phd dissertation conclusion chapter

How To Write The Conclusion Chapter

A Simple Explainer With Examples + Free Template

By: Jenna Crossley (PhD) | Reviewed By: Dr. Eunice Rautenbach | September 2021

So, you’ve wrapped up your results and discussion chapters, and you’re finally on the home stretch – the conclusion chapter . In this post, we’ll discuss everything you need to know to craft a high-quality conclusion chapter for your dissertation or thesis project.

Overview: The Conclusion Chapter

What the thesis/dissertation conclusion chapter is
What to include in your conclusion
How to structure and write up your conclusion
A few tips to help you ace the chapter
FREE conclusion template

What is the conclusion chapter?

The conclusion chapter is typically the final major chapter of a dissertation or thesis. As such, it serves as a concluding summary of your research findings and wraps up the document. While some publications such as journal articles and research reports combine the discussion and conclusion sections, these are typically separate chapters in a dissertation or thesis. As always, be sure to check what your university’s structural preference is before you start writing up these chapters.

So, what’s the difference between the discussion and the conclusion chapter?

Well, the two chapters are quite similar , as they both discuss the key findings of the study. However, the conclusion chapter is typically more general and high-level in nature. In your discussion chapter, you’ll typically discuss the intricate details of your study, but in your conclusion chapter, you’ll take a broader perspective, reporting on the main research outcomes and how these addressed your research aim (or aims) .

A core function of the conclusion chapter is to synthesise all major points covered in your study and to tell the reader what they should take away from your work. Basically, you need to tell them what you found , why it’s valuable , how it can be applied , and what further research can be done.

Whatever you do, don’t just copy and paste what you’ve written in your discussion chapter! The conclusion chapter should not be a simple rehash of the discussion chapter. While the two chapters are similar, they have distinctly different functions.

What should I include in the conclusion chapter?

To understand what needs to go into your conclusion chapter, it’s useful to understand what the chapter needs to achieve. In general, a good dissertation conclusion chapter should achieve the following:

Summarise the key findings of the study
Explicitly answer the research question(s) and address the research aims
Inform the reader of the study’s main contributions
Discuss any limitations or weaknesses of the study
Present recommendations for future research

Therefore, your conclusion chapter needs to cover these core components. Importantly, you need to be careful not to include any new findings or data points. Your conclusion chapter should be based purely on data and analysis findings that you’ve already presented in the earlier chapters. If there’s a new point you want to introduce, you’ll need to go back to your results and discussion chapters to weave the foundation in there.

In many cases, readers will jump from the introduction chapter directly to the conclusions chapter to get a quick overview of the study’s purpose and key findings. Therefore, when you write up your conclusion chapter, it’s useful to assume that the reader hasn’t consumed the inner chapters of your dissertation or thesis. In other words, craft your conclusion chapter such that there’s a strong connection and smooth flow between the introduction and conclusion chapters, even though they’re on opposite ends of your document.

Need a helping hand?

How to write the conclusion chapter

Now that you have a clearer view of what the conclusion chapter is about, let’s break down the structure of this chapter so that you can get writing. Keep in mind that this is merely a typical structure – it’s not set in stone or universal. Some universities will prefer that you cover some of these points in the discussion chapter , or that you cover the points at different levels in different chapters.

Step 1: Craft a brief introduction section

As with all chapters in your dissertation or thesis, the conclusions chapter needs to start with a brief introduction. In this introductory section, you’ll want to tell the reader what they can expect to find in the chapter, and in what order . Here’s an example of what this might look like:

This chapter will conclude the study by summarising the key research findings in relation to the research aims and questions and discussing the value and contribution thereof. It will also review the limitations of the study and propose opportunities for future research.

Importantly, the objective here is just to give the reader a taste of what’s to come (a roadmap of sorts), not a summary of the chapter. So, keep it short and sweet – a paragraph or two should be ample.

Step 2: Discuss the overall findings in relation to the research aims

The next step in writing your conclusions chapter is to discuss the overall findings of your study , as they relate to the research aims and research questions . You would have likely covered similar ground in the discussion chapter, so it’s important to zoom out a little bit here and focus on the broader findings – specifically, how these help address the research aims .

In practical terms, it’s useful to start this section by reminding your reader of your research aims and research questions, so that the findings are well contextualised. In this section, phrases such as, “This study aimed to…” and “the results indicate that…” will likely come in handy. For example, you could say something like the following:

This study aimed to investigate the feeding habits of the naked mole-rat. The results indicate that naked mole rats feed on underground roots and tubers. Further findings show that these creatures eat only a part of the plant, leaving essential parts to ensure long-term food stability.

Be careful not to make overly bold claims here. Avoid claims such as “this study proves that” or “the findings disprove existing the existing theory”. It’s seldom the case that a single study can prove or disprove something. Typically, this is achieved by a broader body of research, not a single study – especially not a dissertation or thesis which will inherently have significant limitations . We’ll discuss those limitations a little later.

Dont make overly bold claims in your dissertation conclusion

Step 3: Discuss how your study contributes to the field

Next, you’ll need to discuss how your research has contributed to the field – both in terms of theory and practice . This involves talking about what you achieved in your study, highlighting why this is important and valuable, and how it can be used or applied.

In this section you’ll want to:

Mention any research outputs created as a result of your study (e.g., articles, publications, etc.)
Inform the reader on just how your research solves your research problem , and why that matters
Reflect on gaps in the existing research and discuss how your study contributes towards addressing these gaps
Discuss your study in relation to relevant theories . For example, does it confirm these theories or constructively challenge them?
Discuss how your research findings can be applied in the real world . For example, what specific actions can practitioners take, based on your findings?

Be careful to strike a careful balance between being firm but humble in your arguments here. It’s unlikely that your one study will fundamentally change paradigms or shake up the discipline, so making claims to this effect will be frowned upon . At the same time though, you need to present your arguments with confidence, firmly asserting the contribution your research has made, however small that contribution may be. Simply put, you need to keep it balanced .

Step 4: Reflect on the limitations of your study

Now that you’ve pumped your research up, the next step is to critically reflect on the limitations and potential shortcomings of your study. You may have already covered this in the discussion chapter, depending on your university’s structural preferences, so be careful not to repeat yourself unnecessarily.

There are many potential limitations that can apply to any given study. Some common ones include:

Sampling issues that reduce the generalisability of the findings (e.g., non-probability sampling )
Insufficient sample size (e.g., not getting enough survey responses ) or limited data access
Low-resolution data collection or analysis techniques
Researcher bias or lack of experience
Lack of access to research equipment
Time constraints that limit the methodology (e.g. cross-sectional vs longitudinal time horizon)
Budget constraints that limit various aspects of the study

Discussing the limitations of your research may feel self-defeating (no one wants to highlight their weaknesses, right), but it’s a critical component of high-quality research. It’s important to appreciate that all studies have limitations (even well-funded studies by expert researchers) – therefore acknowledging these limitations adds credibility to your research by showing that you understand the limitations of your research design .

That being said, keep an eye on your wording and make sure that you don’t undermine your research . It’s important to strike a balance between recognising the limitations, but also highlighting the value of your research despite those limitations. Show the reader that you understand the limitations, that these were justified given your constraints, and that you know how they can be improved upon – this will get you marks.

You have to justify every choice in your dissertation defence

Next, you’ll need to make recommendations for future studies. This will largely be built on the limitations you just discussed. For example, if one of your study’s weaknesses was related to a specific data collection or analysis method, you can make a recommendation that future researchers undertake similar research using a more sophisticated method.

Another potential source of future research recommendations is any data points or analysis findings that were interesting or surprising , but not directly related to your study’s research aims and research questions. So, if you observed anything that “stood out” in your analysis, but you didn’t explore it in your discussion (due to a lack of relevance to your research aims), you can earmark that for further exploration in this section.

Essentially, this section is an opportunity to outline how other researchers can build on your study to take the research further and help develop the body of knowledge. So, think carefully about the new questions that your study has raised, and clearly outline these for future researchers to pick up on.

Step 6: Wrap up with a closing summary

Tips for a top-notch conclusion chapter

Now that we’ve covered the what , why and how of the conclusion chapter, here are some quick tips and suggestions to help you craft a rock-solid conclusion.

Don’t ramble . The conclusion chapter usually consumes 5-7% of the total word count (although this will vary between universities), so you need to be concise. Edit this chapter thoroughly with a focus on brevity and clarity.
Be very careful about the claims you make in terms of your study’s contribution. Nothing will make the marker’s eyes roll back faster than exaggerated or unfounded claims. Be humble but firm in your claim-making.
Use clear and simple language that can be easily understood by an intelligent layman. Remember that not every reader will be an expert in your field, so it’s important to make your writing accessible. Bear in mind that no one knows your research better than you do, so it’s important to spell things out clearly for readers.

Hopefully, this post has given you some direction and confidence to take on the conclusion chapter of your dissertation or thesis with confidence. If you’re still feeling a little shaky and need a helping hand, consider booking a free initial consultation with a friendly Grad Coach to discuss how we can help you with hands-on, private coaching.

Psst... there’s more!

This post was based on one of our popular Research Bootcamps . If you're working on a research project, you'll definitely want to check this out ...

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17 Comments

Really you team are doing great!

Your guide on writing the concluding chapter of a research is really informative especially to the beginners who really do not know where to start. Im now ready to start. Keep it up guys

Really your team are doing great!

Very helpful guidelines, timely saved. Thanks so much for the tips.

This post was very helpful and informative. Thank you team.

A very enjoyable, understandable and crisp presentation on how to write a conclusion chapter. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Thanks Jenna.

This was a very helpful article which really gave me practical pointers for my concluding chapter. Keep doing what you are doing! It meant a lot to me to be able to have this guide. Thank you so much.

Nice content dealing with the conclusion chapter, it’s a relief after the streneous task of completing discussion part.Thanks for valuable guidance

Thanks for your guidance

I get all my doubts clarified regarding the conclusion chapter. It’s really amazing. Many thanks.

Very helpful tips. Thanks so much for the guidance

Thank you very much for this piece. It offers a very helpful starting point in writing the conclusion chapter of my thesis.

It’s awesome! Most useful and timely too. Thanks a million times

Bundle of thanks for your guidance. It was greatly helpful.

Wonderful, clear, practical guidance. So grateful to read this as I conclude my research. Thank you.

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16 November, 2021

PhD Writing 4: How to write the conclusion chapter of your PhD

Writing the conclusion to your PhD thesis can be daunting.

How are you meant to draw together more than three years’ worth of work into one concise chapter, and make those wider conclusive points that have been on the periphery of your research throughout your PhD?

First, it’s important to note that just as every PhD project is different, so too is every conclusion. By the time it comes to writing your conclusion, you are the person who knows your research the best and are also the most well-informed person on your area of study. It is vital to remember that you are absolutely the optimal, most qualified candidate to draw conclusions from your research.

That being said, here are some useful tips for writing a PhD thesis conclusion, whether your field of research is in Science, Technology, Engineering and Medicine (STEM) or Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities (SSAH).

