writing-a-discussion-section---interprete-the-results-21579 [Documents]

In this critical part of the research paper, you start the process of explaining any links and correlations apparent in your data. If you left few interesting leads and open questions in the results section, the discussion is simply a matter of building upon those and expanding them. In an ideal world, you could simply reject your null or alternative hypotheses according to the significance levels found by the statistics. That is the main point of your discussion section, but the process is usually a lot more complex than that. It is rarely clear-cut, and you will need to interpret your findings. For example, one of your graphs may show a distinct trend, but not enough to reach an acceptable significance level. Remember that no significance is not the same as no difference, and you can begin to explain this in your discussion section. Whilst your results may not be enough to reject the null hypothesis, they may show a trend that later researchers may wish to explore, perhaps by refining the experiment. This article has been generated by Essay Freelance Writers . For this purpose, you should criticize the experiment, and be honest about whether your design was good enough. If not, suggest any modifications and improvements that could be made to the design. Maybe the reason that you did not find a significant correlation is because your sampling was not random, or you did not use sensitive enough equipment. The discussion section is not always about what you found, but what you did not find, and how you deal with that. Stating that the results are inconclusive is the easy way out, and you must always try to pick out something of value. You should always put your findings into the context of the previous research that you found during your literature review. Do your results agree or disagree with previous research? Do the results of the previous research help you to interpret your own findings? If your results are very different, why? Either you have uncovered something new, or you may have made a major flaw with the design of the experiment. Finally, after saying all of this, you can make a statement about whether the experiment has contributed to knowledge in the field, or not. Unless you made so many errors that the results are completely unreliable, you will; certainly have learned something. Try not to be too broad in your generalizations to the wider world - it is a small experiment and is unlikely to change the world. State your research questions. Once you have indicated where your research sits in the field and the general rationale for your paper, you can specify the research questions the paper addresses. The literature review and rationale frames your research and introduces your research question. This question should be developed fluently from the earlier parts of the introduction and shouldn't come as a surprise to the reader. The research question or questions generally come towards the end of the introduction, and should be concise and closely focused. The research question might recall some of the key words established in the first few sentences and the title of your paper. This could be honed further to be specific by referring to a particular element of the Free Trade Agreement and the impact on a particular industry in Mexico, such as clothing manufacture. A good research question should shape a problem into a testable hypothesis. Indicate your hypothesis. After you have specified your research questions you need to give a clear and concise articulation of your hypothesis, or your thesis statement. This is a statement which indicates your essay will make a specific contribution and have a clear result rather than just covering a broader topic. You should make it clear briefly how you came to this hypothesis in a way which references your discussion of the existing literature. If possible try to avoid using the word "hypothesis" and rather make this implicit in your writing. This can make your writing appear less formulaic. In a scientific paper, giving a clear one-sentence overview of your results and their relation to your hypothesis makes the information clear and accessible. An example of a hypothesis could be "mice deprived of food for the duration of the study were expected to become more lethargic than those fed normally". Outline the structure of your paper. In some cases the final part of an introduction to a research paper will be a few lines that provide an overview of the structure of the body of the paper. This could simply give an outline of how you have organised the paper and how it is broken down into sections. This is not always necessary and you should pay attention to the writing conventions in your discipline. In a natural sciences paper, for example, there is a fairly rigid structure which you will be following. A humanities or social science paper will most likely present more opportunities to deviate in how you structure your paper. There's no official word count for an introduction but brevity is the soul of clarity. Do a sentence to get the reader interested in your topic and a sentence to state your thesis. You also want to include a few sentences briefly outlining the important points in the paper and some background information, if necessary.