118 9 The Discussion or Interpretation
should acknowledge areas that you yourself thought were weak and deal with them
in a straightforward way. It is where you show your ability as a critical thinker.
For example, in her study of ‘Indigenous Development Projects’, Perla used as
a case study a nutritional project in the Philippines designed and managed by local
people. Among other things she compared the views of the project held by two groups
of villagers in a case-study village, participants in the project and non-participants.
The difficulty of reaching the non-participants and communicating with them in the
local dialect limited the number of respondents in each group to 15. This number
is generally held by statisticians to be too low to get statistically significant differ-
ences between the average values of parameters for such comparative studies. She
understood this, but her limited resources made it impossible for her to interview
more respondents. She was careful to say what she should have done in an ideal
research world, and to acknowledge the limitations imposed on interpretation of her
results. Examiners will understand that you have worked as an individual researcher
with limited time and resources and, in most cases, will not reprimand you for ‘not
doing enough’. However, they will be critical if you show that you are unaware of
key problems in the management and execution of your research.
Another example is the ‘case-study’ problem already mentioned in Chap. 7. In
case-study work you are examining what you have chosen as a typical example (or
examples) of an activity or a place and examining it in some detail. Because of the
detailed examination you are often able to derive some strong conclusions. But how
well will these conclusions apply to other similar activities or places? This may be
difficult to establish, but you must attempt it. (Perla spent 18 pages on this prob-
lem.) If you omit discussion of the problem of generalization, you are saying to the
examiner that you are either unaware of what a case-study approach is attempting to
do, or that you are aware but are not confident of trying to make such an assessment.
Overall, it is in this chapter, in many theses, that you establish yourself as expert.
You have proposed a hypothesis, established a method for evaluating it, undertaken
experiments or measurements or a review, presented your results, and analyzed them
against clear criteria—in other words, made a contribution based on your knowledge
and data. Your presentation of the arguments is where you persuade the sceptical ex-
aminer to your point of view, so it is essential that you be cogent and clear. With a
good presentation, you will truly have demonstrated authority in your field.
Summary of Chapter 9: The Discussion or Interpretation
Structuring your discussion:
- The task of the discussion chapter is to enable you to reach your conclusions.
Drawing up a tentative list of conclusions will help you identify an appropriate
structure. - Begin by writing down all the things you know now that you didn’t know when
you started the project. Rearranging this list will give you the titles of the main
sections of your discussion.