Clearly state the answer(s) to the main research question(s)

By now, you will have honed your research question (s) – here is your opportunity to intelligibly answer those questions or address your hypotheses. If you are struggling with where to start with your conclusion, directly answering your research questions is a good opener.

Summarise and reflect on the research you have undertaken

The conclusion provides the opportunity for you to tie all your chapters together, showing how they all connect under the umbrella of your PhD title and your research questions or objectives.

Acknowledge the limitations of your research

Most PhD conclusions include a reflection of the limitations of your research. Areas for consideration include:

Scope : What has your focus or research questions excluded or not been able to cover within this project, and why?
Time and word limits : How have the limitations of the PhD period restricted your research, or how have the word counts affected the expression of your thesis into a paper? (This may overlap in part with scope.)
Access : Were you unable to access certain resources or materials , and how has this limited your research?

Make recommendations for future work on the topic

Whether you want to be the one to continue this work in postdoctoral research, or if you are ready to hand this off to the next generation of researchers, this is your chance to gesture towards potential future avenues of research. For example, you could highlight other directions or approaches that could be explored, alternative data sets that could be studied or new questions or hypotheses arising from your research that could be further investigated. This is also a good time to offer suggestions for addressing the limitations to this research that you have identified.

Showcase the original knowledge you have contributed to the field

A significant and substantial part of a PhD is about providing an original contribution to your field. Here is your opportunity to lay bare what you have contributed and how you have done that. Your literature review will have discussed the relevant literature and identified prominent gaps in the knowledge within your field of study. Your conclusion can then show how you have filled those gaps in an innovative way.

Finally, working on your conclusion is an excellent opportunity for yourself to reflect upon your research as a whole.

Before and as you write this chapter, reflect upon these questions:

Where does your research fit in the existing body of knowledge?
What gaps in research have you addressed?
What is new and exciting about your research?
How is the literature in your field in dialogue with each other, and with your study?

By answering these questions, you should be able to arrive at a concise, yet insightful summary of your overall research journey, process and findings .

Read previous in series: PhD Writing 3: How to write the introduction chapter of a thesis

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Reference management. Clean and simple.

How to write an excellent thesis conclusion [with examples]

Restate the thesis

Review or reiterate key points of your work, explain why your work is relevant, a take-away for the reader, more resources on writing thesis conclusions, frequently asked questions about writing an excellent thesis conclusion, related articles.

At this point in your writing, you have most likely finished your introduction and the body of your thesis, dissertation, or research paper . While this is a reason to celebrate, you should not underestimate the importance of your conclusion. The conclusion is the last thing that your reader will see, so it should be memorable.

A good conclusion will review the key points of the thesis and explain to the reader why the information is relevant, applicable, or related to the world as a whole. Make sure to dedicate enough of your writing time to the conclusion and do not put it off until the very last minute.

This article provides an effective technique for writing a conclusion adapted from Erika Eby’s The College Student's Guide to Writing a Good Research Paper: 101 Easy Tips & Tricks to Make Your Work Stand Out .

While the thesis introduction starts out with broad statements about the topic, and then narrows it down to the thesis statement , a thesis conclusion does the same in the opposite order.

Restate the thesis.
Review or reiterate key points of your work.
Explain why your work is relevant.
Include a core take-away message for the reader.

Tip: Don’t just copy and paste your thesis into your conclusion. Restate it in different words.

The best way to start a conclusion is simply by restating the thesis statement. That does not mean just copying and pasting it from the introduction, but putting it into different words.

You will need to change the structure and wording of it to avoid sounding repetitive. Also, be firm in your conclusion just as you were in the introduction. Try to avoid sounding apologetic by using phrases like "This paper has tried to show..."

The conclusion should address all the same parts as the thesis while making it clear that the reader has reached the end. You are telling the reader that your research is finished and what your findings are.

I have argued throughout this work that the point of critical mass for biopolitical immunity occurred during the Romantic period because of that era's unique combination of post-revolutionary politics and innovations in smallpox prevention. In particular, I demonstrated that the French Revolution and the discovery of vaccination in the 1790s triggered a reconsideration of the relationship between bodies and the state.

Tip: Try to reiterate points from your introduction in your thesis conclusion.

The next step is to review the main points of the thesis as a whole. Look back at the body of of your project and make a note of the key ideas. You can reword these ideas the same way you reworded your thesis statement and then incorporate that into the conclusion.

You can also repeat striking quotations or statistics, but do not use more than two. As the conclusion represents your own closing thoughts on the topic , it should mainly consist of your own words.

In addition, conclusions can contain recommendations to the reader or relevant questions that further the thesis. You should ask yourself:

What you would ideally like to see your readers do in reaction to your paper?
Do you want them to take a certain action or investigate further?
Is there a bigger issue that your paper wants to draw attention to?

Also, try to reference your introduction in your conclusion. You have already taken a first step by restating your thesis. Now, check whether there are other key words, phrases or ideas that are mentioned in your introduction that fit into your conclusion. Connecting the introduction to the conclusion in this way will help readers feel satisfied.

I explored how Mary Wollstonecraft, in both her fiction and political writings, envisions an ideal medico-political state, and how other writers like William Wordsworth and Mary Shelley increasingly imagined the body politic literally, as an incorporated political collective made up of bodies whose immunity to political and medical ills was essential to a healthy state.

Tip: Make sure to explain why your thesis is relevant to your field of research.

Although you can encourage readers to question their opinions and reflect on your topic, do not leave loose ends. You should provide a sense of resolution and make sure your conclusion wraps up your argument. Make sure you explain why your thesis is relevant to your field of research and how your research intervenes within, or substantially revises, existing scholarly debates.

This project challenged conventional ideas about the relationship among Romanticism, medicine, and politics by reading the unfolding of Romantic literature and biopolitical immunity as mutual, co-productive processes. In doing so, this thesis revises the ways in which biopolitics has been theorized by insisting on the inherent connections between Romantic literature and the forms of biopower that characterize early modernity.

Tip: If you began your thesis with an anecdote or historical example, you may want to return to that in your conclusion.

End your conclusion with something memorable, such as:

a call to action
a recommendation
a gesture towards future research
a brief explanation of how the problem or idea you covered remains relevant

Ultimately, you want readers to feel more informed, or ready to act, as they read your conclusion.

Yet, the Romantic period is only the beginning of modern thought on immunity and biopolitics. Victorian writers, doctors, and politicians upheld the Romantic idea that a "healthy state" was a literal condition that could be achieved by combining politics and medicine, but augmented that idea through legislation and widespread public health measures. While many nineteenth-century efforts to improve citizens' health were successful, the fight against disease ultimately changed course in the twentieth century as global immunological threats such as SARS occupied public consciousness. Indeed, as subsequent public health events make apparent, biopolitical immunity persists as a viable concept for thinking about the relationship between medicine and politics in modernity.

Need more advice? Read our 5 additional tips on how to write a good thesis conclusion.

The conclusion is the last thing that your reader will see, so it should be memorable. To write a great thesis conclusion you should:

The basic content of a conclusion is to review the main points from the paper. This part represents your own closing thoughts on the topic. It should mainly consist of the outcome of the research in your own words.

The length of the conclusion will depend on the length of the whole thesis. Usually, a conclusion should be around 5-7% of the overall word count.

End your conclusion with something memorable, such as a question, warning, or call to action. Depending on the topic, you can also end with a recommendation.

In Open Access: Theses and Dissertations you can find thousands of completed works. Take a look at any of the theses or dissertations for real-life examples of conclusions that were already approved.

How to write a PhD in a hundred steps (or more)

A workingmumscholar's journey through her phd and beyond, concluding the thesis.

I am co-supervising a PhD student who is handing in her thesis for examination in November. She is currently revising her whole thesis, working towards the conclusion (and finally, the introduction). Conclusions can be tricky things to write – pulling something as big as a PhD dissertation together into a final, clear chapter is not easy. It is both an intellectual and an emotional challenge, as conclusion-writing comes towards the very end of the process, and you are so tired, and probably feeling like there are no more coherent words or sentences in your brain. This post reflects a little on what a thesis conclusion is for, with some thoughts on how to construct one that does justice to your meisterwerk .

To begin with, let’s think a bit about what conclusions are for in a piece of written work. In undergraduate studies, students are typically taught that conclusions are summaries . You restate the thesis, or main claim, of your paper, reiterate what each paragraph has said that contributes to that argument, and then bring it all together with a firm final sentence or two that says something about the relevance of the paper, or argument. There should be no new information, just a summing up of what has already been said. Sometimes you are allowed recommendations, depending on the discipline. It makes sense, then, that we progress into postgraduate studies believing that we are writing summaries whenever we conclude (a paper, or a journal article, or a thesis). I have seen many conclusions like this in postgraduate, postdoctoral and early career writing. But, unfortunately, at these levels conclusions that merely summarise a paper the reader has just read are not adequate, or suitable . A shift is needed.

As Pat Thomson usefully argues in this post about writing a thesis conclusion, the conclusion to a thesis (or journal article) is not a summary of the whole . The summary part of a thesis conclusion should ideally be quite brief, and used rather as a springboard to the real work of the conclusion: using the preceding writing and research to show how the study has addressed the research questions, and in so doing, how it has made a valid, and useful, contribution to knowledge .

A strong conclusion shows your readers what your research means within the context of the field you have referenced in your ‘literature review’, and how in answering your research questions you have been able to speak back to this body of research in which you have located your own study. It answers your research questions, succinctly and clearly, so that your readers understand the overall claims of your study, the focus of your argument, the basis upon which you have advanced your argument, and the significance, meaning or value of that argument to your (their) field. It discusses – argues – for the place of your research within your field, and the contribution it is making.

There are a few ways in which you can approach writing such a conclusion (and Pat’s post above is very helpful here). There are also a few guidelines to consider in writing this vital part of your thesis.

To begin with, you do need to bring your reader up to speed with the thesis thus far . Examiners and other readers are unlikely to read your whole PhD in one go, so ending each chapter with a brief summary, and starting the next one with a short section that connects the present chapter to the previous one is a good idea for creating coherent connections between chapters, and is helpful for your readers. Thus, you should begin your conclusion with an overview, or brief summary, of the argument thus far.

Then, consider your research questions : what did you set out to do in this project or study? Your research questions could make useful sub-headings here, at least in a first draft, to help you organise your thoughts. Starting here, you can begin to pull out the answers you have found (in the ‘analysis chapter/s’) so that you can discuss the implications of your findings, their relevance in relation to your overall argument, and the way in which what you have found relates to the body of research to which you have connected your study. No new information : just an analytical discussion of selected aspects of your findings that are useful for answering your research questions, and further consolidating your argument.

Perhaps you have recommendations , on the basis of your findings and their implications for practice, and/or further research. You could include a section on these, discussing a step further the possible implications of your research in relation to your field. Something else that may be relevant to include here could be limitations to the size or scope of your findings: are there any that your readers need to know about, so that they don’t expect your study to have done something other than what it has done? Don’t just list all the things you could have done but didn’t do: think carefully about pertinent limitations that may represent counter-arguments you could defend or mitigate against.

