# Thesis Results and Discussion Template: How to Use One By the end of this article you will be able to take a folder of analyzed data and draft a complete results and discussion chapter for your thesis. You will know the working order that experienced writers follow, the six-part skeleton that fills itself in once you answer a fixed set of questions, how to convert a statistics output into reportable sentences, and the mistakes that examiners flag most often. To follow along you need four things on hand: your analyzed data (tables, figures, and test outputs), the notes or electronic records you kept during data collection, a reference manager such as Zotero or EndNote loaded with the papers you plan to compare against, and the template skeleton given below. Fifteen minutes of setup is enough to start drafting. ## What a Results and Discussion Template Actually Does A results and discussion template is a pre-built outline of the rhetorical moves, the recurring chunks of communicative work, that this part of a thesis performs. You are not filling in a form. You are borrowing a structure that research on real theses has shown to be stable across writers and disciplines. That structure has been measured. In an analysis of 20 English master's theses, the two moves that appeared in every single discussion chapter were reporting results and commenting on results, and within the commenting move, two steps appeared in every text: interpreting the findings and relating them to previous studies [1]. A parallel study of 24 master's theses in TESOL found that these chapters open with a short introduction, close with a summary, and cycle through those framing elements between results blocks, a rhythm the authors traced to the expectations of the local discourse community [2]. Cross-linguistic work on engineering theses written in English and Spanish shows that writers manage these moves partly through metadiscourse, the signposting language such as "these findings suggest" and "as noted in Chapter 3", and that the density of such signposts differs by language background [3]. The template exists because writing this section unaided is genuinely hard. Postgraduate students identify the discussion as one of the most difficult sections to write, particularly when working in a second language [4]. A survey of 124 biology theses and dissertations, plus interviews with 114 of their authors, found that most students had little or no prior knowledge of how a discussion is constructed and had largely copied the habits of earlier students, producing contextual, structural, and scientific errors [5]. Conversely, when students are taught to analyze the move structure of published Results and Discussion sections before drafting their own, their writing competence measurably improves over a semester [6]. A template is a portable version of that genre training. ## What to Have on Hand Before You Start The working order matters more than most students realize. The recommended sequence is data analysis first, then results text, then discussion, because the results section is the heart of the paper and completing it, given that methods are already written, represents more than half of the writing workload, rising to roughly 70 percent once the discussion is added [7]. Drafting the discussion before the data are fully analyzed produces text you will rewrite. Gather these before drafting: 1. **Final analysis outputs.** Every table, figure, test statistic, and confidence interval you intend to report, exported in final form. Do not draft around provisional numbers. 2. **A [lab notebook](/knowledge/molecular-biology/lab-notebook) template PDF or its electronic equivalent.** If you recorded raw observations in a structured lab notebook template, you already have a dated, searchable record of what you did and when. Mine it for the operational details that context sentences need, such as unexpected observations during runs or collections that had to be repeated. 3. **A research template from your department.** Many graduate schools publish a thesis research template that fixes heading levels, numbering, and caption style. Match your chapter headings to it before drafting so you never renumber anything. 4. **Your comparison literature.** Five to ten papers that report findings most similar to yours, each with its key numbers noted, because the discussion move that interprets results depends on these comparisons. 5. **A phrase bank.