Tips for writing the Results section

 

  1. Before writing the first draft of your Results section:
    1. Read the section in Chapter 15 relating to writing the Results section (pp. 625-626).
    2. Consider going through this "Writing Results" tutorial.
  2. When writing your first draft, interpret your results in terms of whether the results support your hypothesis. However, do not interpret your results in terms of their implications for future research or for their practical implications: Save those interpretations for the Discussion. Similarly, save any discussion of weaknesses of your study for the Discussion section.
  3. After you write a draft of your method section, have some unfamiliar with your research read your section and see if they can answer these four questions (anyone, even an elementary school student, should be able to answer the fourth question):
    1. How did you convert participants’ behaviors into scores?
    2. What statistical tests did you perform?
    3. Why did you perform those tests?
    4. Did your results support the hypothesis?
  4. Revise your draft by checking its content and structure (but not its format) against the checklist for the Results section in Appendix A (pp. 641- 646). 

 

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