Some Common Mistakes. IV. Results and Discussion

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Some Common Mistakes

· The word “data” is plural, not singular.

· Do not use the word “essentially” to mean “approximately” or “effectively”.

· Do not confuse “imply” and “infer”.

· The abbreviation “i. e. ” means “that is”, and the abbreviation “e. g. ” means “for example”.

An excellent style manual for science writers is [7].

IV. Results and Discussion

The purpose of the results and discussion is to state your findings and make an interpretation and/or opinion, explain the implications of your findings, and make suggestions for future research. Its main function is to answer the questions posed in the introduction, explain how the results support the answers and, how the answers fit in with existing knowledge on the topic. The discussion is considered the heart of the paper and usually requires several writing attempts.

The discussion will always connect to the introduction by way of the research questions or hypotheses you posed and the literature you reviewed, but it does not simply repeat or rearrange the introduction; the discussion should always explain how your study has moved the reader's understanding of the research problem forward from where you left them at the end of the introduction.

To make your message clear, the discussion should be kept as short as possible while clearly and fully stating, supporting, explaining, and defending your answers and discussing other important and directly relevant issues. Care must be taken to provide a commentary and not a reiteration of the results. Side issues should not be included, as these tend to obscure the message.

Best Practice:

1. State the major findings of the study;

2. Explain the meaning of the findings and why the findings are important;

3. Support the answers with the results. Explain how your results relate to expectations and to the literature, clearly stating why they are acceptable and how they are consistent or fit in with previously published knowledge on the topic;

4. Relate the findings to those of similar studies;

5. Consider alternative explanations of the findings;

6. State the clinical relevance of the findings;

7. Explain the implication of your findings into school counseling settings;

8. Acknowledge the study’s limitations, and;

9. Make suggestions for further research.

It is easy to inflate the interpretation of the results. Be careful that your interpretation of the results does not go beyond what is supported by the data. The data are the data: nothing more, nothing less. Please avoid to make overinterpretation of the results, unwarranted speculation, inflating the importance of the findings, tangential issues or over-emphasize the impact of your study.

Work with Graphic:

Figures and tables are the most effective way to present results. Captions should be able to stand alone, such that the figures and tables are understandable without the need to read the entire manuscript. Besides that, the data represented should be easy to interpret.

Best Practice:

1. The graphic should be simple, but informative;

2. The use of color is encouraged;

3. The graphic should uphold the standards of a scholarly, professional publication;

4. The graphic must be entirely original, unpublished artwork created by one of the co-authors;

5. The graphic should not include a photograph, drawing, or caricature of any person, living or deceased/

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