Your results are crucial to the integrity of your scientific paper, article, or research paper. Whether or not your paper stands or falls depends on both how valid your results are and how well they are represented. The main priority when presenting results should be clarity and completeness.
In your Results section, you present the data that was collected from your experiment and present it clearly and honestly. Presenting complete data makes your research more credible. Even when the results don’t put your research in a flattering light, they should be included.
In this article, we discuss how best to format and present your results to make your research more credible and easy to read.
Things to consider when you write the Results Section of a Research Paper
If your results are not too complicated or large, the data should be fully described in the text. More complicated information and datasets should be presented in tables. There are some cases where datasets are so large that all the tables can’t be included in the paper. In such cases, think of using supplementary tables that should be included in the index at the end of the paper.
Results are usually written in the past tense as they describe past events. The introduction and methods tell the why and how of your research; the discussion focuses on the meaning of your research; however, the results answer the questions that launched the rationale of your paper.
As a result, you should strive for clarity. The good thing about research or academic writing is that it’s not a Haiku contest. You don’t have to worry about writing elegant or flowery language. Simply strive for clarity. This is done through:
Summarize and include the complete data
Be concise in your descriptions
Use tables properly
Writing your results is the somewhat difficult art of achieving a proper balance between avoiding redundancy and making sure you give out enough information. Avoiding redundancy helps direct attention to what is important while remaining concise prevents the reader from being overwhelmed with data.
Your results section makes or breaks your paper. The focus should be on summarizing data while being complete. The proper use of tables is an essential part of that process. I discuss each of these three aspects in the following sections:
1. Summarize and include complete data
In the results section, the collected data should be summarized to prepare for the analysis and discussion sections. Again as mentioned earlier, all results should be included. This means results that run counter to your expected results and hypotheses. You should also avoid hiding uncomfortable results through omissions.
2. Include all relevant statistics and data analysis
Statistics and analysis are fundamental aspects of research. For this reason, data representation and analysis should be accurate, complete, and unbiased. Moreover, it should provide original and interesting insight.
A wide range of analysis methods to present your data are available. The only correct one is the one that is appropriate to answer your research questions or hypotheses. Another thing to remember is to assume that your reader has professional knowledge of statistics.
Don't talk down to them. This is especially true for young or novice scholars, who may feel compelled to over-explain things that they have recently learned. Assuming that your readers are experts will contribute toward saving space, especially for journals or papers with strict word-count requirements.
There are mainly two types of statistics that are used when presenting your results: Descriptive statistics and multivariable statistics.
Descriptive statistics
Descriptive statistics can be considered as the most basic aspect of your sample data. They summarize the basic but essential features of your data. They help demonstrate the “shape of your data in terms of how it is distributed.
They include a summary of measurement values such as sums, means, and medians. For example, you could describe the average age of participants who responded to your questionnaire. Or you could describe the mean time it took for the active ingredient of a botanical to eliminate a culture of bacteria.
Multivariable statistics
Multivariate analysis refers to all statistical methods that are utilized in analyzing more than two variables simultaneously. Its main goal is to uncover correlations between several variables simultaneously. This can bring about a much more in-depth appreciation of a problem than what one would get from either univariate or bivariate analysis.
Multivariate analysis should include aspects such as, multivariate analyses of variance, regression analyses, structural equation modeling (or SEM) analyses, and hierarchical linear modeling. Other measurements that should be included are associated means, sample sizes, and correlation matrices.
Inferential statistics
Inferential statistics uses sample data to draw inferences about the wider population. With these types of statistics, you should ensure that your sample population is representative of the wider population that you are
Generally, inferential statistics can either be used in 1) hypothesis testing and 2) regression analyses. For regression analysis, this includes linear, nominal, logistic and ordinal regression. For hypothesis testing, this would include measures such as t, F, and χ2 tests.
3. The effective use of tables
Properly presented tables are key to your results. In fact, some scholars believe that a scientific paper could hardly be called scientific if it doesn't include tables presenting significant results. Therefore, you should pay special attention to making sure that they are properly incorporated into your research paper.
There are specific rules associated with presenting information in tables. And these rules should be properly adhered to. Here is a list of things to consider when presenting tables:
Table titles should be concise and descriptive. Titles are typically phrases instead of complete sentences and have no periods.
Tables should not span more than one page if at all possible. If so, it should split into two tables; that is, one table per page.
A table should be complete. Abbreviations and any other necessary information should be defined in notes at the bottom of the table if necessary.
However, you should be careful not to stuff your manuscript with tables full of results. This would make reading confusing. Instead, if your tables are too many and you still feel that the information contained is valuable, include them in the list of supplementary tables.
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Final thoughts on how to write the Results section of a research paper
Proper results are essential to giving credibility to your research. As mentioned earlier, whether or not your paper stands or falls depends on the quality and rigor of your data. Also, properly collected data and data analysis means that your paper stands a closer chance of not simply being published or passing but contributing significantly to knowledge on the research area that it addresses.
This would qualify your research paper to be included in meta-analyses, which generally provide a review and summary of the most important research on specific subject matters.
Cite this EminentEdit article |
Antoine, M. (2024, August 06). How to Write the Results Section of a Research Paper. https://www.eminentediting.com/post/how-to-write-the-results-section-of-a-research-paper |
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