At the end of the end, consider your argument again : what has your thesis claimed and to what end? Try to end your thesis with a paragraph that reiterates not just what your thesis has argued, but WHY this argument has relevance, or import, for your readers. What do you hope the outcome of your research will be? Why are you so passionate about it, and why do you think others should care too? Read a few thesis conclusions to get a sense of different ways of doing this, and check out Pat Thomson’s posts on conclusion writing , too. Then write a draft and share it with your supervisor for feedback.

It’s worth really taking your time and not rushing this chapter, even as it comes at the end when you are tired, and really just want to be done. End on the highest note you can: you owe yourself that much after all your hard work getting there.

How to Write a Relevant Conclusion for Your Dissertation

The last portion of your dissertation is called the conclusion. The objective of the dissertation conclusion is to answer the primary question of the research, provide a summary of the research, make recommendations for possible research on the subject and list the new information that your research contributes to the field.

Although the discussion and the conclusion have similar elements, they are not the same. They may be combined in shorter journal articles and papers. However, in a thesis, both the conclusion and discussion must be included.

While a discussion includes specific interpretations and results, the conclusion makes broader statements to sum up all the important points of your research.

Writing a good conclusion is important to clarify the main discoveries and arguments of your research. Here are some tips on how to conclude a thesis.

Provide Answers to The Primary Question in Your Research

The first step is to understand how to start a conclusion. It must begin with the key question of your dissertation. This allows you to show the results of your work. It must be clear and concise. You do not have to repeat all the results discussed along the thesis. Just combine them into a few words that will become the final takeaway for readers.

For example, the conclusion for a dissertation that aims at making theoretical arguments by analysing case studies, the beginning can be as follows:

“A detailed analysis of the changing representations of the UK border policy and migration over the last ten years, the influence of media discourse in political decision making is highlighted in this dissertation”

Summarise Your Research

The thesis conclusion gives your readers a reminder about why you approached a topic in a certain way. You must summarize the expected results and the actual results that matched these expectations.

The summary should not have too many repetitions. It is not meant to summarize every chapter. Instead, it must reflect your views and ideas that were developed through the course of the thesis. This is also a good opportunity to list any limitations in the research. You can also highlight why your methodology was best suited for the topic discussed.

Here is an example of how to restate thesis in conclusion:

This research evidently shows “X” while raising a few questions about “Y”. In keeping with the example provided above, the summary can begin as follows: “In addition to showcasing the various representations of UK border policy, this thesis also raises questions on the credibility of media exposure in these representations.”

Provide Recommendations

In the discussion of your research, you may have provided possible areas to explore in future research. However, with the conclusion, you can elaborate on these suggestions. Make sure you include the implications of all your findings in the field of study.

These examples will help you understand ways to start a dissertation conclusion recommendation:

“Further research is required to determine the relationship between the changing political views on migration and their effect on global economy”, or, “Based on the conclusions of this research, practitioners may consider studying the relationship between migration and economy”

Make sure that you do not exaggerate how applicable your research is. Instead, provide broader statements to highlight important insights of your thesis. Remember, the conclusion must not include any new interpretations, data or arguments.

Highlight the Contributions of You Research

A good thesis is one that provides some new knowledge to a particular field of study. This gives your readers a very strong impression about the contributions of your thesis. You can highlight the contributions of your research in different ways as mentioned below:

Go back to the problem statement and explain how your thesis has helped solve it.
Use references from the literature review to showcase how your research has addressed any gaps in information.
Write about how the results of your thesis challenges existing assumptions and theories.

You need to make sure that you do not repeat information that has already been covered in the discussion. Choose only the important points and provide a brief overview.

Complete the Dissertation

Once the conclusion is written, there are a few final steps to complete your dissertation:

Write the thesis abstract in 200 words or less .
Review your reference list and format it as per the writing style. You can also use online reference generators to speed up this process.
Create the table of contents and complete the title page .

Make sure you review the document completely to ensure that there are no language errors.

Dissertation Conclusion Checklist

To make sure that you have understood the essence of the conclusion, compare this checklist with any available dissertation conclusion sample:

The research question is answered The argument is summarised There is some reflection on the methods and results Limitations, if any, are highlighted The most relevant recommendations are discussed The important contributions of the thesis are explained clearly There is no inclusion of new data

If you need any thesis writing help or wish to read through example of conclusion in thesis, our experts are always ready to help you. Get in touch with us now to create an impressive conclusion for your thesis.

Dissertation Writing: How to Write your Conclusion

December 10, 2016 by Dissertation Genius

In this blog post, you’ll learn exactly how to write the last chapter of your doctoral dissertation. In particular, you will get oriented with the overall goals of the conclusion chapter. Then, you’ll be taught on how to go about writing the chapter itself. Finally, you will be given guidance on what things to avoid in the ever-important final chapter of your dissertation.

The Main Goals of your Dissertation Conclusion

Before going into how to actually write the conclusion chapter of your dissertation, it’s important to review its purpose. Regardless of what discipline you are in, there are certain messages you always want your readers to absorb after reading your conclusion chapter. Basically, your conclusion should always: Give a general overview of the important contributions of your work – Make it absolutely clear for your committee and the general reader the original contributions of your work and where they are situated with respect to the rest of your research field. A good way to do this is to simply display your contributions in a bulleted list.

Summarize the main points of your various chapters – Especially if you aim to get your work published, your conclusion should always strive to be an ‘executive summary’ of your work. Not every reader will be interested in reading your entire work. This way, you will have this chapter ready to give them a brief (yet comprehensive) overview of the dissertation.

Recommendations – You should always include at least a paragraph on the practical implications resulting from your findings. This is extremely valuable for yourself, the committee, and the general reader. You can be rather flexible with your recommendations as long as they are relevant and derived from the findings of your dissertation research. For example, you can list highly-specific recommendations and steps to be followed or you can list more general recommendations guiding the reader towards certain ideas and principles to follow.

Future Work – No matter how much you have done with your dissertation research, it will never truly be finished. There will always be lingering question marks and open ends. By no means does this indicate your work is incomplete On the contrary, no PhD work is ever complete and, in fact, a good dissertation is one that sparks a high level of general interest and motivates further research in a particular discipline.

How to Actually Write the Dissertation Conclusion Chapter

Now that you have a good grasp of what the general outline should be of your conclusion, it is important to look at how to actually write it. The most important principle to keep in mind while writing your dissertation conclusion is reflection . To illustrate:

If readers were to go over nothing in your work except your conclusion, what message(s) would you want to leave them with?
What would your ‘take-home’ message be to your audience? What idea, question, call-to-action, etc., would you want them to have as they finish reading your work and walk away?

These are what you must constantly ask yourself while you are writing your dissertation conclusion.

Usually, you should start writing your conclusion by first taking notes, and you should do this while proofreading the initial draft of your work . In general, you should use the following approach:

Use an approach where you would 1) proofread, 2) take notes, and 3) summarize every single chapter of your work. This will pave the way and give you the structure you need for your dissertation conclusion.
After you do this, simply copy & paste these mini chapter summaries and combine them into your conclusion.
Now you have the ‘raw material’ and with this, you can start to modify and weave together the main ideas of your general summary.
After that, simply add the sections on practical implications, contributions, and future work/research.
As a final step, re-read the draft of your conclusion and ask yourself, “Does my conclusion really grasp the essence of my work?”

Pitfalls to Avoid for your Dissertation Conclusion

In general, there are three main pitfalls you should always avoid when writing the conclusion for your dissertation.

Protracted and Rambling Conclusion – A long and protracted conclusion is when you repeat yourself unnecessarily (without adding anything to what you are mentioning) about points you already mentioned in your previous chapters before the conclusion.

Short Conclusion – This is actually an improvement to a long and rambling conclusion, which wastes valuable time on the part of your audience. However, a conclusion that is too short also rambles about facts without coming to a logical conclusion, and does all this using less words and missing vital points/arguments.

Implausible Conclusion – Often times, doctoral students can come to wild conclusions that boggle the mind. They make claims that have absolutely no logical link to the evidence in their research, or that link is very weak. For example, many PhD students (in their very limited small-scale study) make wild assertions that the results of their study should be adopted by public policy-makers, governmental officials, and the like. If you make a list of unsubstantiated claims, you will be wasting a lot of hard work for nothing. Simply stay humble and avoid doing this!

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How to Write a Thesis or Dissertation Conclusion

How to Write a Dissertation Conclusion | Checklist and Examples

Published on 9 September 2022 by Tegan George and Shona McCombes. Revised on 10 October 2022.

The conclusion is the very last part of your thesis or dissertation . It should be concise and engaging, leaving your reader with a clear understanding of your main findings, as well as the answer to your research question .

In it, you should:

Clearly state the answer to your main research question
Summarise and reflect on your research process
Make recommendations for future work on your topic
Show what new knowledge you have contributed to your field
Wrap up your thesis or dissertation

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Discussion vs. conclusion, how long should your conclusion be, step 1: answer your research question, step 2: summarise and reflect on your research, step 3: make future recommendations, step 4: emphasise your contributions to your field, step 5: wrap up your thesis or dissertation, full conclusion example, conclusion checklist, frequently asked questions about conclusion sections.

While your conclusion contains similar elements to your discussion section , they are not the same thing.

Your conclusion should be shorter and more general than your discussion. Instead of repeating literature from your literature review , discussing specific research results , or interpreting your data in detail, concentrate on making broad statements that sum up the most important insights of your research.

As a rule of thumb, your conclusion should not introduce new data, interpretations, or arguments.

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Depending on whether you are writing a thesis or dissertation, your length will vary. Generally, a conclusion should make up around 5–7% of your overall word count.

An empirical scientific study will often have a short conclusion, concisely stating the main findings and recommendations for future research. A humanities topic or systematic review , on the other hand, might require more space to conclude its analysis, tying all the previous sections together in an overall argument.

Your conclusion should begin with the main question that your thesis or dissertation aimed to address. This is your final chance to show that you’ve done what you set out to do, so make sure to formulate a clear, concise answer.

Don’t repeat a list of all the results that you already discussed
Do synthesise them into a final takeaway that the reader will remember.

An empirical thesis or dissertation conclusion may begin like this:

A case study –based thesis or dissertation conclusion may begin like this:

In the second example, the research aim is not directly restated, but rather added implicitly to the statement. To avoid repeating yourself, it is helpful to reformulate your aims and questions into an overall statement of what you did and how you did it.

Your conclusion is an opportunity to remind your reader why you took the approach you did, what you expected to find, and how well the results matched your expectations.

To avoid repetition , consider writing more reflectively here, rather than just writing a summary of each preceding section. Consider mentioning the effectiveness of your methodology , or perhaps any new questions or unexpected insights that arose in the process.

You can also mention any limitations of your research, but only if you haven’t already included these in the discussion. Don’t dwell on them at length, though – focus on the positives of your work.

While x limits the generalisability of the results, this approach provides new insight into y .
This research clearly illustrates x , but it also raises the question of y .

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You may already have made a few recommendations for future research in your discussion section, but the conclusion is a good place to elaborate and look ahead, considering the implications of your findings in both theoretical and practical terms.

