In the dissertation discussion section, you have to delve into the details about the importance, relevance and meaning of your work. It focuses on explaining and evaluating what you find and showing how it relates to the literature review you craft.
Students often confuse the results and discussion chapter of a dissertation. The results one just mentions the results, while the discussion section acts as the intellectual heart of your papers. Also, it provides people with a platform to interpret findings and analyse their importance.
Let’s first discuss what a dissertation discussion chapter is actually made of.
What Actually Is Dissertation Discussion?
According to the University of Southampton, the discussion chapter explains your research work in detail and links the results back to the research questions. It involves the use of secondary literature to assist the students in contextualising their discussion. However, it is not just another results section of a dissertation.
The feedback from the supervisor can provide you with enough help with your dissertation and let you perfect this section. Students are bound to provide sufficient clarity to their audience regarding the discussion of results they get.
Here is an example of the sample discussion chapter from the University of Leeds titled The Relationship between Sustained and Divided Attentional Abilities and Autistic Spectrum Disorder Traits:
How to Write a Dissertation Discussion? 10 Expert Tips
Often, there is an overlap between the discussion and conclusion sections of your dissertation, but you must know that these are separate sections. Some supervisors tend to combine these two sections. Whatever the structure of your dissertation is, the writing strategies for both these sections are the same.
Let’s discuss the top 10 best tips for crafting a dissertation discussion chapter.
1. Understand the Purpose of This Chapter
While writing the discussion part of a dissertation, you must understand the purpose of writing this chapter. Here, you have to unravel the importance of your results. To achieve this, it is crucial to maintain a strong link between the results and the objectives. Hence, you can provide the audience with a pathway they can use to understand how the research work contributes to meaningful academic discourse.
The interpretation of the results is the most important part of writing this chapter and you must delve deeper into the implications of research work.
2. Organise the Discussion
The backbone of a well-written dissertation discussion is an organised outline that you follow. You should start by organising your thoughts coherently and ensure that there is a logical flow from one point to another. The structure can guide the readers smoothly through the entire argument and make it easy for them to understand the importance of your results.
You must learn how to make a gradual and smooth transition from specific results to rather broad insights. After that, you can elaborate on the individual findings and discuss their significance.
3. Summarise the Findings
You must focus on summarising all the results without sacrificing the quality of your dissertations. The goal is to mention the essence of your research work succinctly and briefly. You must fight the temptation of just repeating the results in this section of your dissertation.
Instead, you have to explain the results you have gotten and the patterns that might contribute to the objectives you have. The quantitative and qualitative data that may support your results must be added to the papers using examples, charts and graphs.
4. Analyse and Interpret
The next step in the process of writing a dissertation discussion chapter is when you conduct an analysis. Here, you have to analyse the background of your research work critically. You have to delve into the how and why of all your results and explore the underlying mechanisms that result in the outcomes that you have gotten.
Work on connecting the dots between the research questions and data and explain how it contributes to the overall comprehension of the topic.
5. Address the Research Hypotheses
Returning to your hypothesis and questions is an important step in the discussion chapter of your results. It guides the readers through the process of linking the findings back to the initial guiding points. You must clearly state what your results reject or support.
It is important to substantiate the results with proof from all the interdisciplinary research work. Explain how the findings relate to the initial questions of your project. This approach will best reinforce the academic vigour of your research work.
6. Make a Comparison With the Existing Literature
Moving towards the next step, it should be an indispensable practice for you to underscore the importance of your research. In this step, not only will you discuss the similarities between the understandings you get but also an analysis of the prior studies and the identification of contradictions and differences. Such comparisons enrich the discussion by giving a comprehensive view of the importance of the research work.
By emphasising similarities, you reinforce the consistency of your results. The discussion of contradictions and differences offers multiple insights into the complexity of the research title.
7. Explore the Limitations
Transparency in the discussion of limitations is important for the maintenance of the integrity of a dissertation. The work itself should be able to guide the readers on how they can address the potential weaknesses in the study. After that, an acknowledgement of all the factors that influence your results is important. For example, talk about the methodology, data collection and sample size.
When discussing the limitations, adopt an analytical stance and present the limitations in the form of an obstacle. You can also use it as an opportunity for growth. All that you need to do is to explain how these limitations might impact the results.
8. Suggest Future Research Recommendations
The entire section where you suggest future research to the researchers is very important for the research community. Here, you will have to guide the readers on how to identify gaps in current literature and draw attention to areas that need further investigation.
When understanding how to write a discussion for a dissertation, you should also comprehend the importance of suggesting future studies to the audience. It will be best if you can suggest the potential avenues of research to clients.
9. Link Back to the Introduction
The most significant part of a dissertation discussion chapter is that you must link the research hypotheses back to the results you get. Demonstrate how the results align with the basic goals that you set for your work.
This connection should highlight the importance of your research journey and reinforce the relevance of research. Remember to highlight the contributions of your results to the goals of your entire study. You can also show the readers the methods you applied to get the results.
10. Stay Objective
By now, you can understand how to write a discussion dissertation chapter. Along with the other important parts, you can also focus on maintaining a neutral and objective tone in your work. Maintaining this spirit is paramount to the scholarly publications. You should also emphasise the significance of maintaining an objective tone.
Ensure not to include personal emotions or opinions in this section. This can undermine the credibility of your work and divert focus from the empirical results.
How Long Should a Discussion Be In a 10,000-Word Dissertation?
As per The Academic Papers UK, the length of the discussion chapter of a dissertation is 30% of the entire content of the paper. It means that you will need to craft this chapter within the range of 2000-3000 words. In this chapter, you explain what you did, what you did and why that was the best way.
Here, you explain the relation of your results to the source literature, the themes you explore and the best practices. You will also be asked to describe the results that you get and mention the reasons why you failed to get the expected results. At the end, you must mention the weaknesses and limitations of your research. It shows an awareness of your shortcomings and weaknesses.
Conclusion
This article has explained in detail the crucial impacts of crafting an impressive dissertation discussion section. We have explored the purpose and writing strategies for crafting such a chapter. The chapter must be able to connect the objectives and results and emphasise the power of interpretation. We have discussed the art of summarising the key results concisely while avoiding repetition.
If you have any questions or thoughts regarding the entire process, you can ask professional dissertation writing companies for help. When connecting to professional experts, you can learn how to shed light on limitations, purpose future directions and link the results back to the introduction.
All in all, ensure that your dissertation discussion is engaging in its nature and makes it easier for the readers to comprehend the results. This will ensure that your paper is readable and can score well in the papers.
