long manuscript.

Discussion part 1: Interpret your results

Your discussion should relate directly to the research question(s) you presented in the introduction, so a good way to start the discussion is to clearly restate your research question(s) (e.g. "The current study aimed to determine whether treatment A or treatment B was better for patients with condition X.") The discussion section follows the results section, so the next obvious step is to state what you can conclude from your results (e.g. "We found that a higher percentage of patients showed improvement with treatment A than with treatment B, and therefore conclude that treatment A is more effective than treatment B for most patients with condition X").

There are two general strategies for structuring the discussion of results. The first strategy is to discuss the results in the same order as they were presented in the results section. Alternatively, you can discuss your most interesting or surprising results first. This second strategy is most effective when the results are especially novel. As with any manuscript, the goal is to keep your reader engaged.

In some fields, the thesis discussion is expected to include comments on all of the results, even minor results that may not be statistically significant (e.g. "Treatments C, D, and E produced results that were statistically indistinguishable from placebo, leading to the conclusion that they were ineffective at the concentrations tested."). Note that you should not just state the results (e.g. "Treatments C, D, and E produced results that were statistically indistinguishable from placebo"), but should also state a conclusion (e.g. "they were ineffective at the concentrations tested").

In some other fields, brief comments on minor results are typically included in the results section, and the discussion section is used to elaborate on the most noteworthy results. In some cases, it may be appropriate to write a combined "results and discussion" section, where results are presented alongside initial conclusions, and broader implications are discussed toward the end. Check the requirements for your graduate program (and target journal).

Discussion part 2: Discuss the significance of your results

Clearly explain what is gained from your research. Sometimes a study is very significant (e.g. These results are among the first to show that treatment A is more effective than treatment B for condition X."). Other times—especially for undergraduate or master's theses based on a few months of data collection—the results primarily provide information about what doesn't work (e.g. "These results indicate that treatments C, D, and E are ineffective at physiologically relevant concentrations.)

Discuss some of the possibilities that your research opens up (e.g. "These results raise the possibility that early treatment could improve daily life for patients with mild cases of condition X, and might even delay disease progression.) but do not overstate (e.g. "These results prove that early treatment will improve daily life for patients with mild cases of condition X, and will delay disease progression."). Be optimistic but realistic, whether your results are highly significant or not (e.g. "These results suggest that the solubility of molecules like C, D, and E need to be improved before they can be effective.").

Discussing the significance of your results (part 2 of this essay) is a natural extension of discussing what your results mean (part 1 in this essay), and may not require a separate section.

Discussion part 3: Place your work in the context of previous work

Put your work into a broader context. Here you should revisit some of the previously published work that was described in your introduction and literature review, and clarify how your work expands upon or challenges that work. Most importantly, you should discuss how your work advances understanding in your research field.

For a thesis based on disappointing data, your ability to effectively discuss previous work and potential future work can support the argument that you have developed the necessary skills to move forward in research. These skills are further demonstrated by many other aspects of a well-researched and well-written thesis.

In some cases, your results may reveal unexpected connections. This may require you to discuss additional bodies of work in the discussion section, which can become a second literature review section. As you may be starting to see, there are many different topics you can include in your discussion section. You need to choose your topics carefully, and cover them in sufficient but not overwhelming detail. You want your discussion to cover all essential information, remain a manageable length, and retain the reader's interest. All of the different possibilities can make writing your discussion section very challenging.

If your results contradict previous work, you need to provide some possible explanations. As a rationale scholar, it is especially important to consider all reasonable options. It could be that (1) the earlier work was flawed, incomplete, or not exactly comparable to your work, or (2) your work is flawed, incomplete, or not exactly comparable to the earlier work. You might not be able to determine the exact cause of the discrepancy, but contradictions provide an obvious way to transition into the next section.

Discussion part 4: Discuss the limitations of your study

Every study has limitations, and here you should discuss the major limitations of your research. What can't the results tell us? In what situations are the findings not relevant or well supported? There may be limitations due to your sample population, experimental techniques, data analysis, etc. Discuss these limitations honestly, but then explain why your study is useful despite these limitations. You might point out that your study included multiple different populations, different experimental techniques, alternative methods of data analysis, etc. You might also emphasize that your conclusions are limited to a subset of a larger population, and that additional work needs to be done to determine whether the same conclusions apply to a larger population. This brings us to our next point.