** Keep a running list of academic phrases grouped by move, a practice whose absence has been documented as a weakness in student discussion chapters [8]. ## The Template at a Glance ![Five-step flow of the chapter moves from framing through reporting, key finding, commenting, to limitations and implications, with approximate shares.](/article-images/illustrations/thesis-results-and-discussion-template-chapter-skeleton-flow.webp) The table below summarizes the six moves of the template, what each one accomplishes, typical sentence openers drawn from the phrase-study literature, and roughly how much of the chapter each should occupy in a typical empirical thesis. | Move | Purpose | Typical opener | Approximate share | |--|--|--|--| | 1. Frame the chapter | Restate the question this chapter answers | "This chapter presents..." | 5 to 10 percent | | 2. Report the results | State findings with statistics, table by table | "Table 3 shows that..." | 30 to 40 percent (results part) | | 3. State the key finding | Answer the research question in one sentence | "The central finding of this study is..." | 5 percent | | 4. Comment on results | Interpret and compare with prior studies | "These results are consistent with..." | 40 to 50 percent | | 5. Acknowledge limitations | Bound the claims honestly | "Several limitations should be considered..." | 10 percent | | 6. Look forward | Implications and bridge to the conclusion | "The findings suggest that..." | 5 to 10 percent | Moves 2 and 4 are the load-bearing pair. As noted above, reporting and commenting on results appeared in every analyzed thesis, while the framing moves appeared cyclically around them [1]. A thesis results and discussion template works because it guarantees those obligatory moves are present and gives the optional moves a fixed home. ## The Skeleton Copy this outline into a fresh document. Each bracketed prompt is a question you answer in one to three paragraphs. Do not write anything outside these slots in the first draft. ```text CHAPTER X: RESULTS AND DISCUSSION X.1 Introduction to the chapter - One paragraph restating the research question this chapter answers and previewing the order of results presented. X.2 Results X.2.1 [Result set 1, tied to Research Question 1] - Reference to Table/Figure - Direction and size of effect with full statistics - One sentence noting what the reader should notice X.2.2 [Result set 2, tied to Research Question 2] - (same structure) X.2.3 [Result set 3 or secondary/ancillary findings] X.3 Discussion X.3.1 Restatement of the key finding - Answer the research question in one sentence. X.3.2 Interpretation of each result - For each result set: what it means, why it makes mechanistic or theoretical sense. X.3.3 Comparison with previous studies - Agreement, disagreement, and possible reasons. X.3.4 Limitations - Method-specific limits, stated without hedging every claim. X.3.5 Implications and future work - What changes if the finding holds. What study comes next. X.4 Chapter summary - One paragraph, no new information, written last. ``` ## Step-by-Step: Filling In the Template This walkthrough is the thesis results and discussion template step by step. Each step ends with a checkable output. ### Step 1. Complete and Freeze the Analysis Open your analysis script and confirm every reported number is reproducible from raw data. The results text is only as trustworthy as this step. If you work in R, generate a final summary table so that every sentence in the results section can cite it. ```r # Summarize the demonstration dataset by group library(dplyr) demo_data %>% group_by(group) %>% summarize(n = n(), mean = mean(value), sd = sd(value)) ``` Expected output has one row per group with n, mean, and sd columns. Save it. Then run your inferential tests and capture the full console output, not just p values. ### Step 2. Draft the Results Text Around Each Visual For each table and figure, write three sentences. Sentence one points to the visual. Sentence two states the finding with complete statistics. Sentence three tells the reader what to notice. In R, a two-group comparison looks like this: ```r t.test(heated, control) ``` Expected console output: ```text Welch Two Sample t-test data: heated and control t = -3.5887, df = 21.35, p-value = 0.001812 [alternative hypothesis](/blog/data-analysis/alternative-hypothesis-definition-examples): true difference in means is not equal to 0 95 percent confidence interval: -13.41 -3.59 sample estimates: mean of x mean of y 33.80 42.30 ``` Convert that output into reportable text using a fixed translation pattern: ```text [Group A] showed [direction] [measure] compared with [Group B] (mean +/- SD: X.X +/- X.X vs. Y.Y +/- Y.Y units, t(df) = T.TT, p = 0.PPP, Cohen's d = D.DD; Table N). ``` Filled in: "Heat-treated cultures showed lower enzyme activity than controls (mean ± SD: 33.8 ± 6.4 vs. 42.3 ± 5.1 units per milligram, t(21.35) = 3.59, p = 0.002, Cohen's d = 1.47, Table 3)." The general linear model version of this pattern appears in the standard textbook treatment of results