Based on these conclusions, practitioners should consider …
To better understand the implications of these results, future studies could address …
Further research is needed to determine the causes of/effects of/relationship between …

When making recommendations for further research, be sure not to undermine your own work. Relatedly, while future studies might confirm, build on, or enrich your conclusions, they shouldn’t be required for your argument to feel complete. Your work should stand alone on its own merits.

Just as you should avoid too much self-criticism, you should also avoid exaggerating the applicability of your research. If you’re making recommendations for policy, business, or other practical implementations, it’s generally best to frame them as ‘shoulds’ rather than ‘musts’. All in all, the purpose of academic research is to inform, explain, and explore – not to demand.

Make sure your reader is left with a strong impression of what your research has contributed to the state of your field.

Some strategies to achieve this include:

Returning to your problem statement to explain how your research helps solve the problem
Referring back to the literature review and showing how you have addressed a gap in knowledge
Discussing how your findings confirm or challenge an existing theory or assumption

Again, avoid simply repeating what you’ve already covered in the discussion in your conclusion. Instead, pick out the most important points and sum them up succinctly, situating your project in a broader context.

The end is near! Once you’ve finished writing your conclusion, it’s time to wrap up your thesis or dissertation with a few final steps:

It’s a good idea to write your abstract next, while the research is still fresh in your mind.
Next, make sure your reference list is complete and correctly formatted. To speed up the process, you can use our free APA citation generator .
Once you’ve added any appendices , you can create a table of contents and title page .
Finally, read through the whole document again to make sure your thesis is clearly written and free from language errors. You can proofread it yourself , ask a friend, or consider Scribbr’s proofreading and editing service .

Here is an example of how you can write your conclusion section. Notice how it includes everything mentioned above:

V. Conclusion

The current research aimed to identify acoustic speech characteristics which mark the beginning of an exacerbation in COPD patients.

The central questions for this research were as follows: 1. Which acoustic measures extracted from read speech differ between COPD speakers in stable condition and healthy speakers? 2. In what ways does the speech of COPD patients during an exacerbation differ from speech of COPD patients during stable periods?

All recordings were aligned using a script. Subsequently, they were manually annotated to indicate respiratory actions such as inhaling and exhaling. The recordings of 9 stable COPD patients reading aloud were then compared with the recordings of 5 healthy control subjects reading aloud. The results showed a significant effect of condition on the number of in- and exhalations per syllable, the number of non-linguistic in- and exhalations per syllable, and the ratio of voiced and silence intervals. The number of in- and exhalations per syllable and the number of non-linguistic in- and exhalations per syllable were higher for COPD patients than for healthy controls, which confirmed both hypotheses.

However, the higher ratio of voiced and silence intervals for COPD patients compared to healthy controls was not in line with the hypotheses. This unpredicted result might have been caused by the different reading materials or recording procedures for both groups, or by a difference in reading skills. Moreover, there was a trend regarding the effect of condition on the number of syllables per breath group. The number of syllables per breath group was higher for healthy controls than for COPD patients, which was in line with the hypothesis. There was no effect of condition on pitch, intensity, center of gravity, pitch variability, speaking rate, or articulation rate.

This research has shown that the speech of COPD patients in exacerbation differs from the speech of COPD patients in stable condition. This might have potential for the detection of exacerbations. However, sustained vowels rarely occur in spontaneous speech. Therefore, the last two outcome measures might have greater potential for the detection of beginning exacerbations, but further research on the different outcome measures and their potential for the detection of exacerbations is needed due to the limitations of the current study.

Checklist: Conclusion

I have clearly and concisely answered the main research question .

I have summarized my overall argument or key takeaways.

I have mentioned any important limitations of the research.

I have given relevant recommendations .

I have clearly explained what my research has contributed to my field.

I have not introduced any new data or arguments.

You've written a great conclusion! Use the other checklists to further improve your dissertation.

In a thesis or dissertation, the discussion is an in-depth exploration of the results, going into detail about the meaning of your findings and citing relevant sources to put them in context.

The conclusion is more shorter and more general: it concisely answers your main research question and makes recommendations based on your overall findings.

While it may be tempting to present new arguments or evidence in your thesis or disseration conclusion , especially if you have a particularly striking argument you’d like to finish your analysis with, you shouldn’t. Theses and dissertations follow a more formal structure than this.

All your findings and arguments should be presented in the body of the text (more specifically in the discussion section and results section .) The conclusion is meant to summarize and reflect on the evidence and arguments you have already presented, not introduce new ones.

For a stronger dissertation conclusion , avoid including:

Generic concluding phrases (e.g. “In conclusion…”)
Weak statements that undermine your argument (e.g. “There are good points on both sides of this issue.”)

Your conclusion should leave the reader with a strong, decisive impression of your work.

The conclusion of your thesis or dissertation shouldn’t take up more than 5-7% of your overall word count.

The conclusion of your thesis or dissertation should include the following:

A restatement of your research question
A summary of your key arguments and/or results
A short discussion of the implications of your research

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How to Write a Conclusion Chapter for a Dissertation and Thesis

Writing Conclusion

Your thesis or dissertation ends with the conclusion. Its primary purposes include addressing the main research question, summarizing and echoing the study, presenting future studies recommendations, and depicting your contribution's novel knowledge. Therefore, this section must be concise and intriguing. After perusing, the reader should have a more precise idea of your main argument and how your research has progressed. In the discussion chapter, you elaborate on and reiterate your results' relevance, meaning, and vitality. Hence, centering on what you have discovered and elucidating and evaluating how your findings relate to or refute your literature review and research questions are critical.

Moreover, it should uphold and establish the foundation of your conclusion section. Different ways exist to structure the discussion section. Nonetheless, here are some helpful tips.

1) Concentrate on what your results suggest and explicitly disclose their meaning.

2) Present implications and focus on their vitality.

3) Inform the reader about the limitations of your study because they articulate what your results fail to suggest.

4) Submit recommendations as they can be inspiring to the researchers so that they can pursue novel research thanks to you.

Suppose you are not sure about the ideal study structure. The discussion and conclusion sections may occasionally overlap, and some theses may have a single chapter instead of two different ones. In that case, consulting your supervisor or researching sample theses or dissertations from relevant databases may be exceedingly helpful.

Discussion vs. Conclusion

The conclusion and the discussion sections may have similar elements, and sometimes these two sections are together (especially in shorter papers and journal articles). However, a thesis or dissertation primarily has them separately, and exceedingly usual is to contain a final chapter epitomizing your research and offering the reader your study’s last impression.

The conclusion chapter is the shorter of the two. Instead of elaborating on particular results and commenting on the data in detail, it is recommended to make broad statements summarizing the most relevant insights of the research. Therefore, the conclusion cannot have new data, comments, or arguments.

What should be the conclusion’s length?

Even though it primarily depends on the type of thesis or dissertation, the conclusion should ideally be around 5 to 7% of your overall work. An empirical scientific study with essential findings and recommendations can have a short conclusion. In contrast, a thesis in the social field might demand more space to conclude the analysis and relate to all the chapters as parts of the overall discussion.

Do you need proofreading or editing for the conclusion section of your thesis?

Editing and proofreading your conclusion section is essential . A professional editing and proofreading service with trained and experienced experts holding Ph.D. in their fields will edit your thesis or dissertation conclusion in detail. The conclusion section will be more legible and practical thanks to their vast experience.

Addressing the research question

The main question should be at the beginning of the conclusion of your thesis or dissertation. You have the ultimate chance to illustrate that you have accomplished what you have stated. Therefore, ensure you address the reader with a clear and concise answer. Avoid repeating all the discussed results. Instead, present the reader with a synthesized and memorable take-home message.

Epitomizing and echoing your study

The conclusion allows you to remind the reader what made you take the chosen approach, what you anticipate finding, and how well the results and your expectations aligned.

Your writing must be to the point, and instead of penning a synopsis of each chapter, your writing should be exceedingly reflective. You might assess the effectiveness of your methods in addressing your research questions and elaborate on any new questions or unexpected insights in due process. Mentioning any limitations of your research may be relevant here. However, avoid discussing them in detail. Instead, concentrate on the positive sides of your study.

Making recommendations

Your discussion might have presented recommendations for future research; however, the conclusion can be ideal to go deeper and look ahead, covering the implications of your theoretical and practical findings. Nonetheless, one should be cautious about overstating the applicability of their research. Suppose you make recommendations for policy, business, or other practical implementations. In that case, it is better to frame them as suggestions instead of imperatives. One should remember that the objective of academic research is to inform, state, and search, not to instruct.

Should you make recommendations for further research, ensure that you do not weaken your study. Future studies may verify, establish, or enhance your conclusions, but they do not necessarily complete them.

Accentuating your contributions

Ensuring your reader has a solid impression of what your research has added to knowledge in your field is essential. You may achieve it using the following strategies:

Reiterate your problem statement to state how your study has helped unravel the problem.

Return to your literature review and depict how you have filled a gap in the extant literature.

Deliberate on your findings and verify or refute an existing theory or hypothesis.

You should be exceedingly precise and avoid reiterating what you have already addressed. One ideal approach may include summarizing and expanding the most critical points to a broader context.

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This article explains how to write a conclusion section for a dissertation or thesis. To give you an opportunity to practice proofreading, we have left a few spelling, punctuation, or grammatical errors in the text. See if you can spot them! If you spot the errors correctly, you will be entitled to a 10% discount.

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The Final Chapter(s): Discussion, Conclusion, Limitations and Implications

Posted by Rene Tetzner | Oct 21, 2021 | PhD Success | 0 |

4.5 The Final Chapter(s): Discussion, Conclusion, Limitations and Implications

In some theses, the discussion of the study, its results and any concluding thoughts will fill more than one chapter: there may be, for instance, a chapter dedicated to discussion and a shorter conclusion chapter, or perhaps two chapters dedicated to discussing the results of different methodologies and a final chapter on relationships between those different results. In many theses, however, a single chapter will suffice for both. This final part of your thesis is a vital one: it tends to synthesise and analyse all elements of the thesis in order to evaluate and explain the overall significance of the research, and readers will often turn to the discussion (or conclusion) chapter first to obtain an overall picture of a study. The structure of this all-important final material varies considerably from thesis to thesis, yet it is essential that it be designed in a way that allows you to move through a great deal of potentially complicated, analytical and speculative information in an orderly fashion. Considerable reflection is therefore necessary before beginning to write, and not only to get the structure right. That structure depends, of course, on exactly what you intend to include in your discussion chapter(s), and deciding on exactly what to say will take some deep reflective thought on your part.

You may wish to address your plans for your discussion and conclusion chapter(s) with your supervisor and other committee members, and it is also a good idea to see if your department has any guidelines for this part of the thesis, especially if you are feeling unsure about how to proceed and could use some practical advice. In the final analysis, however, you are better acquainted with your research and thus better able to make sense of it than anyone else can be, so you are the only person truly qualified not only to write, but also to design the discussion and conclusion for that research. Besides, this final part of the thesis is your opportunity to express your own perspective and opinions on the significance of your doctoral research, based firmly, of course, on the topic, problem or phenomenon you investigated, your aims and objectives, the methods you used and the results you achieved.

