Results Section

The Results section is a part of a research paper in which the author describes findings as clearly and objectively as possible after a series of analyses. It is a summarized report with narrative text, supporting evidence, and sometimes illustrative examples, tables, or figures. Interpretations for a specific result are included in the Discussion section that follows the Results section. A research paper typically consists of five sections: Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and Conclusions. The Results section is a crucial part of a research paper because it contains answers to research questions. This entry describes how to organize results, how to present them, how to demonstrate findings with figures and tables, and some general guidelines to write the Results section. It concludes with an explanatory example.

A well-organized Results section is easy to follow and understand. With a simple design, it usually starts with a few sentences briefly summarizing the research questions and main analyses. With a complicated design, an introduction paragraph provides more details. Authors then present key findings with supporting data and materials. The order of the presentation of key findings is similar to that in other sections of the research paper, so that there is coherence among the sections. Specifically, the sequence and structure of the results follows the same order of the investigated research questions. For instance, if the research questions contain subheadings, then the results should follow the same structure.

The goal of the Results section is to help readers understand the presented statements; therefore, the final results should be concise, simple, clear, and objective. To achieve this goal, the Results section may contain verbal and numerical explanations, examples, or numbered graphs and figures to help present results effectively. Moreover, the narrative text and supportive materials should complement each other. For statistical [Page 1432]analysis, the Results section often includes descriptive analyses. For a quantitative study, this might include means, standard deviations, or correlations for the overall group characteristics and inferential statistics for a significant test. A summary of statistical analyses is usually embedded in a text description and reported in parentheses. In addition to the summary statistics, statistics such as how much groups are different—for example, males (M = 25, SD = 3.2) averaged to fall asleep 20 minutes faster than females (M = 45, SD = 4)—can inform readers about the nature of differences and relationship. For quantitative studies, the Results section might describe themes or conceptual findings, sometimes presented graphically.

When presenting a large amount of information, supporting materials such as tables and figures can help readers visualize the relationships of variables. If tables and figures are included, they are typically inserted near the relevant text description but may be placed at the end. They are numbered sequentially and consecutively, as authors will refer to them in a text such as Table 1, Table 2, Figure 1, Figure 2, and so on. The format and vocabulary among all tables and figures should be consistent.

There are some general guidelines regarding grammar when reporting results. For instance, results are generally written in past tense because all hypothesis tests should have been completed by the time of writing. However, tables, figures, and graphs are usually referred to in the present tense. For instance, the results can be written as “Overall, a variable had a significant impact for … ,” but authors can refer to tables by writing, “Table 1 shows that …” Although active voice should be used as much as possible, passive voice is acceptable. All relevant findings, regardless of significant, nonsignificant, or negative results, should be reported in the Results section. Unexpected results can be important findings even though not consistent with the predicted results and may suggest a further study.

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