Dissertation Chapter 4: How To Write Your Results Chapter
The results chapter, or dissertation chapter 4, is an integral part of any dissertation research. The professionals at Statistics Solutions have assisted thousands of doctoral candidates with their dissertation results chapter.
The results chapter of your dissertation is one of the most important components of your study, where the accurate statistical analysis must be performed, assumptions examined, and findings reported and clearly explained. Once you conduct your analyses, you have to present your results in a way that shows clear support or non-support of your hypotheses. Statistical expertise is needed to effectively present the results and defend your findings.
Intellectus Consulting can assist you with your dissertation chapter 4 in the following ways:
Data Management
- Enter, code and clean data: The first step in creating a results chapter is to import your data. Once the data is uploaded, the variables must be labeled and the levels of the variables assigned (e.g., male=1, female=2). The data cleaning typically entails screening the variables for both univariate and multivariate outliers, normality, addressing missing values, and assessing for linearity.
Statistical Analysis
- Statistical analysis: The actual analyses takes many forms. Most, if not all, dissertation results chapters include descriptive statistics of the demographic variables (means, standard deviation, frequencies and percentages), as well as the reliabilities of any composite scores. The analyses should then be focused on addressing the research hypotheses by assessing, addressing and reporting of the assumptions of the particular analysis, and then the conducting and reporting of the relevant statistical output in the results chapter.
- Write results: The results chapter should be presented logically. First the descriptives and then the results of the analyses that address the hypotheses. The tables and figures must be in APA 6th edition. The results chapter should flow smoothly, where the reader does not have to stop to question why an analysis was conducted. There is an old saying that “hard writing makes for easy reading”–you want the committee to have a very easy time reading your results chapter.
Understanding Your Results
- Explain statistics: You must be able to defend every word of the results chapter. At Intellectus Consulting, we are teachers as well as statisticians and methodologists. We make sure you completely understand what was conducted, why it was conducted, and the implications of the results.
Presenting Your Results
- Create APA-style tables and figures: Tables and figures can be a stumbling block for graduate students and is especially important when formulating the results chapter. APA 7th edition has changed their format a bit from the 6th edition, and we will make sure it is correct. For example, there is a greater emphasis on reporting confidence intervals and the regression tables have been substantially modified.
- Dissertation editing: While the results chapter should be edited properly, we can edit your entire dissertation for both APA and for basic English grammar, style, paragraphing, and punctuation.