Unfortunately, you may well feel rather exhausted by the experience of drafting your thesis by the time you arrive at your discussion chapter(s), but detailed analysis, intellectual vigour and creative connections are absolutely necessary for discussing and concluding your thesis, and a little passion never hurts either. Doing less than your best at this point would compromise all the effort you have already invested, so take a deep breath and dive into what can in fact be the most challenging and pleasurable part of writing a thesis. There is no simple or universal recipe for successfully discussing and concluding a doctoral thesis and its research, but, generally speaking, an inversion of your opening chapters takes place: in those chapters, you moved your reader from the more general background and scholarship associated with the topic, problem or phenomenon to focus on your particular perspective and approach; in your final chapter(s), you need to use the specific focus you adopted and the results you achieved to move your reader back out to the more general interpretations and implications of your research. In order to achieve this, there are a number of practical approaches and standard expectations that are worthy of serious consideration before forging your own unique path through the forest of possibilities.

Discussing and concluding a thesis effectively might and generally should involve:

A brief introduction outlining the structure and content of the chapter(s). This can take the form of a single short paragraph, but because the discussion section of a thesis tends to be creative and is always unique, and it is essential that readers understand exactly what you intend, an opening paragraph of this sort can be extremely helpful for clarifying your approach and raising appropriate expectations.
A brief but informative summary of the study or thesis as a whole. This need only highlight the major issues and can be done efficiently by moving through the individual chapters as outlined in the following four points.
A return to the introduction of the thesis to restate the most important material introduced there. The research topic, problem or phenomenon should certainly be emphasised, as should its significance, your aims and objectives, and any research questions and hypotheses you introduced and used as guiding factors in your research. You will need to analyse how your research and results answer, resolve and contribute to knowledge in relation to these elements, so any or all of them can effectively be used to structure the chapter, especially if you have used them to organise your report of the results. You may also want to return to the essential aspects of the background and context of your research as discussed in the introduction chapter, but this tends to be necessary only if that background and context is immediately relevant to your discussion and concluding thoughts.
A return to the literature review to highlight the most important aspects of previous research on your topic and any key theories related to your work in the thesis. Any gaps, misconceptions and limitations that you identified in the scholarship in your earlier literature review should be restated with the goal being to explain exactly how your research and its results have provided what was lacking, established new ways of looking at the problem(s) and thus moved beyond the traditional views and limitations. Your thesis should make an original contribution to knowledge and discussing it in relation to previous scholarship in the area is one of the most effective ways to identify, emphasise and explain that contribution.

A return to the description of your methodology. This need not be long or detailed, but it sometimes is, and reviewing your main methods and approaches with an eye to evaluating their reliability, limitations and overall effectiveness is an important part of assessing your research. Your understanding of the appropriateness of your methodology may have changed since you first designed your study, particularly as you analysed and reported your results. Your methods may have exceeded or failed to live up to your expectations, or they may have presented limitations or complications you had not envisioned. You may have made errors while putting your methods into practice. Whatever the reality of your methodology proved to be should be explained accurately and objectively, so this is a place for complete if sometimes painful honesty.
A return to the report of your results to summarise and highlight the key points. There is no need to go through your results in detail – the chapter(s) immediately preceding your discussion has already done that – but since you will need to use the results to discuss the implications and limitations of your research, mentioning the main trends is essential. You should focus particularly on the aspects of your results that you intend to discuss, but try not to leave out any significant or meaningful findings, including surprises, whether they support your research hypotheses or not. Focus and brevity can be achieved by making general statements about the nature of the results and following each statement with the most important examples and details to support it.
An analysis and interpretation of your research as a whole and its results. This can be included in a step-by-step manner along with the summaries mentioned in the last four points above, or it can be tackled separately after the relevant information from previous chapters has been highlighted. Your approach, like your ideas, for this part of your thesis will require a great deal of reflection and you may find that you have to begin more than once before finding the right direction. The essential question is ‘What does it all mean?’ and the answer can be notoriously difficult to identify and explain both thoughtfully and accurately. It is likely that your research and results will have many meanings, but this is your chance to express your own views and opinions. These should not be whimsical, erratic, biassed or overly subjective, however, but should be solidly and logically based upon your findings. Your interpretations and conclusions should be plausible, insightful and comprehensive, and whenever your ideas are tentative or speculative (as they will necessarily be at times when discussing matters such as causality), your language should clearly indicate that with phrasing such as ‘it seems that,’ ‘these results appear to suggest,’ ‘it is probable that’ and ‘the likely explanation is.’ It is also important to explain how your research and results have resolved the problem you explored, answered your research questions, tested your hypotheses, filled gaps in the scholarship on the topic, revealed the limitations of earlier theories, proved the validity of your methodology and achieved your aims and objectives. If you have not met with success in any of these areas, that, too, should be indicated.

An identification and analysis of the limitations of your study and its methodology. You may want to write this part along with the review of your main methods, but it can also work as a separate section of the chapter because limitations often extend beyond your methodology (to your findings, for instance). Identifying the limitations of your research and its results is a vital part of your thesis. You may prefer, of course, that there were no or very few limitations, but they are an inevitable aspect of any research, so recognising and discussing them not only demonstrates your intellectual maturity and critical skills, but also makes your research much more useful for future researchers in your area, including yourself. Limitations often stem from the nature of the research design and the exact qualities of the population or sample used, both of which might be called normal limitations that affect the generalisability of your research, but mistakes in controlling the relevant variables, defects in the instruments used or inadequate approaches to recording or analysing data will result in limitations (and perhaps unreliability) of a different kind. If any such limitations proved so significant that it was necessary to adjust your methods and/or repeat any of your research, a discussion of that process, the improvements you made and the ways in which the new results differed can be included as well, though you may want to consult your supervisor about this, as it might be more appropriate to discuss such changes in your methodology chapter(s) instead.
A discussion of the implications of your research and its results. This will tie into your comments about the significance of your research project as expressed in your introduction to the thesis, but your understanding of that significance may well have changed since you began writing, and you can provide further details as well as more certain conclusions in this chapter based on the results you have presented. Implications, whether for practical action or intellectual reflection, should obviously be directly related to the topic, problem or phenomenon you explored (it can be helpful to imagine what you would tell an audience affected by the problem or phenomenon if you had only enough time to emphasise a few major points), and good use can be made of your research questions and hypotheses as well as your aims and objectives as you construct your discussion. The implications you identify should be considered in relation to the background and context of your research as well as previous scholarship in the area, including both trials and studies of a more theoretical nature – ask yourself how your results build on the literature you reviewed and how your study integrates with or overturns current theories. You may also want to comment on the implications of your methodology, especially if it has been innovative, problematic or extraordinarily successful. You will have a great deal of freedom in expressing your thoughts about your work – the factual reporter of your results chapter has been left behind for the authoritative thinker of your discussion – but be sure that the implications you identify and explain are based firmly and logically upon your research and its results, and when you are theorising, generalising and speculating, ensure that your language accurately reflects those tentative modes.
One or more recommendations for future research in your area or discipline. Your recommendations for future research will be based to a large extent on the implications and limitations of your own research. It may be that some idealistic researchers start projects with the notion that their work will resolve all associated questions and problems, but this rarely (if ever) happens in reality, and often the answers that are derived from careful and extensive research complicate matters and open more doors on further research needs and possibilities. Your recommendations may involve repeating the kind of research you have done, but with changes that would eliminate the limitations you have identified (by adding controls, for instance, or choosing or developing different instruments, participants or means of analysis), or they may involve taking very different directions by conducting entirely different kinds of research (using entirely different methods perhaps, or focussing from a different perspective on the most unexpected or surprising trends of your results). Remember that your recommendations for future research can transform aspects of your work that may have proved disappointing into positive possibilities.
A brief conclusion. Since conclusions about your study are a major part of this chapter, a conclusion to it may seem somewhat redundant, but it is important to end on a bright clear note. Sometimes an academic or scientific author will dedicate pages of text to describing, interpreting and speculating upon all the sound and revealing results he or she obtained only to turn at the end of the final chapter to the limitations of the study, which can have the effect of dumping all the wind out of the sails he or she has so carefully and convincingly filled. It may be that the guidelines provided by your university or department call for limitations to be reported at the end of the thesis, and, as an essential aspect of valuable research, limitations need not be negative, especially if they are combined with or (if possible) followed by recommendations for future research. However, after discussing the limitations of your study, it can be useful to return to the unquestionably positive results and conclusions of your research. You might choose, for instance, three main concepts or conclusions that you would like to highlight as you close your text, and these can certainly be qualified with hints of limitations and recommendations while still emphasising the significant contributions of your research. Keep in mind that a doctoral thesis should make a significant and original contribution to knowledge, so highlighting the main ways in which it does so in your final thoughts is not out of place. If there was ever a time to blow your own horn a little, this is it.

Why PhD Success?

To Graduate Successfully

This article is part of a book called "PhD Success" which focuses on the writing process of a phd thesis, with its aim being to provide sound practices and principles for reporting and formatting in text the methods, results and discussion of even the most innovative and unique research in ways that are clear, correct, professional and persuasive.

The assumption of the book is that the doctoral candidate reading it is both eager to write and more than capable of doing so, but nonetheless requires information and guidance on exactly what he or she should be writing and how best to approach the task. The basic components of a doctoral thesis are outlined and described, as are the elements of complete and accurate scholarly references, and detailed descriptions of writing practices are clarified through the use of numerous examples.

The basic components of a doctoral thesis are outlined and described, as are the elements of complete and accurate scholarly references, and detailed descriptions of writing practices are clarified through the use of numerous examples. PhD Success provides guidance for students familiar with English and the procedures of English universities, but it also acknowledges that many theses in the English language are now written by candidates whose first language is not English, so it carefully explains the scholarly styles, conventions and standards expected of a successful doctoral thesis in the English language.

Individual chapters of this book address reflective and critical writing early in the thesis process; working successfully with thesis supervisors and benefiting from commentary and criticism; drafting and revising effective thesis chapters and developing an academic or scientific argument; writing and formatting a thesis in clear and correct scholarly English; citing, quoting and documenting sources thoroughly and accurately; and preparing for and excelling in thesis meetings and examinations.

Completing a doctoral thesis successfully requires long and penetrating thought, intellectual rigour and creativity, original research and sound methods (whether established or innovative), precision in recording detail and a wide-ranging thoroughness, as much perseverance and mental toughness as insight and brilliance, and, no matter how many helpful writing guides are consulted, a great deal of hard work over a significant period of time. Writing a thesis can be an enjoyable as well as a challenging experience, however, and even if it is not always so, the personal and professional rewards of achieving such an enormous goal are considerable, as all doctoral candidates no doubt realise, and will last a great deal longer than any problems that may be encountered during the process.

Interested in Proofreading your PhD Thesis? Get in Touch with us

If you are interested in proofreading your PhD thesis or dissertation, please explore our expert dissertation proofreading services.

Rene Tetzner

Rene Tetzner's blog posts dedicated to academic writing. Although the focus is on How To Write a Doctoral Thesis, many other important aspects of research-based writing, editing and publishing are addressed in helpful detail.

