The Discussion Guidelines
Five numbered guidelines, to be addressed in order. One is a bare label, one is quantitative and undefined, one contradicts its own deck — and one is the most transferable passage in the whole week.
The five, as the source gives them
THE GUIDELINES AND WHAT SITS UNDER EACH
| # | Guideline | Sub-points supplied |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Discuss the implications of the primary analyses first | None |
| 2 | Discuss statistical significance | A definition and three parameters |
| 3 | Discuss any weaknesses and strengths in your research design, or problems with data collection, analysis, or interpretation | Two |
| 4 | Discuss the results in the context of the published literature | Two |
| 5 | Discuss the generalizability of the results | Two |
The numbering is the source's own — the deck auto-numbers the items across three slides. The guideline wording is quoted.
Guideline 1 — implications of the primary analyses
The instruction itself is sound whatever the term means: take the analyses your study was designed around before you take anything else. It stops a discussion opening on an incidental finding that happened to be interesting, which is a common failure and an expensive one — the reader forms their impression of what your study was about from your first two pages.
Guideline 2 — statistical significance
The three parameters are correct and the relationships stated for each are correct, and it is worth having them in one place: significance is easier to demonstrate with a bigger sample, less noise, or a bigger effect. That much is genuinely useful, and it explains why a real effect can fail to reach significance in a small study.
Guideline 3 — weaknesses and strengths
This is the strongest passage in the week and one of the strongest in the whole supplied source, and it earns that in three sentences by doing something the rest of the material rarely does: it acknowledges that the instruction is psychologically hard, and then gives a self-interested reason to follow it anyway.
What the three sentences actually establish
Four places a weakness can live
The research design itself, data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Most limitation sections cover only the first and the second. The third and fourth are where the more serious problems usually sit.
Disclosure is difficult and required anyway
The source names the difficulty rather than pretending it away, which is unusual and worth noticing. A limitations section that cost you nothing to write probably omits the real one.
It is an opportunity, not a confession
Discussing a weakness lets you defend it — to show you knew, and chose, and why — and lets you recommend how someone else would avoid it. The second of those is a contribution in its own right.
Guideline 4 — the published literature
The instruction to attempt an explanation of the difference is the part that matters. Reporting that your findings differ from a published study is a fact; saying why — a different population, a different instrument, a decade between them, a different definition of the same construct — is the analysis. Most discussion chapters stop at the fact.
Reading a difference against the literature
Guideline 5 — generalisability, and the contradiction
If you take the transferability position
- Describe your setting richly enough that a reader can judge the fit to theirs
- The reader decides what transfers, not you
- Bound your claim to the case you studied
- This is the position the same deck takes about qualitative work
If you take the generalisability position
- State the population your sample was drawn from
- State who was included and who was excluded, and why
- State your response or follow-up rate and what it does to the claim
- This is the position this guideline takes
Using the five without inheriting their problems
A pass over your discussion
- You have taken the analyses your design was built for before any incidental finding
- Any significance claim rests on a procedure from a source outside this material, named in your methodology
- Limitations cover all four places the source names: design, collection, analysis, interpretation
- For each limitation you have said what you would do differently — turning it into a recommendation
- The literature comparison names specific studies and attempts to explain each difference
- Your generalisability claim states which position you are taking and is bounded accordingly
- You have not re-reviewed the field
What to carry forward
- Take the analyses your design was built for first. The reader decides what your study was about from your opening pages.
- You are told twice in two weeks to discuss statistical significance and never shown how to determine it. Get that from a statistics text, before you collect data.
- Guideline 3 is three sentences and the best content in the week: weaknesses live in design, collection, analysis and interpretation, and disclosing one lets you defend it and recommend around it.
- Explaining why your findings differ from published work is the analysis. Reporting that they differ is only the fact.
- The generalisability guideline contradicts its own deck. Decide which position you are taking, say so, and bound the claim to match.
Frequently asked questions
What is a primary analysis?
The supplied source never defines it, in this week or any other. Its only contrast is with 'secondary or post hoc analyses' on the conclusions slide, which suggests a primary analysis is one your design was built to perform. That reading is inferred from the contrast, not stated by the source.
How do I determine statistical significance?
Not from this material. Across the two weeks that raise the subject, no threshold, p-value, alpha, test or inferential procedure is named anywhere. The three parameters given — sample size, variability, effect size — are correct as far as they go, and none of the three is defined or measurable from what is supplied.
Where should limitations go — discussion or conclusion?
This guideline places them in the discussion. Observed practice in examined theses puts them in four different places at four different lengths, which the library covers at stating limitations and contribution. What matters more than placement is that they appear before someone else supplies them.
Should a qualitative study claim generalisability at all?
The material takes both positions in one deck: an early slide describes qualitative work as emphasising transferability rather than generalisation, and this guideline states that the purpose of your study is to produce results your field can apply. Choose a position, name it, and bound your claim to it.
How much literature belongs in the discussion?
The source says to be selective and not to review the whole body of literature on the topic. The working principle is that the discussion returns only to the specific works your findings actually speak to — the survey of the field belongs in the literature review chapter.
References and source attribution
- The supplied teaching source: weekly study notes, slide decks and assessment activities for a master's-level research methods subject in project management. Author, institution and year not stated in the supplied files.
Suggested questions for Ask KEVOS
- What are the five discussion guidelines and what does each require?
- How do I discuss statistical significance if my source never defines a threshold?
- How should I write a limitations section that helps rather than damages my study?
- How do I explain why my findings differ from published research?
- Should a qualitative study claim generalisability or transferability?