Discussion part 5: Suggest next steps to advance understanding and/or to improve real-world situations

Once you've placed your work into a broader context, you can imagine the future possibilities. Here you might discuss questions that remain to be answered, or questions that have been newly raised by your work. There might be specific studies that would be an obvious extension of your work, and/or exploratory studies that would shed light on promising areas for novel research. Alternatively, you might suggest ways in which your research could be applied to real-world situations to improve outcomes.

Many manuscripts and presentations end with a discussion of possible next steps. I tend to like this type of ending for discussions of basic research, such as which genes are activated in which cells. However, other people recommend always ending with conclusions, where you restate the main findings of your research in a compact form. This might involve a separate "conclusions" section or as a final paragraph in the "discussion" section. Ending with conclusions makes a lot of sense for studies that might directly impact real-world situations (e.g. Treatment A it more effective than treatment B for condition X.).

In any event, you should follow departmental recommendations, and end with a compelling and memorable message for your readers.

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Academic Phrases for Writing Results & Discussion Sections of a Research Paper

Overview |   Abstract   | Introduction | Literature Review | Materials & Methods | Results & Discussion | Conclusion & Future Work | Acknowledgements & Appendix

The results and discussion sections are one of the challenging sections to write. It is important to plan this section carefully as it may contain a large amount of scientific data that needs to be presented in a clear and concise fashion. The purpose of a Results section is to present the key results of your research. Results and discussions can either be combined into one section or organized as separate sections depending on the requirements of the journal to which you are submitting your research paper. Use subsections and subheadings to improve readability and clarity. Number all tables and figures with descriptive titles. Present your results as figures and tables and point the reader to relevant items while discussing the results. This section should highlight significant or interesting findings along with P values for statistical tests. Be sure to include negative results and highlight potential limitations of the paper. You will be criticised by the reviewers if you don’t discuss the shortcomings of your research. This often makes up for a great discussion section, so do not be afraid to highlight them.

The results and discussion section of your research paper should include the following:

• Comparison with prior studies
• Limitations of your work
• Casual arguments
• Speculations
• Deductive arguments

1. Findings

From the short review above, key findings emerge: __ We describe the results of __, which show __ This suggests that __ We showed that __ Our findings on __ at least hint that __ This is an important finding in the understanding of the __ The present study confirmed the findings about __ Another promising finding was that __ Our results demonstrated that __ This result highlights that little is known about the __ A further novel finding is that __ Together, the present findings confirm __ The implications of these findings are discussed in __ The results demonstrate two things.  First, __. Second,  __ The results of the experiment found clear support for the __ This analysis found evidence for __ Planned comparisons revealed that __ Our results casts a new light on __ This section summarises the findings and contributions made. It performs well, giving good results. This gives clearly better results than __ The results confirm that this a good choice for __ From the results, it is clear that __ In this section, we will illustrate some experimental results. This delivers significantly better results due to __ The result now provides evidence to __ It leads to good results, even if the improvement is negligible. This yields increasingly good results on data. The result of this analysis is then compared with the  __ The applicability of these new results are then tested on __ This is important to correctly interpret the results. The results are substantially better than __ The results lead to similar conclusion where __ Superior results are seen for __ From these results it is clear that __ Extensive results carried out show that this method improves __ We obtain good results with this simple method. However, even better results are achieved when using our algorithm. It is worth discussing these interesting facts revealed by the results of  __ Overall, our method was the one that obtained the most robust results. Slightly superior results are achieved with our algorithm. The result is equal to or better than a result that is currently accepted.

2. Comparison with prior studies

The results demonstrated in this chapter match state of the art methods. Here we compare the results of the proposed method with those of the traditional methods. These results go beyond previous reports, showing that __ In line with previous studies __ This result ties well with previous studies wherein __ Contrary to the findings of __ we did not find __ They have demonstrated that __ Others have shown that __ improves __ By comparing the results from __, we hope to determine __ However, in line with the ideas of __, it can be concluded that __ When comparing our results to those of older studies, it must be pointed out that __ We have verified that using __ produces similar results Overall these findings are in accordance with findings reported by __ Even though we did not replicate the previously reported __, our results suggest that __ A similar conclusion was reached by __ However, when comparing our results to those of older studies, it must be pointed out __ This is consistent with what has been found in previous __ A similar pattern of results was obtained in __ The findings are directly in line with previous findings These basic findings are consistent with research showing that __ Other results were broadly in line with __

