Chapter 5: Discussion and Conclusions
The purpose of this chapter is to integrate the study findings and show the larger implications of your research. This includes making implications resulting from your discussion of the topic, as well as recommendations, for further research and/or practice.
Introduction
This section orients the readers about the organization of the chapter. It restates the study purpose and questions and briefly reminds the readers about the study sample. The brief discussion reinforces the importance of the study and its findings.
Discussion and Interpretation
In this section you need to make connections between your research questions and your results, addressing the larger questions, What do your findings tell you? What does this mean? How does this come together? Do your research findings support your initial hypothesis? Why and how? It is also important to show how your results fit in with other research that has been done in your field, by pointing out the agreements and disagreements between your findings and that of others. Your readers need to discern what has been done by other researchers, what has been done by you, and how they complement each other. This is a section that shows the connections between your findings and the literature review, presented in chapter two.
Implications for Practice and/or Recommendations for Future Research
This section provides the implications of your results with respect to the existing research. Additionally, it provides a retrospective examination of the theoretical framework presented in Chapter 2 in light of the dissertation’s findings. A critical evaluation of the strengths and weaknesses of the study, and the degree to which the conclusions are credible given the methodology, research design, and data, should also be presented. The section delineates new insights and/or applications derived from the dissertation.
Implications for future research are based on what the study did find or do, and what the study did not find or do. Generally, future research could look at different kinds of subjects in different kinds of settings, interventions with new kinds of protocols or dependent measures, or new theoretical issues that emerge from the study. It could also address the questions that have been left insufficiently answered and how they might be more effectively answered. Implications for practice are based on how practitioners could use the study findings to improve their practice.
Recommendations are related to the implications as they address the areas of research that need further examination, or address gaps or new research needs the study found. The section ends with a discussion of “next steps” in forwarding this line of research.
Conclusion
This section reinforces the study purpose and findings. It addresses the overall significance of the study, the subject in general, and why it is important to know about it.