The Discussion¶
Function¶
The findings or results of the evaluation of your idea (i.e., your approach) need to be put in context according to the problem domain and the research questions of your work. i.e., their impact with regard to the research questions need to be expounded. This is what the discussion section is about.
The role of the discussion in the usual research workflow is briefly sketched below:
The usual research workflow is as follows
- You identified a problem and created one or some ideas on how to solve it
- Specific aspects of the problem were formulated as research questions (usually based on some observations and in conjunction with a hypothesis)
- Your idea is then implemented and evaluated
- Those evaluation results then need to be analyzed wrt. how well they contribute towards solving the problem (or parts of it)
- This analysis is usually done in form of a discussion, that by itself, creates new insights and allows the drawing of conclusions about how well a certain method (your idea or approach) performs in effectively and efficently solving the stated problem under certain circumstances (the assumptions your approach is built upon; every approach is built upon assumptions).
Style¶
The discussion is usually written in plain text. The length of the text depends on the number of insights as well as on the extensiveness of the research (experiment / evaluation / etc.)
It should be written in a neutral and fact-oriented language.
It is also good style to align gathered results or insights with related research, i.e., to align the findings to the findings of other works, thereby determining their relevance and validating their correctness and relevance.
Sometimes, insights are explicitly highlighted, e.g., in the form of serially numbered and emphasized summary sentences
Structure¶
The discussion can be individually structured based on how well the convey gathered findings and hence contribute towards the optimization of the overall comprehension of the paper’s findings.