The Findings and Data Analysis Chapters of Your Dissertation
Your findings and analyses sections usually involve two
chapters in a master’s thesis. Your findings
section will give details about all of the results of the experiments which you’ve
conducted or will present all of the data which your study has yielded. The data analysis section will show the
emergent themes or show how the data which your study has produced actually
relates to the research questions or hypotheses which you’ve posed at the
start. You also analyse whether your study was appropriate at answering the
questions you started with.
These sections have the most variance across disciplines. For
many of the social and physical sciences, involving anything form psychology to
biology, the headings of your two chapters will probably be exactly as listed
above, the first being “Findings” and the second being “Data Analysis.”
However, for other fields in the humanities, such as Political Science, History,
Literature Studies, or other fields that don’t involve experimentation or
participant studies, you’ll probably incorporate headings which link to the
emergent themes or important points of discussion. Your headings of your
chapters could be longer and more detailed, explaining the aspect of your
analysis or comparison that you are looking at, and you might have even more
chapters here so that each chapter can cover only one of your themes or points
of analysis.
However, even though the headings might differ, you’ll be
going through the same process of producing data and analyzing it in a focused
way, and then comparing it to your research aims. A good point of analysis is
whether your findings have challenged, contributed to or complicated the
literature which you’ve reviewed in your second chapter.
The distinction between the two chapters should be very
clear. Don’t start analyzing the data in the Findings chapter yet, simply
present all of the data which you’ve found. You could present this data in the
form of statistics, tables, graphs, or any other form that makes it easier to
understand. For social sciences, you will want to present the most important
elements which you unearthed in your study. If you worked with participants,
which answers did they provide which seemed to directly speak to your research
aims?
In the analysis section, you can start unpacking this data
for the reader and explaining the relevance,
importance or applicability of
the data for building knowledge and understanding in your field. Your analysis
section will look at how the data fits into the theoretical models which your
study employed, and if there were any data which had not been anticipated by
the theories or hypotheses. You can make comparisons between different data
points, and start to identify the important themes that emerged in your study.
Much more can be said about how to do data analysis
effectively, which is why we provide some guides on
the topic. Make sure that you are considering your data through a critical lens. You need to demonstrate
to your reader that you’ve thought about your findings from many different
angles. Try to clarify whether or not your data have provided a satisfactory
answer to your research aims and questions.
Data analysis is one of the most time-consuming aspects of
working on your dissertation. You’ll have to be in constant communication with
your supervisor throughout this process to make sure that you’re being rigorous
with the way you look at your data.
Some studies also add an additional chapter entitled Discussion, where they have a more
overarching discussion of the important points in their data analysis. However,
often this forms part of the data analysis chapter, and an additional chapter
might not be necessary. Speak to your supervisor about the preferred style of
your department.
Review Your Learning:
·
Your findings section shows all of the data
which have been produced during your study
·
Your data analysis looks at this data in a
critical way, and looks at emerging themes. You can make comparisons or show
how your data have responded to gaps in knowledge, how it aligns with theories,
or how it responds to the ideas you looked at in your literature review
·
You might have an additional chapter entitled Discussion where you give an
overarching look at your data analysis