The discussion section or chapter of your dissertation is very important, and your paper will be incomplete without it. The chapter gives you the opportunity to dig deeper into the relevance of the findings of the study.
When preparing a discussion, make sure to explain and evaluate what you discovered during the study and the relationship with both the research questions and literature review. Therefore, it sets the stage for drawing the conclusion. Keep reading as we demonstrate how to write a good discussion chapter of your paper.
What is a Discussion Chapter?
This is the chapter of a research paper or dissertation that comes after the Results Chapter. It is used for interpreting the findings of the study and giving their significance in line with the research problems that are being investigated. Because you are interpreting the results, this chapter also provides new insights into the problem being investigated.
When preparing a discussion chapter dissertation, one of the mistakes that some students make is simply rearranging the abstract. It will sound repetitive and you are likely to lose marks. Instead, the discussion should demonstrate how the research advanced from the introduction to the end. The way you handle the discussion of findings will determine how great your paper will be.
What Should a Discussion Include?
Discussion in dissertation in can be written in a number of ways, but the best writers focus on four key components, including:
- Interpretations
- Implications
- Limitations
- Recommendations
At this point, we must indicate that how to write discussion in research paper might differ a little depending on your department or college. For example, your college professor or teacher might require you to combine the two while others call for separate chapters. To be sure of the best approach for your thesis discussion, make sure to work closely with your school professor or supervisor.
A Step-By-Step Guide on How to how to Write a Discussion
What should a discussion section include? Now that you have the answer to the question, the next one might be, “how exactly do you write the discussion?” Well, here is a step-by-step guide on writing a discussion section of a dissertation or thesis. You can also use the tips to structure your research paper’s discussion section.
1. Summarize the Results of Your Study
For most students, the primary challenge is how to start a discussion section of a research paper or dissertation. First, you should restate the study’s research problems and correctly summarize the main findings. As we pointed out earlier, you should avoid simply copying and pasting the findings from the previous chapters, and focus on explaining them.
Because you are discussing, it implies you expound on the numbers or information from the findings so that the reader can easily get the answers you sought to answer from the beginning of the study. If you targeted to find out a specific issue, how well have you achieved the objective?
Good examples on how to write this section:
- The findings of the study suggest that …
- The results show that …
- According to the study results ….
- The analysis deviates from the theory of …
- The research shows a strong correlation between …
2. Provide Your Interpretations
Once you have written the first paragraph, the next step is results interpretation. Here, it is important to appreciate that although the findings are obvious to you after taking all the time researching the parameters, the reader is anxiously awaiting to get the results and answers to the research questions. Here are some awesome approaches that you can apply for interpretations:
- Explain whether the findings you got met the targeted expectation. Did the findings support the hypothesis of your study?
- Make sure to identify the patterns, correlations, and relationships noted with your data.
- Place the findings in the context of the previous researches and theoretical frameworks.
- Did you get unexpected results? Explain what they mean for your scientific paper or lab report.
- Are there alternative explanations about the results that you got from the study? Provide explanations.
To make the outline of the discussion more straightforward, experts in writing dissertation recommend that you base the different sections around the main themes. You can also base the discussion based on the research questions and in line with the results section. So, how exactly should you frame this section?
Examples:
- The results support the hypothesis …
- Unlike the hypothesis suggestion that … the results indicate …
- The findings strongly decline the argument by Jeremy (2020) that …
- The findings indicate that X … However, the findings from two similar studies, Jennings (2019) and Johann (2020), that Y …
Note how the findings are expounded, meaning that the reader can rush back to the results chapter for confirmation and clearly see the direction the paper is taking.
3. Bring Out the Implications of the Study
What goes into the discussion section of a research paper after interpreting the results? This is your moment to capture the implications of the study. This means that you need to go back to the larger discipline, especially the works you looked at in Chapter Two: Literature Review of the study. Then, demonstrate how the results of your work cog with the present knowledge. Does it bring a new understanding? What are the implications to your areas of study? Consider asking yourself a number of questions, including the following when preparing the dissertation discussion chapter.