3. Limitations of your work

Because of the lack of __ we decided to not investigate __ One concern about the findings of __ was that __ Because of this potential limitation, we treat __ The limitations of the present studies naturally include __ Regarding the limitations of __, it could be argued that __ Another limitation of this __ This limitation is apparent in many __ Another limitation in __ involves the issue of __ The main limitation is the lack of __ One limitation is found in this case. One limitation of these methods however is that they __ It presents some limitations such as __ Although widely accepted, it suffers from some limitations due to __ An apparent limitation of the method is __ There are several limitations to this approach. One limitation of our implementation is that it is __ A major source of limitation is due to  __ The approach utilised suffers from the limitation that __ The limitations are becoming clear __ It suffers from the same limitations associated with a __

4. Casual arguments

A popular explanation of __ is that __ It is by now generally accepted that __ A popular explanation is that __ As it is not generally agreed that __ These are very small and difficult to observe. It is important to highlight the fact that __ It is notable that __ An important question associated with __ is __ This did not impair the __ This is important because there is __ This implies that __ is associated with __ This is indicative for lack of __ This will not be biased by __ There were also some important differences in __ It is interesting to note that, __ It is unlikely that __ This may alter or improve aspects of __ In contrast, this makes it possible to __ This is particularly important when investigating __ This has been used to successfully account for __ This introduces a possible confound in __ This was included to verify that __

5. Speculations

However, we acknowledge that there are considerable discussions among researchers as to __ We speculate that this might be due to __ There are reasons to doubt this explanation of __ It remains unclear to which degree __ are attributed to __ However, __ does seem to improve __ This does seem to depend on __ It is important to note, that the present evidence relies on __ The results show that __ does not seem to impact the __ However, the extent to which it is possible to __ is unknown Alternatively, it could simply mean that __ It is difficult to explain such results within the context of __ It is unclear whether this is a suitable for __ This appears to be a case of __ From this standpoint, __ can be considered as __ To date, __remain unknown Under certain assumptions, this can be construed as __ Because of this potential limitation, we treat __ In addition, several questions remain unanswered. At this stage of understanding, we believe__ Therefore, it remains unclear whether __ This may explain why __

6. Deductive arguments

A difference between these __ can only be attributable to __ Nonetheless, we believe that it is well justified to __ This may raise concerns about __ which can be addressed by __ As discussed, this is due to the fact that __ Results demonstrate that this is not necessarily true. These findings support the notion that __ is not influenced by __ This may be the reason why we did not find __ In order to test whether this is equivalent across __, we __ Therefore, __ can be considered to be equivalent for __

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32 Comments

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I’m currently writing up my PhD thesis and as a non-native English speaker, I find this site extremely useful. Thanks for making it!

Very ve4y resourceful..well done Sam

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Hi, would like to clarify if that is “casual” or “causal”? Thanks!

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• How to Write a Discussion Section | Tips & Examples

How to Write a Discussion Section | Tips & Examples

Published on 21 August 2022 by Shona McCombes . Revised on 25 October 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 making an argument in support of your overall conclusion . It should not be a second results section .

There are different ways to write this section, but you can focus your writing around these key elements:

• Summary: A brief recap of your key results
• Interpretations: What do your results mean?
• Implications: Why do your results matter?
• Limitations: What can’t your results tell us?
• Recommendations: Avenues for further studies or analyses

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Table of contents

What not to include in your discussion section, step 1: summarise your key findings, step 2: give your interpretations, step 3: discuss the implications, step 4: acknowledge the limitations, step 5: share your recommendations, discussion section example.

There are a few common mistakes to avoid when writing the discussion section of your paper.

• Don’t introduce new results: You should only discuss the data that you have already reported in your results section .
• Don’t make inflated claims: Avoid overinterpretation and speculation that isn’t directly supported by your data.
• Don’t undermine your research: The discussion of limitations should aim to strengthen your credibility, not emphasise weaknesses or failures.

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Start this section by reiterating your research problem  and concisely summarising your major findings. 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 . This should be no more than one paragraph.