writing, which advises organizing results text into alternating segments of text and visuals such as tables, figures, and algorithms. Check your work: every number in the results text must trace to a saved output, and every visual must be referenced in the text at least once. ### Step 3. Open the Discussion With the Key Finding Write one sentence that answers your research question. This is Move 3. Then delete any temptation to re-narrate statistics here. The key finding sentence is a claim, and everything after it in the chapter is its defense. Doctoral exemplars show this move clearly. A recent doctoral thesis in craniofacial surgery opened its discussion by framing the overall contribution, converging systematic reviews, multicenter cohorts, expert consensus, and a new international registry into one argument about standardizing care for rare conditions [9]. Your sentence should do the same job at your scale. ### Step 4. Interpret Each Result and Tie It to the Literature For each result set, answer three questions in order: what does the result mean, why is that plausible given mechanism or theory, and how does it agree or conflict with published work. This is the commenting move that appeared in every thesis analyzed in the rhetorical studies [1]. Keep a fixed internal pattern per paragraph: ```text Topic sentence: Restate result N in plain language. Interpretation: "This pattern suggests [mechanism/explanation] because..." Literature link: "This aligns with [Author, Year], who reported..." or "This contrasts with [Author, Year], where..." Signpost: "These findings suggest that..." (move to next paragraph) ``` The literature-link step is not optional decoration. In the move analysis of master's theses, referring to other studies was an obligatory step within the commenting move [1], and students whose discussion sections lacked conventional academic phrasing for these links received insufficient ratings for that part of the text [8]. If you cannot name a study that agrees or disagrees with your result, that is a signal to widen your literature search before drafting, not to write a paragraph of unsupported speculation. ### Step 5. State Limitations Without Sinking the Chapter List two to four genuine limitations, each paired with a sentence on why the finding still stands despite it. Common candidates: sample size, single-site data collection, measurement instruments with known error, and confounders you could not control. The template slot keeps this section proportionate. Students who write discussions with no limitations invite examiner challenge, and students who write only limitations erase their own contribution. Both errors appear in the documented structural mistakes of thesis discussion chapters [5]. ### Step 6. Close With Implications and a Chapter Summary State what practitioners, researchers, or policy should do differently if your finding holds, then name the single most valuable next study. Finish with the chapter summary paragraph, written last, containing no new information. The summary slot reflects the introduction-summary cycle documented in thesis results and discussion chapters. Check the chapter: read only the first sentence of every paragraph in sequence. That skeleton should retell the whole chapter in under a minute. If it does not, your paragraph topic sentences are weak. ## Worked Example: From Raw Output to Finished Paragraph Here is the demonstration example end to end so you can see the template in operation. The data are illustrative. **Raw situation.** Twelve control cultures and twelve heat-treated cultures, enzyme activity measured in units per milligram. **Analysis output** (from Step 2): heat-treated 33.8 ± 6.4, control 42.3 ± 5.1, Welch t(21.35) = 3.59, p = 0.002, 95 percent CI of the difference from 13.41 down to 3.59 units, Cohen's d = 1.47. **Results text (Move 2).** "Heat-treated cultures showed lower enzyme activity than controls (mean ± SD: 33.8 ± 6.4 vs. 42.3 ± 5.1 units per milligram, t(21.35) = 3.59, p = 0.002, Cohen's d = 1.47, Figure 2). The reduction was consistent across replicates, with all twelve treated cultures falling below the control group mean." **Key finding sentence (Move 3).** "The central finding of this study is that sustained heat exposure reduces measurable enzyme activity by approximately 20 percent under the conditions tested." **Discussion paragraph (Move 4).** "The 20 percent reduction in activity aligns with thermal-denaturation predictions, since the exposure temperature sits near the reported stability limit for enzymes of this class. This agrees with prior reports of activity loss at comparable exposures [cite], though those studies used shorter treatment windows. The effect size of 1.47 indicates the difference is large in practical terms, not only statistically detectable. These findings suggest that exposure duration, not temperature alone, governs the extent of activity loss." **Limitation pair (Move 5).