ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes that Discussion is where the researcher can comment, interpret, recommend, reflect, judge, draw implications, conclude, and generally make meaning of the findings. Its focus is on significance and voice. In the discussion of study limitations, the book distinguishes between limitations and delimitations.
Section 6.1 An overview of significance. This section offers strategies for identifying significance, including reader questions. It warns that writers need to stay close to the data and not overstate meaning or recommendations. They need to comment on what their study turned up, not on larger ideas or interests they had preceding the study. This is an important distinction, as writers await this opportunity to attach larger meanings to their work.
Section 6.2 Brainstorming. This section details systematic brainstorming techniques, including going back to each previous chapter and commenting on how findings support, contradict, or advance the literature and how the processes of performing the study influenced the findings.
Section 6.3 Opening the Discussion chapter. This section underscores how openings to the Discussion chapter capture study significance. A number of powerful examples make this case.
Section 6.4 After the opening, what is most worth discussing? This section asks, does the writer examine all findings? Does the writer attach recommendations to each finding? Broad suggestions about selecting what to report follow.
Section 6.5 Structures for the Discussion chapter. To show the variety of structures, this section takes titles from a number of Discussion chapters for different types of completed studies, to reinforce the idea of choice and adjustment.
Section 6.6 Where does theory fit? This section offers a powerful example of how one student used her theoretical frame to shape her Discussion chapter.
Section 6.7 What about limitations? This section addresses and exemplifies the writer’s obligation to discuss limitations. The discussion distinguishes between limitations and delimitations, and offers some examples.
Section 6.8 Reflections. Writers can choose to reflect back on the research process, what the topic means, and how the researcher has changed over the study period.
