OK in this lecture I want to show you how we can deal with limitations because that tends to be one
of the most tricky parts of the discussion section.
And first of all I want to say that it's normal to have limitations.
In fact, your reader assumes that you have limitations because every study has limitations.
Therefore, one of the worst things you can do is to claim that you have no limitations or at least to
not mention any and so to implicitly claim that you don't have limitations. That will make your reader
very suspicious and make you a reader trust your results less.
So you have to mention some limitations.
Okay now suppose that you have limitations and you're worried that they prevent you from giving a convincing
answer to your question.
What can you do in that case?
And the first recommendation I want to give to you is to simply look at the whole pattern of your results.
Because I've seen people arguing about some limitations that they may or may not have while completely
losing sight of the fact that even if they have this limitation they can still make the argument that
their conclusion is right based on other results.
So always make sure that you look at the whole pattern of your results.
Another advice that I want to give you is to incorporate findings from other sources. You've already
seen that briefly in the example that I just showed you of the discussion outline.
So in the example an alternative explanation was that the placebo group increased depression. But
then I pointed to other research (previous research) that ruled that alternative explanation out. And that's
how you can do this. It is not necessary that your results by themselves provide the convincing answer.
You can also use findings from previous research and use them together with your findings to form a
conclusion.
Another advice that I want to give to you is to compare your research with previous research.
Sometimes it happens that you have a limitation simply because what you're trying to do is for example
very very difficult. Sometimes, in some areas, it's simply not possible to have a perfect study.
A typical example is correlational research.
For example, if you investigate differences between genders then that research tends to be correlational
because you can't manipulate gender.
You just have to take it as it is.
And that means that you can only observe.
You cannot manipulate and if that's the case for your research then it is worth pointing out that you
may have limitations but these are actually standard limitations in your topic. And maybe you can even
argue that while you have limitations they are actually less serious than the limitations of previous
studies.
As long as you can give the feeling that your study is State of the art or even better it's not necessarily
a problem if you have limitations.
OK.
Finally I want to repeat my earlier advice, which is that if you cannot draw a convincing conclusion
it may make sense to adjust your question.
It may be that your question is too ambitious the way it's phrased and by rephrasing it, making it a
bit more narrow, and making it a bit more modest,
you may suddenly be able to answer your question.
OK.
So if you have serious limitations these are my suggestions for dealing with it.
And in the next lecture I'm going to get into the writing of the whole discussion section including
the limitations subsection.