Summary of Chapter 10: The Conclusion 123
- Summaries are not conclusions. I drew this distinction in Chap. 2 when talking
about conclusions to individual chapters. It was important there; it is even more
important here. Repeating what I said earlier: summaries are a brief account
of what you found out; conclusions are a statement of the significance of what
you found out—what you concluded from it. If you are merely summarizing
the argument developed in your discussion chapter, you will feel quite unhappy
with your conclusions. There will be no sense of closure. Also, you will almost
certainly have failed to respond to the aim of the whole project. (Sometimes
this happens when the aim is too modest, or even woolly. For example, when
researchers say that their aim is to investigate the properties of a system, they
may end up with a list of properties, a summary. This is hardly research.) - Conclusions should be crisp and concise. The conclusions chapter may be only
two or three pages long—which helps to give the sense of closure mentioned
above.
Summary of Chapter 10: The Conclusion
Connecting discussion and conclusions:
- Your conclusions are what your discussion chapter has been arguing for.
- You could write the conclusions to your whole study as the last section of a
chapter called ‘Discussion and Conclusions’, but it is usually preferable to have
a separate ‘Conclusions’ chapter. - If they form a separate chapter there should be no conclusions to the discussion
chapter, and you should inform the reader of this in the discussion.
Rules about conclusions:
- You should draw your conclusions solely from the discussion chapter.
- There should be little further discussion in the conclusions chapter.
- The conclusions should respond to the aim stated in the first chapter.
- Summaries are not conclusions.
- Conclusions should be crisp and concise.
- The conclusions can be used to briefly explore the implications of your findings.