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Research Basics

Writing the Research Paper (or Proposal)

Results

This is where you present your main findings. Depending on whether you used quantitative methods or qualitative methods, the organization for summarizing your results will vary. Here, we briefly highlight the main elements, but we suggest that you go to the section for a more elaborate description.

In quantitative analyses, you’ll present your findings in a series of tables. However, your result section should refer the reader to the most important and interesting findings as it relates to the original research questions and hypothesis. In addition, you provide an interpretation of the statistical results. This way, even a non-statistical reader, can understand the key meaning behind the numbers.

In qualitative analyses, the results section often read more like a narrative. However, don’t let that fool you. The results are also organized and presented in a systematic manner to highlight the main findings and the interpretations. Utlimately, any result section presents the main findings in a way where it weaves the author’s interpretation with key pieces of evidence from the data. Regardless of your method technique, your results should be organized around key themes or variables that you already outlined or identified in the beginning of the paper either in the introduction or the literature review. Thus, use these key themes to organize the results sections so that you avoid a “laundry list” review of your results.