Results sections
By the time you write your results section, you’ve completed the hard work of data collection and analysis. This section focuses on describing your findings clearly and logically. Follow these tips to get your results section right.
The results section in a thesis is usually about describing your findings, not analysing or interpreting them. Depending on your thesis type, you may choose to present discussion and interpretation separately or integrate them differently.
As with all structural decisions, check your options with your supervisory team.
Contents of the results section
The results section in a HDR thesis generally contains statements of your results, and the analysis of them is then done in the following section, the discussion. In some theses, however, the two sections can be combined, as reflected in ‘Arrangement 2’ below.
The results section can, in fact, be arranged in the following three main ways with the first being most common.
| Arrangement 1 | Arrangement 2 | Arrangement 3 |
| Results | Results and Discussion | Results |
| Discussion | Discussion and Conclusion | |
| Conclusion | Conclusion |
Structuring your results section
Writing the results section
Write the results section in the past tense as, by the time of writing it up, the experiment or study is over.
If there are secondary studies and sub-group analyses in your study, discuss the primary findings first, then the secondary findings, and then the findings from the sub-group analyses. This is done in the following examples below: the main findings (first "passage with double quote marks") is followed by the secondary findings (second "passage with double quote marks"), if applicable.