Assignment Instructions

Using the Discussion outline you created for the last assignment, develop your points and ideas into full sentences and paragraphs. You should be expanding the points you made in the outline to write out full paragraphs that elaborate on your points and ideas. The flow of the Discussion should follow the same structure as the outline:

1. Introduction to this section.


2. Summarizing relevant results and linking them to the research questions.


3. Interpretation of the results.


4. Drawing on relevant literature that addresses your interpretation.


5. Limitations of the study and what future research should happen to address these limitations and add knowledge around the topic.


6. Conclusions.


7. Implications (why people should care) and how the results can be applied generally (think ecological validity!).

You are writing the Discussion section as if you are the author of the study, so you do not need to cite the original article. Similarly, the Discussion section should be written in the present tense using active voice and be objective in tone, unlike the Results section which is written in the past tense. However, when referring to the findings of other studies, you should use the present tense. Below are some examples to illustrate that.

You should be using in-text citations and providing references for any paraphrasing of other relevant literature in the Discussion. Reminder that plagiarism is a major academic offence. Most of the in-text citations in the Discussion section will likely be in the introduction and when talking about other research studies that support your interpretations.

Example of a Good Discussion

Using the example below, notice how the author(s) have written the Discussion using the flow mentioned above. In their Discussion section, they put the results of their study in context, and by the end discussed the limitations and implications of their study. You will notice that the author(s) skipped steps one and two (i.e., they did not provide a brief introduction of why the study was done and did not summarize the relevant results and link them to the research question(s). However, for your Discussion section, please make sure to complete steps one and two in order to get used to writing and thinking about how the results of your study relate to your research question(s). Writing a brief introduction and summarizing the results for a Discussion section is similar to how you write an introduction and conclusion for an Abstract. You want to look for the same kind of information (the most important details), but write two or at most three sentences about each instead of one each.

Overview

The Discussion section is where you will make conclusions about what your results really mean and their implications. If you think of the Discussion section like a book report, the Discussion would be where you highlight all the main parts of the book, including the main storyline and side plots that were important, and then share your overall thoughts about the importance of the story. Sometimes your story will have twists, such as unexpected study results, that should be explained as best as possible with supporting evidence from your research and other similar studies (connect to existing research).

The primary purpose of a Discussion section is to talk about the key results observed in your experiment and explain what the results mean in relation to your research question(s) and the context of existing evidence (i.e., are your results consistent with results from similar studies). In the Discussion, do not include statistics/numbers that have already been stated in the Results. Instead, talk about whether the results support the research question, and what a significant result means in the context of your paper and the existing literature.

Structure of a Discussion Section

The Discussion is where the authors explain their results, what they mean in the context of the literature, and how the study answered the research questions raised in the introduction of the paper. For instance, some of the information that the authors should include in the discussion are:

• A reminder of the purpose of the study and why it’s important.


• How the study fills in any research gaps that were identified in the introduction.


• A summary and an interpretation of the results (in words, without using statistics!).
  
  
  
  • If and how the results answer the research question(s)/ whether the hypothesis was supported/rejected by the results.
  
  
  • How this research project contributes to the field or current knowledge base.
    
    
    
    • Address any limitations of the study (i.e., how those limitations affect the interpretation of the results).
      
      
      
      • It is important to note that limitations are not flaws within one’s study. They are parts of a study that limit the ability to interpret your results. These are most of the time limitations to the generalizability of the data to the rest of the world (e.g., composition of your sample: if your sample includes only undergraduate students, then the results may not be generalizable to older adults or children.
      
      
      • Provide suggestions on future research in the field, and how future research could account for the limitations of your study.
        
        
        
        • A conclusion of what the results mean. The potential “real-world” implications of your findings (think: ecological validity!).
        
        
        
        
      
      
      
      
    
    
    
    
  
  
  
  

Assignment Requirements

• Font size 12; Times New Roman or Arial.


• Maximum of 2 pages double-spaced.


• A minimum of four references.
  
  
  
  • At least one article must be an academic article (peer-reviewed article).
  
  
  • At least one article must be an article not already referenced in the paper.
  
  
  • You can reuse the articles from the Discussion outline assignment. Be sure they are properly cited and referenced.
  
  
  • Must include APA 7 formatted in-text citations and reference section. See Purdue OWL and the APA template on Brightspace.
  
  
  • A title page, header, and page numbers are required for this assignment, again APA formatted.