** "Activity was measured at a single post-exposure time point, so the recovery trajectory is unknown. Activity assays at 24 and 72 hours would establish whether the loss is reversible." That is the whole pipeline: output, translation pattern, claim, defense. Once the pattern is set, each additional result set costs far less effort than the first. ## Thesis Results and Discussion Template Tips ![A path of three checks on statistics, interpretation in discussion paragraphs, and paired limitations, ending in a sound draft.](/article-images/illustrations/thesis-results-and-discussion-template-draft-check-triage.webp) These thesis results and discussion template tips come from the documented habits of successful writers and the documented failures of struggling ones. - **Write results and discussion in separate sittings.** The results draft should exist, cold and complete, before you write a word of interpretation. Mixing them mid-sentence, "Table 3 shows X, which is interesting because...", is the most common structural error in first drafts. - **Mine your metadiscourse.** Signposting phrases are not filler. Successful thesis writers use them deliberately to mark moves, and their distribution differs measurably across writing traditions [3]. Use "This chapter has shown..." to open a summary and "Turning to the second research question..." to pivot between result sets. - **Build a phrase bank by move, not alphabetically.** Collect published sentences that report, interpret, compare, and hedge, filed under the move they serve. Students taught to do this through genre analysis showed semester-long improvement in their drafted sections [6]. The documented weakness of student discussions is concentrated in exactly these conventional phrasings [8]. - **Match the cycle rhythm your department expects.** If your program's accepted theses open each results block with a mini-introduction and close each with a mini-summary, mirror that. The cycle structure was prominent in the analyzed TESOL theses and reflects local disciplinary expectation rather than universal law [2]. - **Keep one master research template file.** Maintain a personal research template document holding your skeleton, phrase bank, and statistics reporting patterns. Reuse it across chapters and papers. The investment pays back because results and discussion writing together dominate the total writing workload [7]. - **Read three accepted theses from your own department before your defense draft.** Examiners reward conformity to local convention more than novelty of format. ## Common Mistakes and Limitations Analysis of 124 biology theses and dissertations categorized discussion-writing failures as contextual, structural, and scientific, and interviews with 114 of the authors showed the root cause was never having learned the genre at all, with most students imitating whatever earlier students had done, correct or not [5]. Against that backdrop, these are the template mistakes worth hunting in your own draft. **Restating results in the discussion.** If a discussion paragraph could be moved into the results section without damage, it contains no interpretation. Every discussion paragraph should contain at least one sentence that does not appear anywhere in the results section, usually the mechanism or the literature comparison. **Reporting statistics without effect sizes or [confidence intervals](/blog/data-analysis/confidence-interval-formula-examples).** A p value alone answers whether, not how much. The translation pattern in Step 2 forces the mean difference and confidence interval into the sentence, which is what lets the discussion comment on magnitude. **Unanchored comparisons.** Writing "these results agree with previous work" without naming the work and its finding is a hollow move. The reference-to-other-studies step is obligatory in the discussion genre [1], and it needs a citation and a specific claim to function. **Overclaiming from a single study.** Limitations exist in every dataset. Pair each limitation with a defense, as shown in Step 5, rather than either hiding it or letting it consume the chapter. **Ignoring unexpected or negative results.** Omitting findings that contradict your hypothesis invites the examiner question "what did you find that you did not report?" Give unexpected results their own result set and a discussion paragraph. A well-constructed discussion can even turn divergent evidence into a strength, as doctoral work does when it weighs conflicting lines of evidence toward a consensus position [9]. **Writing the discussion before analysis is final.