Many students struggle with the differences between a discussion section and a results section . The crux of the matter is that your results sections should present your results, and your discussion section should subjectively evaluate them. Try not to blend elements of these two sections, in order to keep your paper sharp.

• The results indicate that …
• The study demonstrates a correlation between …
• This analysis supports the theory that …
• The data suggest  that …

The meaning of your results may seem obvious to you, but it’s important to spell out their significance for your reader, showing exactly how they answer your research question.

The form of your interpretations will depend on the type of research, but some typical approaches to interpreting the data include:

• Identifying correlations , patterns, and relationships among the data
• Discussing whether the results met your expectations or supported your hypotheses
• 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

You can organise your discussion around key themes, hypotheses, or research questions, following the same structure as your results section. Alternatively, you can also begin by highlighting the most significant or unexpected results.

• In line with the hypothesis …
• Contrary to the hypothesised association …
• The results contradict the claims of Smith (2007) that …
• The results might suggest that x . However, based on the findings of similar studies, a more plausible explanation is x .

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 . 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.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Do your results support or challenge existing theories? If they support existing theories, what new information do they contribute? If they challenge existing theories, why do you think that is?
• Are there any practical implications?

Your overall aim is to show the reader exactly what your research has contributed, and why they should care.

• These results build on existing evidence of …
• The results do not fit with the theory that …
• The experiment provides a new insight into the relationship between …
• These results should be taken into account when considering how to …
• The data contribute a clearer understanding of …
• While previous research has focused on  x , these results demonstrate that y .

Even the best research has its limitations. Acknowledging these is important to demonstrate your credibility. Limitations aren’t about listing your errors, but about providing an accurate picture of what can and cannot be concluded from your study.

Limitations might be due to your overall research design, specific methodological choices , or unanticipated obstacles that emerged during your research process.

Here are a few common possibilities:

• If your sample size was small or limited to a specific group of people, explain how generalisability is limited.
• If you encountered problems when gathering or analysing data, explain how these influenced the results.
• If there are potential confounding variables that you were unable to control, acknowledge the effect these may have had.

After noting the limitations, you can reiterate why the results are nonetheless valid for the purpose of answering your research question.

• The generalisability of the results is limited by …
• The reliability of these data is impacted by …
• Due to the lack of data on x , the results cannot confirm …
• The methodological choices were constrained by …
• It is beyond the scope of this study to …

Based on the discussion of your results, you can make recommendations for practical implementation or further research. Sometimes, the recommendations are saved for the conclusion .

Suggestions for further research can lead directly from the limitations. Don’t just state that more studies should be done – give concrete ideas for how future work can build on areas that your own research was unable to address.

• Further research is needed to establish …
• Future studies should take into account …
• Avenues for future research include …

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McCombes, S. (2022, October 25). How to Write a Discussion Section | Tips & Examples. Scribbr. Retrieved 29 April 2024, from https://www.scribbr.co.uk/thesis-dissertation/discussion/

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Writing the Discussion Section/ Results/ Findings Section of an Academic Research Study/ Thesis

2021, Writing a succesful a cademic thesis

This article is a brief guidance on effective writing of academic research thesis with a focus on the results/ findings section/ chapters. It provides step by step highlights on how to present data from the field, interpretation of the findings, corroborating the findings with existing studies as well as the use of theoretical tenets to discuss the findings. The conclusions and recommendations sections are also highlighted.

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I have already discussed the PhD introduction and literature review in detail. In this paper, I discuss the PhD methodology, results and how to write a stunning conclusion for your thesis. The main objective of this paper is to help PhD candidates to understand what is a PhD methodology and guide them in writing a systematic and meaningful PhD methodology, results and conclusion. The methodology used in this research is a descriptive method as it deliberates and defines the various parts of PhD methodology, results and conclusion writing process and elucidates the "how to do" in a very unpretentious and understanding manner. As thus, this paper summarises the various steps of thesis methodology, results and conclusion writing to pilot the PhD students. This road map is a useful guidance especially for students of social science studies. Additionally, in this paper, methodology writing techniques , procedures and important strategies are enlightened in a simple manner. This paper adopts a "how-to approach" when discussing a variety of relevant topics such as introduction, formulation of the methodology, variables , research design process, types of sampling, data collection process, interviews, questionnaires, data analysis techniques and so on. Results and conclusions are also discussed in detail, so that PhD candidates can follow the guide clearly. This paper has 5 parts such as Introduction, Literature reviews, Methodology, Results and Conclusion. As such, I discuss Methodology, Results and Conclusion as the final assessment of the PhD thesis writing process.

