 This chapter should provide the product of your

analytic process. Think of it as a “stand alone”

chapter that you could hand to a friend and just
by reading it, they would know exactly what you
discovered through your study. The chapter
should reveal the “answers” to your research
questions and reflect the design you put forward
in Chapter 2. It should also align to the purpose
of the study you offered in Chapter 1 as well
as demonstrate why the study was important to
conduct in the first place.
 Your findings or results should connect to
your literature review and especially your
conceptual framework. In some quantitative
dissertations the results section presents only
the products of statistical analyses that have
been conducted. In other
quantitative dissertation, the results section
also provides a discussion that connects the
results to the relevant literature and
conceptual framework.
 The chapter represents the best thinking of
the student and the advising
committee about how to answer the research
questions being posed. So you can see that
an incomplete understanding of the role of
Chapter 3 can lead to a methodology full
of gaps, creating the potential for the study
to go off track, and not answer the
research questions.
Chapter 4 is titled based on the
research tradition used:
 Qualitative chapter is title Findings
 Quantitative chapter is title Results
 Introduction
 Remind the reader what your research questions
were
▪ In a qualitative study you will restate the research
questions
▪ In a quantitative study you will present the hypotheses
 Findings (qualitative), Results (quantitative, and
Discussion (quantitative)
 In a qualitative study the information to be reported is
called findings. Findings are those themes that have
emerged from or have been found in the data you
collected. They are the product of your analysis.
 In a quantitative study the results of the quantitative
analyses conducted may be presented on their own,
without any accompanying connections to the larger
literature.
 When quantitative data are presented without any
accompanying explanation a discussion section is
presented separately in order to explain the meaning of
the results.
Report descriptive analysis of demographics

 This report depends on whether the study is

quantitative or qualitative
 Quantitative report uses frequencies and
percentages.
 Qualitative report uses text and detailed
descriptions.
 Your chapter needs to be organized in a way that
answers your research questions. The information
must be organized in a way that is logical and easy to
follow for your reader.
▪ You may describe your sample here if this is something that
emerged from your data collection and analysis or if you
believe it helps provide context for your findings. You may
also describe your sample in chapter 3 if it is not a part of your
findings and it becomes a distraction from your actual
findings.
▪ You may organize your chapter in terms of themes or
categories or cases or research questions.
 Use of pseudonyms
 When presenting qualitative data, all names are masked to
provide confidentiality. You made this commitment to
your participants during the consent process and in your
IRB application.
 Use of tables, charts, figures
 You may use tables, charts, or figures in both qualitative
and quantitative capstones.
 Never present a table, chart, or figure that you are not
planning on explaining.
▪ Tables, charts, and figures should be able to be interpreted without
supporting text BUT
▪ It is your responsibility to tell your reader what you think is the most
important information in the table, chart, or figure.
 When do you use a table, chart, or figure?
 In qualitative research, when providing quantitative
data that compares different cases or different
populations, or different members of a given
population. When you have information that is hard
to grasp only in text and the reader will have greater
insight by seeing it displayed in more than one
format.
▪ Descriptive statistics
 In quantitative research, when presenting important
results.
 Consult APA to ensure that you use the appropriate
format for tables, charts, and figures.
 You will want to consider what information goes
in an appendix as opposed to in the body of the
chapter. For example, if you have extra tables
representing results that you think are worth
sharing with your reader but are not the main
substance of your dissertation, you should
consider creating an appendix. Similarly, if you
have other relevant but not essential
information, you should consider adding an
appendix. And finally, you may decide to locate
the instruments you used for data collection in
an appendix.
 Qualitative
 Quantitative
What if I don’t have any significant findings?
• In qualitative research there is never a
risk of finishing without something
worth reporting. Qualitative research is
about understanding an experience and
gaining insight. It is always the case that
the data will provide insight into an
experience.
 What if I find something for which I do not
have a research question?
 If the finding is substantial enough to warrant
reporting, you develop a research question that
aligns to the finding.
 Under what circumstances do I revise my
research questions?
 Qualitative research questions can and often
should be revised up until the dissertation is
completed. The research questions match the
findings, not the other way around.
 In a quantitative dissertation or capstone you
will be presenting your results. You may present
your results with or without a discussion
explaining what those results mean.You will
want to consult your chair to make sure you are
following the approach
preferred by your chair. Thus, your chapter 4
may include the following:
 Introduction
 Results
 Discussion
 First you should remind your reader what your
research question(s) is/are. Your results should then be
presented in response to your research question(s).
Your results are the “solution(s)” or “answer(s)” to
that/those questions.
Example: Nollner Dissertation, p. 58
 Your results should focus only on data that enables
you to answer your research questions, not simply raw
data.
If you are also providing a discussion of the results in
this section, your discussion should be related back to
your conceptual framework.
 When crafting your findings, the first thing you want
to think about is how you will organize your findings.
Your findings represent the story you are going to tell
in response to the research questions you have
answered. Thus, you will want to organize that story
in a way that makes sense to you and will make sense
to your reader. You want to think about how you will
present the findings so that they are compelling
and responsive to the research question(s) you
answered. These questions may not be the questions
you set out to answer but they will definitely be the
questions you answered.
 You may discover that the best way to organize
the findings is first by research question and
second by theme. There may be other formats
that are better for telling your story. Once you
have decided how you want to organize the
findings, you will start the chapter by reminding
your reader of the research questions. You will
need to differentiate between is presenting raw
data and using data as evidence or examples to
support the findings you have identified.
 Here are some points to consider:

 Your findings should provide sufficient evidence

from your data to support the conclusions you
have made. Evidence takes the form of quotations
from interviews and excerpts from observations
and documents.
 Ethically you have to make sure you have confidence
in your findings and account for counter-evidence
(evidence that contradicts your primary finding) and
not report something that does not have sufficient
evidence to back it up.
 Your findings should be related back to your
conceptual framework.
 Your findings should be in response to the problem
presented (as defined by the research questions) and
should be the “solution” or “answer” to those
questions.
 You should focus on data that enables you to
answer your research questions, not simply on
offering raw data.
 Qualitative research presents “best examples” of
raw data to demonstrate an analytic point, not
simply to display data.
 Numbers (descriptive statistics) help your reader
understand how prevalent or typical a finding is.
Numbers are helpful and should not be avoided
simply because this is a qualitative dissertation.