HANDLING THE DISCUSSION SECTION


 

75% of academic writing-related anxieties are about the discussion section. The discussion section of a manuscript is the heart of the creative endeavor: it’s where you have to be MOST original. Even if you don’t have a section in your thesis called ‘discussion’ (specific to a journal), there will still be places in your manuscript where you must explicitly make new knowledge in relation to the data you have collected and your analysis. Unfortunately, I have seen a lot of papers where this section is a repeat of ‘results’ which calls for rejection of papers at worst or major revision at best. So, what should the discussion section look like?

Each discipline is different. It’s important to base your moves on what is socially acceptable for your community, but here is a simple list of basic moves that every discussion section needs to have:

·         Restate Results (don’t repeat them)

·         Comment on the results

·         Evaluate the Results

·         Make suggestions based on the results

 

Try some of these sentence starters to get you going:

 

Restate Results:

“The current study found that …”

“The results of this study show/indicate that …”

“The results of this study did not show that …/did not show any significant increase in …”

 

Comment on the results:

“These results further support the idea of …

“These results confirm the association between …

“These findings are consistent with  …”

“These match/don’t match those observed in earlier studies…”

“These results are in line with those of previous studies…”

“These findings are in agreement with those obtained by …”

 

Evaluate the Results:

“There are several possible explanations for this result…”

“It seems possible that these results are due to …”

“The reason for this is not clear but it may have something to do with…”

“These data must be interpreted with caution because …”

“The present results are significant in at least two major respects.”

 

Suggestions

“There are still many unanswered questions about …”

“There is abundant room for further progress in determining.”

“Despite these promising results, questions remain.”


Adapted from: The Thesis Whisperer 

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