Chapter 4 – Purpose, Elements,

Considerations and Presenting

Capstone| DLSUD High School | 2020-2021
What is the purpose of Chapter
4 or the Findings or Results
Chapter?
Chapter 4: Purpose
Answer:

• This chapter should provide the product of your analytic process.  

• 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. 

• 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. 
What needs to be included in
the chapter?
Chapter 4: Elements
Answer:

• 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.
How do you organize your
chapter?
Chapter 4: Considerations
Answer:

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 Institutional Review Board (IRB)
application.

• Usually these are just "Participant x" or "Mr. Y", but if you have pseudonyms from the study in
question, then you can just use those directly.
Answer:

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.
Question and Answer:

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.

SEE THIS LINK: 

https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/research_and_citation/apa_style/apa_formatting_and_style_guid
e/apa_tables_and_figures.html
Answer:

• 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.
Question and Answer:

You may be wondering about any of the following things as you are writing your Chapter 4. Some
students worry about the following things:

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.
How do you present your
results (quantitative)? 
Chapter 4: Presenting
Answer:

• 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. 
SEE 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. 
How do you present your
findings (qualitative)?
Chapter 4: Presenting
Answer:

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. 
Answer:

•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. 
Example Martinez-Kellar Dissertation, p. 140-144 (Individual Leader Element: Leader
Creativity) 
Chapter 4

Consideration
Purpose Elements Presenting
s
END

HAPPY LEARNING!!
CAPSTONE