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Many young researchers find it difficult to write a good and quality research thesis/article because they are not prone to article writing ethics and training. Yet, a thesis/publication is often vital and paramount for career advancement, grants, academic qualifications and others. This research work described the basics and systematic steps to follow in writing a good scientific thesis/article. This research also outlined the main sections that an average thesis/article should contain, the elements that should appear in each section, the systematic approaches in writing research, the characteristics of a good thesis/article, the attributes of a good research thesis/article, qualities of a good researcher and finally the ethics guiding research.

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The paper is designed to acquaint the researchers about how to write a research report. The paper intends to discuss the common format of research report. There can be several reasons for writing a research report. It can be written for publishing in scholarly journals, peer-reviewed journals, publications and books. The paper will improve our understanding of writing a good academic research report with example of our research topics on various issues. The examples are based on our research on HIV positive people, adolescent health and infertility issues. The primary source of data collection for the paper is our field work.

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In this study an attempt has been made to answer the questions " What are Research and its types? " What is difference between research paper and article? What is difference between project report, thesis and dissertation? A systematic literature review is undertaken giving an overview of its processes and principles. Research' is a particular type of investigation. It is impossible to do research without having a problem, which is required to be resolved, or a question, which needs to be answered but it is difficult for scholars to select and write topic, statement of purpose and thesis, so the solutions of these are given in this article. The definition and evolution of the approach are described, including the various kinds of research being used today. The research procedure and its nature have been discussed from different scholars' point of view. This article also seeks to organize the scattered knowledge at one point to get research scholars equipped with the latest knowledge. Finally, this study has revealed that research is purposeful and solution-oriented investigation which needs every step properly written. Guidelines given in this study are very clear to help the student to complete their article thesis and dissertation so researchers are advised to follow the guidelines to write quality thesis.

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How To Write ChatGPT Prompts To Get The Best Results

Learn how to craft powerful ChatGPT prompts to generate high-quality SEO content. Follow expert tips, examples, and strategies for layering prompts to get the best results.

ChatGPT is a game changer in the field of SEO . This powerful language model can generate human-like content, making it an invaluable tool for SEO professionals.

However, the prompts you provide largely determine the quality of the output.

To unlock the full potential of ChatGPT and create content that resonates with your audience and search engines, writing effective prompts is crucial.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ll explore the art of writing prompts for ChatGPT, covering everything from basic techniques to advanced strategies for layering prompts and generating high-quality, SEO-friendly content.

Writing Prompts For ChatGPT

What is a chatgpt prompt.

A ChatGPT prompt is an instruction or discussion topic a user provides for the ChatGPT AI model to respond to.

The prompt can be a question, statement, or any other stimulus to spark creativity, reflection, or engagement.

Users can use the prompt to generate ideas, share their thoughts, or start a conversation.

ChatGPT prompts are designed to be open-ended and can be customized based on the user’s preferences and interests.

How To Write Prompts For ChatGPT

Start by giving ChatGPT a writing prompt, such as, “Write a short story about a person who discovers they have a superpower.”

ChatGPT will then generate a response based on your prompt. Depending on the prompt’s complexity and the level of detail you requested, the answer may be a few sentences or several paragraphs long.

Use the ChatGPT-generated response as a starting point for your writing . You can take the ideas and concepts presented in the answer and expand upon them, adding your own unique spin to the story.

If you want to generate additional ideas, try asking ChatGPT follow-up questions related to your original prompt.

For example, you could ask, “What challenges might the person face in exploring their newfound superpower?” Or, “How might the person’s relationships with others be affected by their superpower?”

Remember that ChatGPT’s answers are generated by artificial intelligence and may not always be perfect or exactly what you want.

However, they can still be a great source of inspiration and help you start writing.

Must-Have GPTs Assistant

I recommend installing the WebBrowser Assistant created by the OpenAI Team. This tool allows you to add relevant Bing results to your ChatGPT prompts.

