F and d webinar

1. PG Dissertations: writing up
your findings and discussion
You will be able to…
Describe what should go in each chapter
Explain how your findings and discussion are linked
Analyse how to use your aims and literature review to
plan your findings and discussion chapters
Rhian Wyn-Williams
Skills@ljmu.ac.uk

2. What do you want to learn from today’s
session?

3. There are different types of dissertation that affects how you
organise and write up your findings and discussion.
Are you writing separate
chapters for your findings and
discussion?
Are you writing a single chapter
for your findings and
discussion?
Are you writing chapters by
theme/topic?

4. What are they? Empirical (separate chapters for
literature, methods, findings and discussion)
Findings/Results Chapter
• What was found as a result of your study
• Use summary data
• Graphs and tables
• Extracts from transcripts
• Calculations
• Details of thematic analyses
• If there is an analysis of the errors or
uncertainties, include them here
• Identification of themes and trends
• Restatement of aims/objectives/hypothesis

5. What are they? Empirical (separate chapters for
literature, methods, findings and discussion)
Discussion Chapter
• A summary of the main results of the study
• How your results prove or disprove your
hypothesis
• Comparison of your results with other
investigations or literature
• Factors which may have influenced your results
• Implications of the results
• Interpretation of what you think the findings
mean/show
• Suggestions for why you got the results you did
• Restatement of aims/objectives/hypothesis

6. There is no single, correct way of writing
them but they all should:
• Be clearly themed
• Explain what you think your
evidence/findings mean
• Compare with the literature throughout.
• Contribute clearly to your conclusion: it is a
step in building up your argument.
• Always show relevance to your research
aims.
What are they? Non-empirical (themed chapters
discussing findings and literature)

7. Findings and Discussion: find your story
You will have a mass of material and ideas in your head that you
need to turn into a text that makes sense and tells your research
‘story’.
Find your focus: what have you learnt?
- write a sentence for each
- organise them into groups
- check them against your aims and objectives
- plan how to order them (following your
objectives/develop new themes)
But keep sight of the big picture: significance and patterns
identified.

8. Results/Findings
Your results/findings chapter
will vary enormously.
What could affect the way you
present your findings?

9. Quantitative results:
Table 5 shows the most common modes of
computer infection in Australian businesses. As
can be seen in the table, home disks are the most
frequent source of infection.
The influents to filter A and B were analysed fully
on a number of occasions, and the averaged
results are presented in Table 6.1. It can be seen
from the table that the wastewaters from plants
A and B were of similar composition.
Usually presented in figures and tables, not
raw data.
Think about these key features:
• show calculations if relevant
• summarise information given in the
figure or table
• highlighting statement to point out the
significance, e.g. trends, patterns, results
Look at these examples. Is A, B or C
highlighting significance?
A)
B)
C)

10. 6.4.3 Themes from the Interview Data
For each of these graduates, the data reveal that they were all seeking
ways to improve their pedagogy and achieving success in different ways.
Angela suggested that in her second year of teaching she had changed in
that she was planning in a "more child oriented" way. Ahmed discussed a
similar experience:
‘One of the things I've changed is this idea of herding children through the
day: they go from indoor play to snack time to the mat and so on. How I
do it now is that I have a lot of different things happening at once. I'll have
a small group on the mat and there might be some children sitting down
and having a snack and there's still some children in home corner playing.’
From these comments, two themes emerged. First, the ability to identify
changes in their planning through critical reflection, and second, the
congruence between expressed beliefs and the practice described.
Qualitative
results:
Text-based, and rarely
would have tables or
graphs.
Refer to specific words
and phrases, often
quotes.
Still identify patterns and
themes.

11. Read through either the extracts from
some non-empirical discussion chapters
or the one from the empirical chapter. I
have emailed you all with these.
What do these tell you about how you
your discussion? Write your answers in
the chat box.
Discussion

12. Discussion
• It’s where you show what you think your
findings mean.
• It’s where you may want to explain why
you found what you did, and what may
have influenced your results.
• You put forward an argument.
• It’s like a conversation between your
research and the research of others:
keep linking back to the literature.

13. Discussion
83% of respondents said that
environmental issues did not
influence their travel choices as
tourists.
That contradicts Jones’
argument that ‘most
people’ do now consider
the environmental impact
of tourism (2017, p.82).
Maybe this project’s participants were
less concerned than the average because
they were all students on a budget who
said low cost was their priority.

14. This means that you need to think about
where your findings link to the literature
Aim Objective Findings Link to reading Critical Analysis
Do your findings
challenge what
you have read, or
offer further
evidence for
established
arguments? How
do they compare?
What these
findings mean to
you in relation to
your research aim
and objectives?
Find reasons for
them and draw
conclusions.

15. Useful language: hedging -
caution in academic writing
In the academic world nothing is a 100% certain. Use
language to show that you understand that.
Rather than rushing in with ‘the’ answer, stop and add
some caution.
• use impersonal subjects (It is believed that ..., it can be
argued that ...)
• use verbs such as would, could, may, might. • Globalisation is a positive development for
nations. 
• Globalisation is perhaps beneficial for a
number of countries in several areas (Smith,
2006; Chen, 2008). 

16. • It is apparent from this table that…….
• Overall it can be seen that there is no difference in perception of effectiveness
between male and female participants.
• A significant number of the respondents argued that LJMU should provide more
Directed Study Weeks.
• The interviews with academic staff suggest that there is a link between their
enthusiasm for additional classes and students’ perceptions of effectiveness. This
is clearly demonstrated in Table 3, which shows the frequency of positive language
markers in the interview tape scripts; within individual faculties and between
students and staff.
Further examples of language
Findings

17. • These findings support the assertions of Roberts (2018)
• More surprisingly are the differences between the responses at interview to those
expressed on the questionnaires. This seems to support Davenport’s (2017) statistical
work outlined earlier.
• There are similarities between the attitudes expressed in this study and those described in
previous studies (Fox 2014; Beaumont,2017) in relation to students’ perception of
progress.
• Thus, it can be suggested on the basis of these findings, that there is a difference in
perception between staff and students in relation to the effectiveness of Directed Study
Week (Doran, 2018).
Further examples of language
Discussion

18. Reflection…..
• Which aspects of planning and
writing about your findings and
discussion would you now make sure
you remember?
• Why?
• How will you make those
improvements?

19. Next steps: webinars to develop your dissertation writing, and
other assignments you may still have.
Tomorrow:
Academic Writing: reflections
Next week:
Editing and Proofreading
Dissertations: Question Time
Academic Writing: case studies