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Writing Up Your Results in A Thesis or Dissertation

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Writing Up Your Results in A Thesis or Dissertation

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ii.98sh7
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© © All Rights Reserved
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Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Writing up your results in a thesis or dissertation

Published on October 27, 2016 by Bas Swaen. Revised on October 13, 2020 by Shona McCombes.

Once you’ve finished collecting and analyzing your data, you can begin writing up
the results. This is where you report the main findings of your research.

All relevant results should be reported concisely and objectively in a logical order.
You may use tables and graphs to illustrate specific findings.

Don’t include subjective interpretations of why you found these results or what they
mean – your evaluation should be saved for the discussion.

When to write a results chapter


Depending on your field, you might not include a separate results chapter. In some
types of qualitative research, such as ethnography, the results are often woven
together with the discussion.

But in most cases, if you’re doing empirical research, it’s important to report the
results of your study before you start discussing their meaning. This gives the
reader a clear idea of exactly what you found and keeps the data itself separate from
your interpretation of it.

The results should be written in the past tense. The length of this chapter
depends on how much data you collected and analyzed, but it should be written
as concisely as possible. Only include results that are relevant to answering
your research questions.

Results of quantitative research (e.g. surveys, experiments)


For quantitative research, you’ll usually be dealing with statistical results.

You can report descriptive statistics to describe things like means, proportions, and
the variability of your data.

You’ll also report the results of any statistical tests you used to compare groups or
assess relationships between variables, stating whether or not your hypotheses were
supported.

The most logical way to structure quantitative results is to frame them around your
research questions or hypotheses. For each question or hypothesis, present:
 A reminder of the type of analysis you used (e.g. a two-sample t-test or simple
linear regression). A more detailed description of your analysis should go in
your methodology section.
 A concise summary of each result, including relevant descriptive statistics
(e.g. means and standard deviations) and inferential statistics (e.g. t-scores,
degrees of freedom, and p-values). These numbers are often placed in
parentheses.
 A brief statement of how the result relates to the question or whether the
hypothesis was supported.

The statistics you should report and the conventions for presenting them depend on
the types of analysis you used and the style guide you are following. Make sure to
include all relevant results, both positive and negative. If you have results that
didn’t fit your expectations and assumptions, include these too, but do not speculate
on their meaning or consequences – this should be saved for
the discussion and conclusion.

You shouldn’t present raw data in your results chapter, but you may include it in
an appendix so that readers can check your results for themselves.

Tables and figures


In quantitative research, it’s helpful to include visual elements such as graphs,
charts and tables, but only if they accurately reflect your results and add value for
the reader.

 Tables are used to communicate exact values, giving a concise overview of


various results.
 Graphs and charts are used to visualize trends and relationships, giving an at-
a-glance illustration of key findings.

You must refer to all tables and figures in the text, but don’t repeat information. The
text should summarize or elaborate on specific aspects of your tables and figures,
not just re-state the same numbers that you’ve already presented.

Give your tables and figures clear, descriptive titles and labels so the reader can
easily understand what is being shown.
Example: Reporting survey results
A two-sample t-test was used to test the hypothesis that higher social distance from
environmental problems would reduce the intent to donate to environmental
organizations, with donation intention (recorded as a score from 1 to 10) as the
outcome variable and social distance (categorized as either a low or high level of
social distance) as the predictor variable.
Social distance was found to be positively correlated with donation intention, t(98)
= 12.19, p < .001, with the donation intention of the high social distance group 0.28
points higher, on average, than the low social distance group (see figure 1). This
contradicts the initial hypothesis that social distance would decrease donation
intention, and in fact suggests a small effect in the opposite direction.

Figure 1: Intention to donate to environmental organizations based on social


distance from impact of environmental damage.

Results of qualitative research (e.g. interviews)


In qualitative research, the results might not all be directly related to specific
hypotheses. In this case, you can structure your results section around key themes or
topics that emerged from your analysis of the data.
For each theme, make general observations about what the data showed. For
example, you might mention recurring points of agreement or disagreement,
patterns and trends, and individual responses that were particularly significant to
your research question. You can clarify and support these points with direct
quotations, and report relevant demographic information about participants.

Further information (such as full transcripts of your interviews, if appropriate) can


be included in an appendix.

Example: Reporting interview results


When asked about video games as a form of art, the respondents tended to believe
that video games themselves are not an art form, but agreed that creativity is
involved in their production. The criteria used to identify artistic video games
included design, story, music, and creative teams. One respondent (male, 24) noted
a difference in creativity between popular video game genres:
“I think that in role-playing games, there’s more attention to character design, to
world design, because the whole story is important and more attention is paid to
certain game elements […] so that perhaps you do need bigger teams of creative
experts than in an average shooter or something.”

It is clear from the responses that video game consumers consider some types of
games to have more artistic potential than others.
Results vs discussion vs conclusion
The results chapter should objectively report the findings, presenting only brief
observations in relation to each question, hypothesis or theme. It should not give an
overall answer to the main research question or speculate on the meaning of the
results.

Avoid subjective and interpretive words like “appears” or “implies”. These are
more suitable for the discussion section, where you will interpret the results in
detail and draw out their implications.

Checklist: Research results


 I have completed my data collection and analyzed the results.
 I have included all results that are relevant to my research questions.
 I have concisely and objectively reported each result, including
relevant descriptive statistics and inferential statistics.
 I have stated whether each hypothesis was supported or refuted.
 I have used tables and figures to illustrate my results where appropriate.
 All tables and figures are correctly labelled and referred to in the text.
 There is no subjective interpretation or speculation on the meaning of the
results.

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