This assistant adds the first web results to your ChatGPT prompts for more accurate and up-to-date conversations.

It is very easy to install in only two clicks. (Click on Start Chat. )

For example, if I ask, “Who is Vincent Terrasi?,” ChatGPT has no answer.

With WebBrower Assistant, the assistant creates a new prompt with the first Bing results, and now ChatGPT knows who Vincent Terrasi is.

You can test other GPT assistants available in the GPTs search engine if you want to use Google results.

Master Reverse Prompt Engineering

ChatGPT can be an excellent tool for reverse engineering prompts because it generates natural and engaging responses to any given input.

By analyzing the prompts generated by ChatGPT, it is possible to gain insight into the model’s underlying thought processes and decision-making strategies.

One key benefit of using ChatGPT to reverse engineer prompts is that the model is highly transparent in its decision-making.

This means that the reasoning and logic behind each response can be traced, making it easier to understand how the model arrives at its conclusions.

Once you’ve done this a few times for different types of content , you’ll gain insight into crafting more effective prompts.

Prepare Your ChatGPT For Generating Prompts

First, activate the reverse prompt engineering.

• Type the following prompt: “Enable Reverse Prompt Engineering? By Reverse Prompt Engineering I mean creating a prompt from a given text.”

ChatGPT is now ready to generate your prompt. You can test the product description in a new chatbot session and evaluate the generated prompt.

• Type: “Create a very technical reverse prompt engineering template for a product description about iPhone 11.”

The result is amazing. You can test with a full text that you want to reproduce. Here is an example of a prompt for selling a Kindle on Amazon.

• Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {product), capture the writing style and the length of the text : product =”

I tested it on an SEJ blog post. Enjoy the analysis – it is excellent.

• Type: “Reverse Prompt engineer the following {text}, capture the tone and writing style of the {text} to include in the prompt : text = all text coming from https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-bard-training-data/478941/”

But be careful not to use ChatGPT to generate your texts. It is just a personal assistant.

Prompts and examples for SEO:

• Keyword research and content ideas p rompt : “Provide a list of 20 long-tail keyword ideas related to ‘local SEO strategies’ along with brief content topic descriptions for each keyword.”
• Optimizing content for featured snippets p rompt : “Write a 40-50 word paragraph optimized for the query ‘what is the featured snippet in Google search’ that could potentially earn the featured snippet.”
• Creating meta descriptions p rompt: “Draft a compelling meta description for the following blog post title: ’10 Technical SEO Factors You Can’t Ignore in 2024′.”

Important Considerations:

• Always Fact-Check: While ChatGPT can be a helpful tool, it’s crucial to remember that it may generate inaccurate or fabricated information. Always verify any facts, statistics, or quotes generated by ChatGPT before incorporating them into your content.
• Maintain Control and Creativity: Use ChatGPT as a tool to assist your writing, not replace it. Don’t rely on it to do your thinking or create content from scratch. Your unique perspective and creativity are essential for producing high-quality, engaging content.
• Iteration is Key: Refine and revise the outputs generated by ChatGPT to ensure they align with your voice, style, and intended message.

Additional Prompts for Rewording and SEO: – Rewrite this sentence to be more concise and impactful. – Suggest alternative phrasing for this section to improve clarity. – Identify opportunities to incorporate relevant internal and external links. – Analyze the keyword density and suggest improvements for better SEO.

Remember, while ChatGPT can be a valuable tool, it’s essential to use it responsibly and maintain control over your content creation process.

Experiment And Refine Your Prompting Techniques

Writing effective prompts for ChatGPT is an essential skill for any SEO professional who wants to harness the power of AI-generated content .

Hopefully, the insights and examples shared in this article can inspire you and help guide you to crafting stronger prompts that yield high-quality content.

Remember to experiment with layering prompts, iterating on the output, and continually refining your prompting techniques.

This will help you stay ahead of the curve in the ever-changing world of SEO.

More resources: 

• 25 ChatGPT Examples For Digital Marketers & SEOs 
• From Zero To ChatGPT Hero: How To Harness The Power Of AI In Marketing
• Leveraging Generative AI Tools For SEO

Featured Image: Tapati Rinchumrus/Shutterstock

Vincent Terrasi is the Co-founder and CTO at Draft&Goal. With more than 15 year’s experience, Vincent has become an expert ...

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