PhD Success – How To Write a Doctoral Thesis

October 1, 2021

Table of Contents – PhD Success

October 2, 2021

The Essential – Preliminary Matter

October 3, 2021

The Main Body of the Thesis

October 4, 2021

my research
contributions and comments

leave a good last impression – the thesis conclusion

Writing the conclusion to the thesis is hard. It’s often done badly . And it’s something that doctoral researchers often get asked to do more work on. Not at all what they/you need.

Writing a conclusion is important. The conclusion is that last thing that the examiner reads before they write their report, and it can shape their attitude to the entire thesis.

If the researcher in the conclusion seems unsure, dodges saying what they’ve actually achieved, then the examiner writes their report thinking that the research is incomplete. They decide that the purpose of the viva is to find out if the researcher knows what they are talking about. Are they really doctoral material or still being prepared? Is the thesis a work in progress or a completed text?

AARHGH. You’d rather this not be the case. You’d rather the examiner approach their report and your viva thinking you are already a doctor, and the viva is about exploring the topic and the research. Yes, you really do need to make a good last impression.

But a moment to recap. A thesis conclusion generally:

restates the question
provides a succinct summary of the answer(s) and how this was produced ( I did this and my analysis showed 1, 2, 3 and I argue that this … ). The writer usually acknowledges the particularity of the research here too (sometimes called limitations.)
shows how the research contributes to the literatures ( the contribution of the research is a, b, c )
discusses the implications ( the results could lead to further research on, changes in policy/practice such as.. ). The implications arise logically from the particularity of the study and its results – they point to questions the study opens up, what the results says to current thinking about and acting on the topic.

Sounds simple. Straightforward. If so, why do people find writing the conclusion so hard?

Well, sometimes people have simply run out of words by the time they reach the end. They haven’t allowed enough space to say what needs to be said last. Writing the conclusion then means going back and creating space for more text – and they aren’t prepared to do that. They write something that fits the word count, not something that does the job. So, key action 1 – ALLOW FOR THE WORDS AT THE END.

And sometimes people have run out of time. They’ve spent every moment getting the results together and they thought that the conclusion would be easy and take no time at all. It doesn’t. Conclusions need time and much thinking. So key action two – ALLOW TIME .

That’s because writing the conclusion requires two more key actions:

3. STEP AWAY FROM THE RESEARCH.

Writing a conclusion requires you to have some distance on the thesis. Rather than seeing the details of each chapter, you have to get a grip on the whole. You take a critical evaluative look at what the work that you done adds up to. You assume the standpoint you had when you were imagining what the project would be, why it was important and how it would go. You return to the question of purpose and significance that you had at the start of the project and the thesis. To use a cliché, the conclusion is where you move from being in the middle of the trees – you move far enough away to see the forest.

And getting your head out of the minutiae is not necessarily an easy or quick thing to do. You’ve been stuck inside the particulars for a long time. You’ve been analysing and writing the results and it’s sometimes very hard to move on. You can tell if you’re drowning in details if, when someone asks you what you found in your research, your answer is very lengthy and detailed and not short, snappy and to the point. It’s that short-snappy-and-to-the-point-ness that you need to find in order to write the conclusion.

You might get your concluding head set if you organise a three-minute thesis exercise for yourself and your best research companions. It can help to make a set of powerpoint slides, one for each move in the conclusion. It can help to have someone ask you the viva question – give me the headlines about your research – and stop you each time you start to drill down too far into the specifics. It can help to practice answering an imaginary examiner who says So What Now What.

Stepping away from the research is necessary but not sufficient. You also need to:

4. TAKE THE POSITION.

Writing a conclusion means that you must assume the position of the expert. That’s not faking it, because at the end of the thesis you know more about your topic than anyone else. You know heaps, in depth, about your very particular research. And you can see that because of how easily you can talk at length about all of the research ins and outs. However, you need to put what’s behind that detailed understanding, that authority, into the writing. This means taking on the persona of someone who is already a doctor, who is seen by others as having the expertise to speak knowledgeably on their topic.

And the examiner can easily see where a doctoral researcher is reluctant to assume the position. The conclusion is truncated and vague. Where a contribution is specified it is either underplayed or over-generalised. There is too much hedging, too much handwringing about what the research didn’t do, too much throat clearing before getting to the crunch.

Doctoral researchers who struggle with taking the (expert) position often haven’t thought about all the ways in which their thesis might make a contribution. They take for granted their literatures work, the ways in which they adapted methods, the particular procedural and/or ethical difficulties they dealt with – they don’t look for potential issues of interest to other researchers. They hesitate to mention that their research raises questions about, or contradicts something, or locates something that no one else has. They don’t own the new-ness of their work.

The tentative doctoral researcher has to step up. And this is where a bit of role play might be in order. Ask your supervisor to show you some theses that have good conclusions. Look at the rhetorical moves that these writers make. Use some sentence skeletons to expose the ways in which these good conclusion writers stage their final, summary argument and their claims. Repeat the three-minute thesis, conversation and powerpoint exercises concentrating on your researcher ‘voice’. Record yourself giving the three minute answer – transcribe it and then edit it. Speed-write your claims in five minutes. Go through the text and see if you can booster it up .

So there you are. Four actions that can help with thesis concluding. Four for a good last and lasting impression.

Allow for the words. Allow for the time it takes. Step away from the research. Take the position.

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Good stuff. Thanks Pat

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The structure of PhD conclusion chapters

2005, Journal of English for Academic Purposes

This paper considers the generic structure of Conclusion chapters in PhD theses or dissertations. From a corpus of 45 PhD theses covering a range of disciplines, chapters playing a concluding role were identified and analysed for their functional moves and steps. Most Conclusions were found to restate purpose, consolidate research space with a varied array of steps, recommend future research and cover practical applications, implications or recommendations. However a minority were found to focus more on the field than on the thesis itself. These field-oriented Conclusions tended to adopt a problem–solution text structure, or in one case, an argument structure. Variations in focus and structure between disciplines were also found.

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Science Park Research Organization & Counselling

Writing a thesis in English is challenging for non-native English speaking students, and it is not an exception for Vietnamese master's (M.A.) students. Despite this challenge, English writing was not formally taught at their elementary, secondary and high school levels until 2008. In their postgraduate programs, these students have little or no formal instruction on how to write each part of a thesis; but are provided with the guidelines and then tailor their own theses. This paper, therefore, explores how 24 Vietnamese teachers of English wrote their thesis Conclusion chapters. By employing the revised framework for analyzing the Conclusion chapters in Applied Linguistics by Chen and Kuo (2012), the study found Deductions from the study (Move 4) is present in every chapter while the other three moves (Introducing the Conclusion chapter, Summarizing the study and Evaluating the study) are conventional. Moreover, a new move (Chapter summary) and an infrequent occurrence of Summarizing previous chapter and a cycle of next section introduction-each section summary were identified. These findings indicate not only a linear structure in composing the concluding chapters by this group of Vietnamese writers but also the rhetorical influence of Vietnamese written discourse on their English writing. The results from this study have some pedagogical implications for teaching novice Vietnamese writers on how to properly compose this genre.

Thi Thuy Loan Nguyen

Writing a thesis in English is challenging for non-native English speaking students, and it is not an exception for Vietnamese master’s (M.A.) students. Despite this challenge, English writing was not formally taught at their elementary, secondary and high school levels until 2008. In their postgraduate programs, these students have little or no formal instruction on how to write each part of a thesis; but are provided with the guidelines and then tailor their own theses. This paper, therefore, explores how 24 Vietnamese teachers of English wrote their thesis Conclusion chapters. By employing the revised framework for analyzing the Conclusion chapters in Applied Linguistics by Chen and Kuo (2012), the study found Deductions from the study (Move 4) is present in every chapter while the other three moves (Introducing the Conclusion chapter, Summarizing the study and Evaluating the study) are conventional. Moreover, a new move (Chapter summary) and an infrequent occurrence of Summarizing previous chapter and a cycle of next section introduction-each section summary were identified. These findings indicate not only a linear structure in composing the concluding chapters by this group of Vietnamese writers but also the rhetorical influence of Vietnamese written discourse on their English writing. The results from this study have some pedagogical implications for teaching novice Vietnamese writers on how to properly compose this genre.

A master’s thesis is a high stakes genre at the summit of a student’s academic accomplishment (Hyland, 2004) and writing a thesis in English poses difficulties for non-native English speaking students (Dong, 1998; Paltridge, 2002b; Shaw, 1991). Given the difficulty of writing M.A. theses and their importance in students’ academic achievement, scarce or even non-existent research has been conducted on this specific genre written by Vietnamese students and what constitutes effective citation practices in student writing. This research, therefore, studies on the rhetorical structure and the in-text citations in each chapter of 24 M.A. theses in TESOL produced at three universities in the South of Vietnam. Employing Chen and Kuo’s (2012) and Thompson and Tribble's (2001) frameworks for the analysis of moves-steps and citation types and functions, respectively and semi-structured interviews with thesis writers and thesis supervisors, the results showed the similarities and differences in the moves and steps of each chapter in these TESOL theses by Vietnamese and those by international writers in ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database although this group of Vietnamese writers had little or no formal instruction on how to write this genre. This finding is likely to reflect not only these writers’ conformity to the rhetorical norms but also their adaptation to suit their cultural expectations. Moreover, citations were found to function differently among the chapters and this group of novice writers was likely to be unaware of the rhetorical consequences of their citation choices through their preference for integral citation types, their limited use of citation functions, and their random use of reporting verbs in their M.A. theses. Besides these findings, this study also proposes practical implications for teaching this particular group of novice writers in Vietnam as well as for other educational settings with similar cultural values on how to effectively compose this particular genre and use citation in composing this genre.

