A Guide to Report Writing

The Discussion

The aim of the discussion is to outline and explain the results and to relate them to others' theories and results. It also should include some discussion and perhaps evaluation of the methodology of the experiment and provide suggestions for further research.

The Summary and Discussion of the Results

The first task is to provide a verbal summary of the study's findings. It is important that you do not repeat the results section here, this should be a simple summary of what was found. Do not include figures from the results (e.g. means, standard deviation etc.), as this should be a purely verbal summary.

After the brief summary, the findings should be then related to other research findings and theoretical models in an attempt to explain the results. At this point you should relate what you have found to the research that was outlined in the introduction. In the simple example we are using the question to be asked are:How does the finding that there is no difference between the two mnemonics' effectiveness relate to what others have found about the effectiveness of mnemonics? Do our findings agree with or contradict the published research? How can what we have found be explained in terms of the theoretical models outlined in the introduction? (For example what do the results tell us about how LTM is organized ?)

The Evaluation of the Methodology

The next step is to analyze the methodology that was used. Were there any weaknesses that could have affected the results? What you are considering here is; were your experimental results due to the manipulation of the independent variable or were they due to some other factor? In our example if we found no difference amongst the conditions (and thus accepted the null hypothesis), is this because there is no real difference or are there other explanations? If we had found no difference between the mnemonics and no strategy, was this due to there being no increase in effectiveness with using mnemonics? Could there be other reasons? For example although the no strategy group was told not to use any mnemonics, we have no way of checking they did not. It could have been that all three of the groups were using mnemonics, albeit with one using them surreptitiously.

Suggestions for Further Research

The role of the next part of the discussion is to suggest, in light of your results, what further research could be done. An attempt should be made to move beyond simply saying that there should be more participants or that the experiment should "be more controlled". While these may be useful suggestions, they don't really indicate a full grasp of the methodology or the actual area being studied. You should try to give more thought to what the implications of your results are and how further studies could elaborate on your findings.

Finally the discussion should end with a brief summary, stating what the conclusions of the study were.

Common Errors

The main error that students make is failing to provide a comprehensive discussion. It is important that the discussion does not merely repeat the findings but actually discusses them, compares them to other findings and relates them to important models or theories. Also the other issues outlined above, evaluation of the methodology and suggestions for further research, should be considered.

Another problem is that of students repeating the results section at the beginning of the discussion.The summary of the findings should be concise and verbal. This means that the t-score, means and other statistics should not be repeated.

Perhaps the most problematic error is lack of thought and imagination, especially as regards the suggestions for further research.