** Numbers that change after drafting produce inconsistencies that are hard to catch, because the prose remembers old values better than the tables do. Freeze the analysis first. **Copying structure from a paper when a thesis structure is expected.** Journal articles compress. Theses document. If your department expects the introduction-summary cycle between results blocks, a paper's compressed format will read as thin. A final limitation of templates themselves: a template organizes your argument but cannot supply the data quality underneath it. If your measurements or sampling were compromised, no structure rescues the chapter. Weak discussion writing is a symptom that also appears when the underlying analysis is weak [5]. Individual projects with unusual designs still need supervisor judgment on structure and scope. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### Should results and discussion be separate chapters or combined? Follow your department's regulations first, since both formats are accepted in different programs. If the choice is yours, combine them when results are few or tightly interwoven with interpretation, and separate them when you have many result sets whose full reporting would bury the argument. ### Can I use a results and discussion template for a qualitative thesis? Yes, with adjusted moves. Replace statistical reporting with theme-by-theme presentation supported by quotations, and keep the interpretive moves, the literature comparison, limitations, and implications, essentially unchanged. ### How long should the results and discussion chapter be? There is no universal number, and department rules vary widely. A practical anchor is that the discussion is typically the largest single interpretive section of the thesis, so budget your word count around giving each result set one full discussion paragraph at minimum. ### Where do I put negative or unexpected results? Report them in their own result set within the results section, then interpret them in the discussion like any other finding. Omitting them is a documented scientific error in discussion writing and an easy examiner target. ### Do I cite sources in the results section? Generally no. Results report your own findings, so citations belong in the discussion, where you compare your findings with published work. An exception is citing the source of an instrument, assay, or reference values you used to produce the results. ### What tense should I use? Past tense for your own results, since the work is complete. Present tense for interpretations, general truths, and references to what published literature shows. ### Can I adapt a template from a published journal article instead of a thesis? You can learn the moves from articles, but adapt the length, not just the wording. Theses demand fuller documentation, explicit chapter framing, and complete reporting of secondary analyses that articles compress or cut. ### How do I check that my draft follows the template correctly? Read the first sentence of every paragraph in order, confirm each of the six moves is present at least once, and verify that every statistic in the text traces to a saved analysis output and every visual is referenced in the text. If the skeleton retells the chapter coherently, the structure is sound. ## Sources 1. [STATING AND DEFENDING NEW KNOWLEDGE CLAIM: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS ON THE DISCUSSION SECTION OF ENGLISH MASTER THESIS BY INDONESIAN EFL LEARNERS](https://doi.org/10.15408/IJEE.V4I2.6746) 2. [Move Analysis of Results-Discussion Chapters in TESOL Master’s Theses Written by Vietnamese Students](https://doi.org/10.17576/3l-2015-2102-01) 3. [Metadiscourse in results and discussion chapters: A cross-linguistic analysis of English and Spanish thesis writers in engineering](https://doi.org/10.1016/J.SYSTEM.2014.07.009) 4. [Perceptions of the difficulties of postgraduate L2 thesis students writing the discussion section](https://doi.org/10.1016/J.JEAP.2005.10.002) 5. [Writing scientific thesis/ dissertation in biology field: Discussion writing problems](https://doi.org/10.29409/ijcmg.v10i1.206) 6. [Promoting Writing Competence of the “Results & Discussion” Section with Genre Analysis Activities in EAP Thesis-Writing Class](https://doi.org/10.22158/eltls.v5n1p116) 7. [Basic Approach to Data Analysis and Writing of Results and Discussion Sections](https://doi.org/10.4103/MAMCJMS.MAMCJMS_50_16) 8. [ACADEMIC PHRASE USED BY ENGLISH STUDENTS IN WRITING DISCUSSION SECTION IN THESIS](https://doi.org/10.36085/telle.v4i1.6335) 9. [Towards consensus on the treatment of congenital craniofacial conditions: the discussion section of a doctoral thesis.](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42095487/)