Maria Ester W. Moritz , Adriana Kuerten Dellagnelo

The present study is a contrastive investigation of conclusions of researcharticles (RAs) written in Portuguese as a native language, English as anative language and English as a foreign language. The analysis wascarried out according to the principles of genre studies as proposed bySwales (1990). The corpus is composed of 36 conclusions of RAs in the field of applied linguistics. The findings reveal no constant pattern of rhetorical organization and no obligatory moves or steps. However,the results indicate the occurrence of a complex array of moves and steps which exhibits a cyclical structure but with differences in the threelanguages investigated. Furthermore, the samples investigated permitted the elaboration of a proposal of a model for this component of RAs. Thestudy, therefore, contributes to a richer understanding of the nature of conclusions of RAs and, as such, of academic writing

Widhi Widhiyanto

Abstract This thesis is concerned with the quality of argument in lengthy academic texts. The aim of the research reported in this thesis is to better understand the ways arguments in undergraduate dissertations are constructed through the employment of a range of linguistic resources. It investigates two dissertations written by student writers who, while from very different linguistic background and educational contexts, are both neophyte participants in an increasingly global higher education market. In this research, argument refers to “a mode of thinking and composition or ‘metagenre’” (Andrews, 2005), by which undergraduate student writers create and organise meanings in the dissertations. The research is particularly interested in the textual and the interpersonal zones in academic texts where novice writers must learn in constructing effective arguments that embody the organisation of the texts as unified whole, the staging of meanings to achieve texts’ communicative purposes, and the enactment of the writers’ engagement with others in the literature as they take up their positions in the discourse community. The research is underpinned primarily by comprehensive theoretical frameworks of the model of “language as social semiotic” (SFL) (Halliday, 1994, 2004). Particularly, the research draws on the Periodicity framework (Halliday, 1985b; Martin & Rose, 2007), the genre theories (Swales, 1990; Martin, 1992; Martin & Rose, 2008), and the Appraisal framework (Martin, 2000a; Martin & White, 2005) to conduct in-depth linguistic analyses on the linguistic resources utilised to construct the arguments, focusing on three-key text features: Periodicity, genre and Engagement. A complementary theory of the model of “the layout of argument” by Toulmin (1958, 2003) is utilised to assess the organisation of the elements of arguments laid out across stretches of the dissertations. This research is descriptive in nature; in which, the in-depth linguistic analysis is conducted to investigate the phenomena emerging in both texts with a view to noticing the similarities and differences in the ways the two student writers manage these tasks. It analyses an Honours dissertation from an Australian university and a dissertation written by an Indonesian student writer studying English as a foreign language (EFL) in an English department at an Indonesian university. Three-stage analyses are conducted in the top-down manner suggested by the three-key text features. Firstly, Periodicity analysis explores each dissertation to see how each student writer organises meanings as unified whole hierarchically and construct the macro-argument effectively. Secondly, genre analysis examines three selected chapters from each dissertation to see how writers stage meanings to achieve their communicative purposes in the meso-level of argument. Thirdly, analysis on Engagement in the sentence level (i.e. micro-level of argument) is conducted to samples from each text those that potentially show how the writers engage with readers and other writers in the field. The research uncovers that the two writers employ linguistic resources to organise meanings to construct arguments in both similar and different ways. The Periodicity analysis reveals that both writers structure their texts at the macro-level of arguments according to conventional ways of organising dissertations. This suggests commonality in modelling practices across the students’ institutions. However, genre analysis and Appraisal analysis show important differences that emerged in how students structure their texts at the meso-level (at chapter, section and paragraph levels), and in how the writers accomplish negotiation by their employment of evaluative language at the micro-level of sentence and below. The arguments within these levels are differently organised that might influence their soundness (quality). These practices indicate the dissimilarities the way each discourse community employs linguistic resources in academic setting, and the academic discourse practices within communities where each student writer participated in. The thesis contributes to the understanding of how arguments are constructed across lengthy texts through (i) choices in the ways meanings are hierarchically organised at various levels of texts, and (ii) in the ways meanings are staged to achieve the texts’ communicative purposes, together with (iii) how writers engage with others in respect to other voices in the discourse within the academic context. The research extends existing explanations of text development and its relations to genre staging. This staging is verified by the evaluative linguistic analysis in which the staging is signposted. Pedagogically, the findings of the research contribute to the advancement of the teaching of argument in academic genre in EFL educational context. More specifically, a more nuanced approach to pedagogy is necessary in the Indonesian tertiary context.

A master's thesis is a high stakes genre at the summit of a student's academic accomplishment, and writing a thesis in English is reported to pose difficulties for non-native English speaking students. Given the difficulty of writing master's theses and their importance in students' academic achievement, scarce or even non-existent research has been conducted on this specific genre written by Vietnamese students. This paper, therefore, presents the study on the rhetorical structure of 24 master's theses in TESOL produced at three universities in Vietnam. Employing Chen and Kuo's (2012) framework, the results revealed the similarities and differences in the moves and steps of each chapter in the theses written by Vietnamese and those by international writers from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Database (ProQuest). Moreover, these findings indicated both these Vietnamese writers' conformity to the rhetorical norms and their adaptation to suit their discourse community's expectations.

In P. Thompson & G. Diani (Eds.), English for Academic Purposes: Approaches and implications. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.

Maggie Charles

Results and Discussion chapters are considered difficult to write in a thesis, especially for non-native English writers. However, few studies have been conducted on how writers compose these two genres. This study, therefore, explores the move-step structures of these two chapters in 24 Master’s theses written by Vietnamese postgraduates. Based on the framework by Chen and Kuo (2012) and the discourse-based interviews with actual thesis writers and supervisors, the study found that this group of writers constructed the genres according to their perceived communicative purposes of these chapters. Moreover, the presence of section/chapter introduction-next section/chapter introduction-section/chapter summary cycles tends to reflect the distinctive composition of these texts at the TESOL discourse community in Vietnam. These findings suggest that explicit instructions on rhetorical structures of these two genres should be provided to non-native English writers and attention should also be paid to specific practice of a genre composition in a particular discourse community.

Wasima Shehzad , Akhtar Abbas

Exploration of academic discourse of academic genres has been a focus of attention of many) for the last twenty years in native and non-native contexts. However, the academic genres produced in Pakistan have not got the attention of scholars yet. Continuing the international tradition of analyzing genre knowledge, the current study aims at the analysis of MPhil theses' introduction chapters in the disciplines of Linguistics and Literature produced in Pakistan by applying the genre theory of Swales (1990). At macro level, genre analysis was conducted to explore the rhetorical organization of the introductory chapters qualitatively and quantitatively by adopting CARS (Create A Research Space) model proposed by Swales (2004). Contrary to other CARS based studies, M3M1, M1M3 and M3M3 were found as dominant move sequences with dominant occurrence of Move 3 (228).

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How to Write a Conclusion Chapter for a PhD Dissertation?

How to format your research proposal , how to write a statement of the problem for a phd dissertation.

Writing a conclusion chapter for a PhD dissertation is a crucial part of your academic work, as it provides a summary of your research and highlights the significance of your findings. The conclusion chapter should be concise and provide a clear and logical ending to your research. Here are some steps to follow when writing a conclusion chapter for your PhD dissertation:

Summarize your main findings:

Begin by summarizing the key findings of your research. This should briefly summaries what you have found in your research. The researcher should summarize the findings and their significance.

Discuss the implications of your findings:

After summarizing your main findings, discuss the implications of your research. This should discuss how your research has contributed to the existing body of knowledge in your field and how it can be used in practical applications.

Justify your research questions and objectives:

The conclusion chapter should address the research questions and objectives, demonstrating how they have been met and how the findings contribute to the research gap .

Reflect on your study limitations and Provide recommendations for future research:

Reflect on the limitations of your research and discuss how they could have affected your results. This shows that you have considered potential research issues and thought about how they could have affected your findings. Provide recommendations for future research: Finally, provide recommendations for future research in your field based on your findings. This shows that your research has contributed to a larger conversation and can help guide future research efforts.

Emphasize the significance of your research:

Throughout the conclusion chapter, emphasize the significance of your research and how it contributes to the field. Make sure to clearly state the impact of your research and why it matters.

Write clearly and concisely:

The conclusion chapter should be written clearly and concisely, avoiding unnecessary jargon and technical language. It should provide a logical and convincing summary of your research and its implications for the field.

Following these key points can create a conclusion chapter that effectively summarizes your research and highlights its significance. Remember, the conclusion chapter is your final opportunity to make a lasting impression on your readers. Make sure to write clearly, concisely, and confidently, emphasizing your research's significance. For more information use our PhD Dissertation study guide.

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How To Write A Discussion Chapter In Your PhD Discussion

If you’re here, you probably got to the part in your thesis or dissertation where you have to work on the discussion chapter. Don’t worry; we’re here to help! In this article, we’ll break down the discussion chapter in simple language and give you lots of examples to make it easier to understand.”

What is the discussion chapter?

The discussion chapter plays a vital role in your thesis or dissertation.

Unlike the results chapter, which presents your analysis findings, whether they are qualitative or quantitative, this chapter is where you really dig into your results.

Here, you’ll interpret and explain your research findings, exploring their significance and implications.

In this section, you’ll connect your research findings with your research questions or hypotheses and link them back to previous studies and literature, as you did in your literature review chapter.

You’ll also assess the relevance and importance of your findings to your field of study and make a persuasive argument for the conclusions you’ve drawn from your analysis.

In essence, the discussion chapter is your opportunity to engage with and elucidate your research findings in a comprehensive and cohesive manner.

What to Incorporate in the Discussion Chapter?

Let’s start with the basics: in certain studies, the results and discussion chapters are merged into a single chapter.

Whether this applies to your work depends on the type of study you conducted, including its nature and chosen methodology, as well as the guidelines set by your university.

In essence, your discussion chapter’s primary purpose is to dissect, delve into the meaning of, and establish the significance of the data you presented in the results chapter. Here, you will infuse your results with significance by critically evaluating and interpreting them.

This process aids in addressing your research questions, achieving your research objectives, and bolstering your overall conclusions. Therefore, your discussion chapter should squarely focus on findings that are directly relevant to your research objectives and questions.

Since this chapter mirrors your results chapter, it’s imperative that you refrain from introducing any new findings.

In simpler terms, you should avoid making claims in this section if you haven’t already presented the pertinent data in the results chapter.

Hence, ensure that each discussion point you raise in this chapter corresponds to the data analysis covered in the results chapter.

Crafting the Discussion Chapter: A Step-by-Step Guide

Now that you’ve grasped the essence of the discussion chapter and its essential elements let’s delve into structuring this pivotal chapter. In a broad sense, you can break down this chapter into six key components, which serve as sequential steps in the chapter-writing journey.

Step 1: Reiterate Your Research Problem and Questions

When you begin writing your discussion chapter, the first thing to do is remind your reader about what your research is all about, like the main problem you’re trying to solve and what questions you’re trying to answer. This reminder is important because, after reading a bunch of stuff, your reader might forget what your research was really about or get distracted by other things.

Step 2: Sum Up The Main Discoveries

Moving ahead, it’s time to sum up the most important thing you found in your results chapter. Now, this might look different if you did qualitative or quantitative research. Qualitative research could be all about themes and connections, while quantitative research might talk about things like correlations and reasons behind everything happening.

Usually, this part doesn’t need to be long, just a paragraph or two, depending on how many research questions you had. Try to keep it short because you’ll go into more detail later on in the chapter.

Here are some examples of what you might say:

The analysed data suggest that…

The data support/oppose the defined theory that…

The detailed analysis identifies…

Remember, these are just examples. What you say here depends on the questions you were trying to answer in your research, so make sure you address them correctly.

Step 3: Interpret your results

Once you’ve started your research problem and questions and given a quick rundown of what you found, it’s time to explain your discoveries by looking at your results more closely.

But remember, only talk about what you already told them in the results part – don’t bring in new information.

From a structure point of view, it might be a good idea to organise this chapter, kind of like how you did the results one. This makes it easier for your reader to follow along and understand your points better.

Here are a few things to think about while you’re explaining your findings:

How do your results match up with what other studies found?
If your results are different from other studies, why do you think that happened?
What do your results add to your field of research?
Are there any other reasons your findings could be the way they are?

When you’re explaining your findings, make sure not to say anything that doesn’t have proof. Every idea you put out there should have something to back it up, like data or facts (and you already put that in the results chapter).

