OK.
We finally arrived at the discussion section which is one of the more interesting sections because as
I mentioned at the beginning this is the section where you will sell your answer to the question.
And in this lecture, I want to show you what the main goals of the discussion section are and also the
logic and structure of the discussion section.
So first of all, what are the goals in the Discussion section? And there are two simple goals.
First, you want to show that you gave a convincing answer to your question.
And second, you want to show that you gave a valuable answer to your question.
Now, with that in mind, let's have a look at the essential parts of a discussion section. So a discussion
section often begins with a summary.
There you remind us of your research questions, your methods, and your results.
Very very briefly.
Then after that you finally get into the interpretation of your results.
What do they mean?
Did the treatment work or are there alternative explanations?
Now is finally the time to talk about this.
Okay.
The next part is usually the integration of your research into existing research.
So how does it compare with research that is already there?
And most importantly what did you add to what we already knew?
Another essential part is: implications of your research.
What are the general lessons that we can learn from your results.
What general phenomena do we understand better or maybe: how could your results help us towards potential
applications. Then, very often you will find a section in which the researchers talk about limitations
of their study.
So what are the weaker parts of your research?
And also importantly: do they invalidate your conclusions? Can you draw your conclusions despite your
limitations?
And then finally, very often at the end of the discussion section, you find a summary or conclusions section
in which you just tell the reader in general what the key takeaways from your research are.
So these are the essential and typical parts of a discussion section.
Now, what's important is to not just know that these parts are there but understand what purpose they
serve.
So in the last slide I talk about the two main goals of the discussion section which is to make clear
that you gave a convincing and valuable answer. And I'm gonna mark these parts now in blue and green,
blue parts are parts in which you're mostly concerned about arguing that you gave a convincing answer
to your research question while in the green parts you're usually more focused on the question whether
you gave a valuable answer.
So for example when you talk about the interpretation of your results and whether there are alternative
explanations then you're basically talking about the question: are your results convincing?
For example, if there are plausible alternative explanations for your results then you may not be able
to answer your question.
Likewise if your study has limitations,
for example, if it is only correlational or if the measurements do not turn out to be that reliable or
if part of your results did not confirm your hypothesis then that could mean that you cannot give a
convincing answer to your research question and therefore these two parts - interpretation and limitations -
are mostly about showing that you gave a convincing answer to your question.
Now what about the other parts?
So in the integration part you basically show that you contributed something new to the literature which
is the first sign that you contributed something valuable then in the implication section you go a bit
further and show what the general lessons are that we have learned.
What do we understand better? What applications may be possible based on your results?
So here you really show the reader the value of your research. And then finally in the summary and conclusions
section you just summarize the key points again while focusing on the value of your research.
What have we learned?
What do we understand better?
These things need to stay on the mind of the researcher after the researcher has finished your paper.
Okay.
When you look at this you may wonder: why is it so cluttered?
So for example, why don't we take the limitations part and move it up to the interpretation so that we
first discuss whether our answer is convincing and then we discuss what the value of our answer is?
And that's actually exactly what I did in one of my first paper and I remember that my supervisor made
the remark that I wrote the paper in a very well German style. And here's what he meant.
The problem is that if you put the limitations section here then you start your discussion section pretty
much with the weak spots of your research. But you don't want to start with the weak spots of your research.
It makes much more sense to first show the value of your research and then after the reader got a little
bit excited about your research start to talk about limitations.
And this tends to be true most of the time. It's usually good to have limitations...
Well at least not at the beginning.
But I also want you to be aware that these things are not fixed and there may be cases in which it makes
sense to put the limitations first.
So for example, a situation where I would put the limitations first is if there is something that looks
like a serious limitation, something that will make many readers reject everything that I have to say
about integration and implications,
but that isn't actually a real limitation.
And if that's the case I would start with the limitations to get that limitation out of the way.
However in most cases it will make more sense to put the limitations more at the end of your discussion
section. OK so now you know the essential parts of the discussion section and what their function is.
And now let's move to the next lecture in which we're going to construct the outline of your discussion
section.