- Looking at the research findings, ask, “Are they in line with already existing research?” Be specific and further ask, “What exactly does the study contribute?”
- Did the result show a deviation from the previous studies? If this was the case, what caused it?
- Are the results from your study supporting the existing theories?
- Are the results challenging the existing theories?
The ultimate objective is to tell readers how the results have impacted the industry. Does it support or challenge the industry?
Good examples on bringing the implications:
- The findings of the study helps to advance the theory that …
- Unlike the previous studies whose results supported Y, this study’s findings show that X …
- The findings of this study should be read together with …. to reveal …
- The report results usher a new line of thought that …
4. Bring Out the Limitations Encountered During the Study
One fact about doing research, be it a dissertation or research paper, is that there must be some limitations. Some students argue that bringing out the limitations can harm the credibility of the study, but this is a misconception. When you highlight the limitations, the reader is able to get the correct picture of what the study could and could not achieve. So, what are some common limitations?
In many studies, the limitations are often caused by the selected methodological option and unexpected obstacles. Here, it is not about simply highlighting the errors but identifying and reporting the limitations that are directly related to the study. Therefore, think of how the limitations impact the core goals of the study.
If you got the challenge when gathering data, it is crucial to show how that impacted the final results. For example, were you unable to work with three controls and only relied on two? Indicate how this impacted the results, and further confirm that the results are valid and correctly respond to the study questions.
Examples of how to write limitation in your study discussions:
- Because of lack of data on variable A, the findings were unable to confirm …
- The study’s generalizability was limited by ….
- The study design was limited by …
5. Explain the Recommendations
As we indicated earlier, the discussion in research is your area to expound the results gathered after the lengthy task. In addition to indicating the implications, you have the opportunity to bring forth recommendations or call for further studies if some gaps were noted. Do not just drop a statement indicating that further studies will be needed. Instead, try to expand on the results to guide readers on why further work is required. Here are some examples:
- Further studies on this topic should factor …
- Additional research on X is needed to determine …
Important Tips for Crafting a Top-Rated Discussion Section
With the above step-by-step guide, you can now create an excellent discussion section. To help you polish it even further, here are some useful tips. We will break them down into “do’s” and “don’ts” to follow when preparing a dissertation section:
Do’s:
- Make sure to follow your college and supervisor’s guidelines on preparing the discussion and conclusion parts. For example, does your department recommend they are prepared together or separately?
- The discussion should start with a statement about the results to introduce readers into the section.
- Be as concise as possible because the targeted reader will want to get a clear link between the results and the study questions. Simply target to answer the main question, “do the findings answer the study questions?”
- Make sure to tell your readers why the results are important. Focus on demonstrating how it advances knowledge in the field of study.
- Explain whether the results supported or disapproved your dissertation hypothesis.
- If there are issues that came up and were not resolved, make sure to indicate the next steps for resolving them. This might be calling for further study.
- If your study is about an ongoing issue, explain the consequences that are likely to befall the society.
Dont’s:
- Simply rewriting or copy-pasting your abstract or introduction. This is likely to result in failure. Again, using phrases, such as “we studied” and “we investigated” will make this section look passive and unprofessional.
- Including new arguments that were not captured in the paper. The discussions should only be a derivative of the results and other related parts of the paper. So, anything that is outside the research realms of the work should be kept away.
- Apologizing. When preparing a research paper or dissertation, you should expect to encounter different limitations. However, you should not apologize because of them. Instead, you should explain the limitations and demonstrate the impact they have on the study. Make sure to tell the reader that the limitations did not impact the validity of results.
- Following the outline of your friend only. Although it is a good idea to check how others did their dissertations, you need to be careful about the attributes to pick. For example, your department or supervisor should answer the question, “how long should a discussion section be?”
- Overstating the importance of results. This is a major mistake that a lot of students make when preparing their discussion chapters. It will make the study look general and miss the targeted point. Instead, you should only focus on demonstrating how the findings relate to the study questions.
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