Step 4: Admit the Flaws in Your Research

Now, in the fourth step of making your discussion chapter, it’s time to fess up about the things that didn’t go so well in your study. These could be problems in any part of your study, like how big or small it was, the theories you used, how you did your analysis or even the group of people you studied.

Some folks might feel like talking about what went wrong is like shooting themselves in the foot. But that’s not true! Actually, one of the signs of doing really good research is being honest about what didn’t work out. So, saying what went wrong is actually a strong move, not a weak one.

Step 5: Offer Some Suggestions for What Comes Next

Now, after you’ve talked about your findings and owned up to what didn’t go perfectly, it’s time to think about two important things:

How can other students use your findings in real life? Basically, what good can come out of your research in the field or industry? Where can people put this info to use, and how would they do it?
What about future research? How can other researchers take what you’ve done and build on it? Maybe they can make your findings even better by dealing with the issues you mentioned earlier. While you’re at it, check if your results match up with what other studies have found, and if not, figure out why.

Final Words

By adhering to these fundamental principles, you will not only construct a well-organised discussion chapter but also contribute significantly to the ongoing discourse in your field. This, in turn, elevates the impact and relevance of your research within the broader academic community.

Conclusions

First Online: 01 June 2024

Cite this chapter

Rytis Mitkus 4

Part of the book series: Mechanics and Adaptronics ((MA))

This dissertation investigates UV light curable piezoelectric 0-0-3 composite sensors, filled with lead-free piezoceramics and conductive carbon-based nanoparticles.

You have full access to this open access chapter, Download chapter PDF

This dissertation investigates UV light curable piezoelectric 0-0-3 composite sensors, filled with lead-free piezoceramics and conductive carbon-based nanoparticles. Starting with relatively low piezoceramic concentrations, suitable photopolymer selection, and 3D printing of the composites, most of the dissertation focuses on the investigation of piezoelectric composites with 30 vol.% piezoceramic, which are manufactured with the simulated 3D printing process. The addition of piezoceramic causes a huge reduction in the curing depth of the photopolymer, which intensifies with the addition of conductive carbon-based nanoparticles. An extensive study is conducted to find a composite material combination producing the highest piezoelectric properties, by investigating two types of piezoceramics (KNN and BTO) and three types of conductive nanoparticles (MWCNTs, GNPs, GO). Composites with 30 vol.% of bigger KNN piezoceramic particles, combined with 0.2 wt.% MWCNTs show the highest \(d_{31}\) values. Composites with BTO produce overall very poor performance, most likely due to the relatively high relative permittivity of BTO piezoceramic itself, limiting the electric field acting on piezoceramic particles during composite poling. The positive influence of conductive nanoparticles is rather negligible due to a high reduction in curing depth, an increase in suspensions viscosity, without a measurable increase in sensor sensitivity. Nevertheless, multi-layer composites are manufactured with improved piezoelectric performance, visually homogeneous microstructure, and relatively stable dielectric properties, but strongly decreasing Young’s modulus over sensor thickness. Composites show higher piezoelectric performance than similar MPB-based KNN composites reported in the literature up to date, but the sensitivity is still smaller than that of a typical PVDF material. The main hypothesis of the dissertation, that UV light curable piezoelectric 0-0-3 composites achieve piezoelectric performance higher than that of a typical PVDF material ( \({\boldsymbol{d}}_{\textbf{31}}\boldsymbol{\approx }\) 23 pC/N) when comparing sensors of similar size , is not supported by the results. Yet, the KNN-based piezoelectric composites show performance sufficient for SHM applications. It is believed that proposed future research directions could improve piezoelectric 0-0-3 composite performance to achieve performance higher than that of a typical PVDF material.

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Mitkus, R. (2024). Conclusions. In: Ultraviolet Light Curable Piezoelectric Multi-phase Composites. Mechanics and Adaptronics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-56946-3_10

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How To Write A Dissertation Conclusion (Examples
Some universities will prefer that you cover some of these points in the discussion chapter, or that you cover the points at different levels in different chapters. Step 1: Craft a brief introduction section. As with all chapters in your dissertation or thesis, the conclusions chapter needs to start with a brief introduction.
How to Write a Thesis or Dissertation Conclusion
Step 2: Summarize and reflect on your research. Step 3: Make future recommendations. Step 4: Emphasize your contributions to your field. Step 5: Wrap up your thesis or dissertation. Full conclusion example. Conclusion checklist. Other interesting articles. Frequently asked questions about conclusion sections.
How to write your PhD thesis discussion and conclusion chapters
So, in a nutshell, the discussion and conclusion chapters of your PhD dissertation are all about making sense of your research and thinking about what it means for the big picture. The discussion chapter digs into the details of your findings and how you got them. The conclusion chapter zooms out to look at the broader implications and what ...
How to write the conclusion chapter in your PhD thesis
The conclusion provides the opportunity for you to tie all your chapters together, showing how they all connect under the umbrella of your PhD title and your research questions or objectives. Acknowledge the limitations of your research. Most PhD conclusions include a reflection of the limitations of your research. Areas for consideration include:
How to write an excellent thesis conclusion [with examples]
This article provides an effective technique for writing a conclusion adapted from Erika Eby's The College Student's Guide to Writing a Good Research Paper: 101 Easy Tips & Tricks to Make Your Work Stand Out.. While the thesis introduction starts out with broad statements about the topic, and then narrows it down to the thesis statement, a thesis conclusion does the same in the opposite order.
Concluding the thesis
Conclusions can be tricky things to write - pulling something as big as a PhD dissertation together into a final, clear chapter is not easy. It is both an intellectual and an emotional challenge, as conclusion-writing comes towards the very end of the process, and you are so tired, and probably feeling like there are no more coherent words or ...
Dissertation Conclusion: Step-By-Step Guide With Examples
Complete the Dissertation. Once the conclusion is written, there are a few final steps to complete your dissertation: Write the thesis abstract in 200 words or less. Review your reference list and format it as per the writing style. You can also use online reference generators to speed up this process.
Dissertation Writing: How to Write your Conclusion
In general, you should use the following approach: Use an approach where you would 1) proofread, 2) take notes, and 3) summarize every single chapter of your work. This will pave the way and give you the structure you need for your dissertation conclusion. After you do this, simply copy & paste these mini chapter summaries and combine them into ...
Last impressions count
Three things not to do in a conclusion. 1. Don't repeat yourself. Somewhere in your conclusion, you need to have an executive summary of your entire thesis. Our PhD writing template can help with this, as it forces you to write a synopsis of each chapter which you can add together for a summary of the thesis.
PDF The Structure of PH.D. Conclusion Chapters by D. Bunton
The lengths of the 44 thesis Conclusions ranged from 2 to 38 pages, averaging 9.2 pages. There was a marked difference, however, between those in ST disciplines and those in HSS disciplines. ST conclusions averaged 4.9 pages, while HSS conclusions averaged 17.2 pages. Table 2 Titles of 44 PhD concluding chapters/sections Conclusion (13)
How to plan, structure and write every chapter in your PhD
A Template To Help You Structure Your PhD's Theoretical Framework Chapter. In this guide, I explain how to use the theory framework template. The focus is on the practical things to consider when you're working with the template and how you can give your theory framework the rockstar treatment. Use our free tools, guides and templates to ...
Introduction and conclusion thesis chapters
This chapter is your opportunity to leave a strong impression on the reader (assessors) about the strength and relevance of your research, and your skills as a researcher. Importantly, the conclusion chapter must link with your introduction chapter to complete the framing of the thesis and demonstrate that you have achieved what you set out to do.
How to Write a Dissertation Conclusion
Step 3: Make future recommendations. You may already have made a few recommendations for future research in your discussion section, but the conclusion is a good place to elaborate and look ahead, considering the implications of your findings in both theoretical and practical terms. Example: Recommendation sentence.
connecting chapters/chapter conclusions
connecting chapters/chapter conclusions. Posted on January 27, 2014 by pat thomson. This post is the second of four which address the question of how you achieve flow across a thesis text. The previous post ( here) offered a three-part approach to beginning to write a chapter. The three moves, link, focus and overview, are particularly useful ...
How to Write a Conclusion Chapter for a Dissertation and Thesis
Editing and proofreading your conclusion section is essential. A professional editing and proofreading service with trained and experienced experts holding Ph.D. in their fields will edit your thesis or dissertation conclusion in detail. The conclusion section will be more legible and practical thanks to their vast experience.
The Final PhD Chapter(s): Discussion, Conclusion, Limitations
4.5 The Final Chapter (s): Discussion, Conclusion, Limitations and Implications. In some theses, the discussion of the study, its results and any concluding thoughts will fill more than one chapter: there may be, for instance, a chapter dedicated to discussion and a shorter conclusion chapter, or perhaps two chapters dedicated to discussing the ...
leave a good last impression
That's because writing the conclusion requires two more key actions: 3. STEP AWAY FROM THE RESEARCH. Writing a conclusion requires you to have some distance on the thesis. Rather than seeing the details of each chapter, you have to get a grip on the whole. You take a critical evaluative look at what the work that you done adds up to.
The structure of PhD conclusion chapters
This paper considers the generic structure of Conclusion chapters in PhD theses or dissertations. From a corpus of 45 PhD theses covering a range of disciplines, chapters playing a concluding role were identified and analysed for their functional moves and steps. Most Conclusions were found to restate purpose, consolidate research space with a ...
How to Write a Conclusion Chapter for a PhD Dissertation?
Writing a conclusion chapter for a PhD dissertation is a crucial part of your academic work, as it provides a summary of your research and highlights the significance of your findings. The conclusion chapter should be concise and provide a clear and logical ending to your research. Here are some steps to follow when writing a conclusion chapter ...
Do I need "Introduction" and "Conclusions" parts in my PhD thesis?
I had an introduction section in my PhD thesis, but no conclusion. Rather, each chapter had its own introduction and conclusion in addition to one introduction chapter at the beginning. This was for two reasons: the conclusion of the dissertation could be clearly categorized by chapter, and also I was trying to save space to avoid the thesis ...
PhD Dissertation Conclusion Chapter
PhD Dissertation is here to help the students out in writing the dissertation or any chapter of the dissertation, students desires to write. The conclusion part or section is generally created at the end of the writing procedure, when a student feels tired and the creativity running low.
How To Write A Discussion Chapter In Your PhD Discussion
If you're here, you probably got to the part in your thesis or dissertation where you have to work on the discussion chapter. Don't worry; we're here to help! In this article, we'll break down the discussion chapter in simple language and give you lots of examples to make it easier to understand."
Predominant Shortcomings Experienced by Examiners of LIS ...
Most good co-publications with master's and doctoral students (Ocholla, 2020), in leading national and international journals that we engaged with, have been based on and developed from the discussions chapter. The last chapter in a thesis is "Summary, Conclusions, and Recommendations".
Conclusions
This dissertation investigates UV light curable piezoelectric 0-0-3 composite sensors, filled with lead-free piezoceramics and conductive carbon-based nanoparticles. ... Cite this chapter. Mitkus, R. (2024). Conclusions. In: Ultraviolet Light Curable Piezoelectric Multi-phase Composites. Mechanics and Adaptronics. Springer, Cham. https://doi ...