Chapter 5: Writing the Results Section

Conceptualizing the Research Article: Review

You may remember from Chapters 3 and 4 that research articles have specific sections regardless of discipline or journal. Generally, there are five commonly acknowledged sections of an empirical research manuscript: Introduction (including the Literature Review), Methods, Results, Discussion/Conclusion.

Visual depiction of the sections of a research article in the shape of an hourglass. The beginning (introduction) and end (discussion/conclusion) sections are the broader parts of the hourglass while the Methods and Results constitute the more specific middle sections.

Notice that the figure depicts an article in the shape of an hourglass. That shape provides a way for us to consider whether the content of the sections of a research article will be general or specific. The middle parts — the Methods and Results sections — are the most specific pieces of the entire article. As you learned in Chapter 4 (Methods), the move toward the middle of your research manuscript allows you to really hone in on your exact study’s parts, so the content will necessarily narrow in scope. In this chapter, we will present the goals and strategies for writing the Results.

Warm-Up

Why do you think the Results need to be specific (narrow) and not too general (broad)? What aspects of the Results section contribute to its specificity?

License

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Preparing to Publish Copyright © 2023 by Sarah Huffman; Elena Cotos; and Kimberly Becker is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.