CHAPTER FOUR: RESULTS FINDINGS AND DISCUSSIONS

The preceding chapter was aimed at outlining the methodologies and design used in your research. This chapter is for summarizing the collected data obtained through those methodologies and critically analyzing the data. This section can be the most interesting to write. In this chapter, you focus on the results you obtained and set out clearly what happened in your research and experiments, as well as the implications of the results. This section should include your key experimental results and any statistical analysis.

Writing a quality section on findings is important, so you don’t report too little information despite having gathered and analyzed large amounts of data or report so poorly that your reader struggles to figure out what you’ve written.

The research design and methodology chapter are crucial for writing a quality findings section. Every result included in this chapter must have a method defined in the preceding chapter. Every method stated should also link to some results.

The results you include in this section should be relevant to your research problems and questions outlined in the introductory chapter. The order in which you present your findings is also important – it could be chronological or in order of priority, or by research question.

Another important aspect is the format in which you present your findings – either as tables, figures, graphs, or text. Try to include various modes of presentation to illustrate and summarize your overall findings to make them clearer. The figures you use should be complementary and not just repeat the same data. Ensure you include information indicating any changes or patterns. Include all your primary evidence in an appendix to refer to at the relevant point.

The discussion of your results aims at interpreting and explaining your results. It would be best to focus on answering your research questions and relating the results to the problems. You should try to justify your approach and methodology and also critically analyze your study. This section needs to analyze your findings in the context of existing knowledge about the topic.

The discussion should come after your results and relate to your literature review from chapter 2.

Ensure you continually check the guidelines for your university to align your outline with the accepted practice as it differs among various institutions.

How to Structure your Findings Section

It is advisable to prepare an outline, constructing the basic structure of your arguments and how your results support them. Once you have the basic outline, you can start to flesh out the details. This will also give you a broad view of your results so you can see if you’re over-focused or under-focused in one area or another.

Introduction

For the preamble section of this chapter, restate your problem statement, the purpose of the study and research questions. State the purpose of this chapter and briefly summarize your research design and methodology from the preceding chapter. Explain the criteria you used for collecting, organizing and validating the data presented. This is to provide a context for the reader on the findings to be reported. Not all your readers will begin from chapter 1, and a summary provides a good background for them to understand better and appreciate your findings.

For qualitative research, the research questions or problems should be restated. For quantitative research, the hypothesis or theories should be presented.

Body

Begin with a description of the sample – the sample size, criteria for selecting participants, handling of missing data. Present the descriptive statistics next – the frequencies means standard deviations and ranges of variables.

Address each hypothesis, giving a description of the research to address the hypothesis and the analysis results. Keep your statements short and straight to the point. Ensure the titles of your tables and your figure captions are easy to understand.

Begin with the results before you draw your implications, interpretations, or assessments. For each theme, discuss how the analysis results help answer your research questions or prove or disprove your hypothesis—state whether the results are consistent with your expectations and the literature.

Set your results fully in context and explain your justification for the methodology used. Evaluate your results against the findings of others, particularly if your results are controversial or unexpected. It would be best if you also had a full understanding of the limitations of your research.

For qualitative data, including words, phrases and sentences from participants who were interviewed or focus groups as you discuss, the themes that emerge from the data collated from the interviews and observations. Verbatim quotations and extracts help to support your arguments and demonstrate how the findings of your interpretations have arisen from the data.

Remember to write for the reader, so let the findings be logical and easy to follow and understand.

Outline for the body

Here is a guide for the outline of what to include in the body of the chapter:

• Raw presentation of data: Here, you should state each of the research questions or hypothesis outlined in the introductory chapter and give the results gotten from your research analysis. Support your presentation with tables, graphs or figures where it is applicable. Highlight the most important information in the graphics to aid the reader.

• Description of data: Include a brief description of the sample, the methodology and your data collection techniques.

• Compilation of data/questionnaires: This should include data from the interviews, focus groups or ethnography and your evaluation of the results. Include the gradients in responses and the distribution between the participants based on your defined patterns.

• Interpretations of results: In this discussion section, review your findings and results and relate them to the existing body of knowledge. Ensure everything you discuss is covered in the results section.

• Theory: Draw out your theory from the data. State whether your results confirm or contradict your predictions and theories. Solidify your theoretical framework in this section.

Summary

Conclude this chapter by summarizing your findings and their implications. Explain why they’re important and provide suggestions for further research. You can also make practice recommendations. Close the chapter by providing a transition to the final chapter of your thesis, the Conclusion.