If you have made it to Chapter 4, congratulations — the hardest part of the research is behind you. You collected the data, ran the analysis, and now you have to do one thing: report what you found, clearly and honestly, without adding interpretation that belongs in Chapter 5. That sounds simple, but Chapter 4 is where many dissertations stall. Students either dump pages of raw output, or they start discussing and explaining results before they have even presented them.
This guide walks you through writing a strong results chapter, step by step. It follows the structure most universities expect, works for quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods theses, and includes a worked example, the mistakes examiners notice most, and answers to the questions students ask again and again.
What Chapter 4 Is — and What It Is Not
Chapter 4 presents your findings. Its job is to answer your research questions and report the outcome of each hypothesis test or theme, in the order you promised in Chapter 3. It is not the place to explain why results turned out the way they did, compare them with previous studies, or recommend changes to practice. That discussion belongs in Chapter 5.
A useful test for every paragraph in Chapter 4 is this: does it report a finding, or does it interpret one? If it interprets, move it to Chapter 5. A sentence like “The mean score increased from 62 to 74” reports. A sentence like “This increase shows that the training programme was highly effective” interprets. Keep the first kind here and save the second kind for later.
Before You Start Writing
Do not open a blank document and start typing. First, gather four things:
- Your research questions and hypotheses, exactly as written in Chapters 1 and 3. Chapter 4 must answer them in the same order.
- Your final analysis output, cleaned up. Decide which tables and figures you actually need, and delete the rest from your working files so you are not tempted to paste everything in.
- Your university’s formatting rules. Check the required heading styles, table and figure formats, and whether your department follows APA 7th edition for reporting statistics.
- A one-page outline of the chapter. Most results chapters follow the structure below, so sketch yours before you write a single paragraph.
The Standard Structure of Chapter 4
Introduction. Write a short opening paragraph that reminds the reader of the purpose of the study and the research questions, and previews how the chapter is organised. One paragraph is usually enough.
Description of the sample. Report who took part: how many participants, how they were recruited, and their key characteristics. For a survey study, this might be a table showing age, gender, programme of study, or other relevant breakdowns. Always report the response rate and how many cases were excluded, and why. If 250 questionnaires were distributed and 212 were usable, say so plainly.
Data preparation and assumption checks. Briefly state how missing data were handled, whether any cases were removed as outliers, and whether the assumptions of your tests were checked. You do not need pages of detail here — a short paragraph per issue is enough — but examiners want to see that you checked, not just that you assumed.
Results in research-question order. This is the main body of the chapter. Take one research question or hypothesis at a time, present the relevant analysis, and state the finding in plain words. Repeat for each question. Keep the same order as Chapters 1 and 3 so your reader can follow the thread.
Summary. End with a brief summary of the key findings, organised by research question. Do not introduce new results here, and do not start discussing implications. One short paragraph per question is plenty.
How to Write the Results, Step by Step
Step 1: Write the introduction last in spirit, first on the page. Draft a short paragraph that states the purpose of the study and lists the research questions. Keep it factual and brief — this is a signpost, not an essay.
Step 2: Describe your sample in a table, then in words. Build your participant table first, then write two or three sentences that highlight the most important features of the sample. Do not repeat every number from the table in the text. The text should point the reader to the interesting parts, not duplicate the table.
Step 3: Report assumption checks briefly. For example: “Data were screened for missing values and outliers. Four incomplete questionnaires were excluded, leaving 212 usable responses. Normality was checked using skewness, kurtosis, and Shapiro-Wilk tests, and the assumptions for parametric tests were met.” One paragraph like this reassures your examiner and clears the way for the main results.
Step 4: Present each result in the same pattern: remind the reader of the question, name the test, give the result, and state the finding in words. For instance: “The first research question asked whether study habits predict exam performance. A Pearson correlation showed a moderate positive relationship between weekly study hours and exam scores, and the relationship was statistically significant. Students who reported more study hours tended to score higher.” Always report the statistic, degrees of freedom, and p value in APA style, and give an effect size where your department expects one.
Step 5: Let tables and figures carry the detail. A good table shows the numbers; the text explains what they mean. Refer to every table and figure in the text (“As shown in Table 2…”), number them in the order they appear, and give each one a clear, descriptive title. Never paste a table into your chapter without mentioning it in the text.
Step 6: Report non-significant results honestly. A hypothesis that was not supported is still a finding. Write it plainly: “No significant difference was found between the two groups.” Do not hide it, do not run extra tests until something turns significant, and do not describe a non-significant result as a “trend” to make it sound better than it is. Examiners respect honest reporting far more than creative rescue attempts.
Step 7: Write the summary and stop. Summarise the findings question by question, in the same order as the rest of the chapter. Resist the urge to explain or discuss. Your discussion chapter will thank you for the discipline.
A Worked Example
Imagine a small study that asked whether a four-week study-skills workshop improves exam performance. Sixty students took a mock exam before and after the workshop. The mean score rose from 58.4 to 66.1. A paired-samples t-test showed that this improvement was statistically significant, with a medium-to-large effect size.
In Chapter 4, this might appear as one short section: the research question is restated, the test is named, the means and standard deviations are given in a table, the t statistic, degrees of freedom, and p value are reported in APA style in the text, and the finding is stated in one plain sentence: students scored significantly higher after the workshop than before it. The paragraph then ends. There is no discussion of why the workshop worked, no comparison with other studies, and no recommendation that all students should attend workshops. All of that waits for Chapter 5.
Notice what the example leaves out: the raw scores of all sixty students, the full software output, and any explanation of the result. Your chapter should do the same. Report the finding, show the evidence in a clean table, and move on to the next question.
Tables and Figures: Five Rules That Save Marks
First, number tables and figures in the order they appear, and refer to each one in the text. Second, give every table a clear title above it and every figure a clear caption below it. Third, keep tables simple: remove gridlines you do not need, round to two decimal places, and do not overload a single table with everything you measured. Fourth, use figures only when they genuinely help — a bar chart of group means is useful, a chart that repeats a table exactly is not. Fifth, follow APA 7th edition formatting for table notes, including notes that explain abbreviations or mark statistical significance.
Common Mistakes to Avoid
Presenting raw software output. Your examiner does not want screenshots of SPSS output or pages of unedited tables. Clean every table before it goes in.
Mixing results and discussion. If a paragraph explains why something happened or compares your finding with earlier research, it belongs in Chapter 5. Move it.
Reporting results in a different order from Chapters 1 and 3. This confuses readers and makes it look as though the study changed direction halfway through. Keep the order consistent.
Repeating every number twice. If a value is in a table, do not also list it in a long sentence. Summarise the pattern in words and let the table hold the detail.
Hiding non-significant findings. Report them in the same format as significant ones. Selective reporting is one of the fastest ways to lose an examiner’s trust.
Overclaiming from small samples. A study of 30 students cannot prove that a method works for all students everywhere. Report what your sample showed, and leave generalisation to the discussion.
Forgetting the sample description. Results mean little without knowing who they came from. Always describe your participants and your response rate early in the chapter.
Writing without headings. Long unbroken text is hard to mark and hard to read. Use a heading for each research question or hypothesis so the structure is visible at a glance.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long should Chapter 4 be? There is no fixed length. It should be as long as it takes to report every research question and hypothesis clearly — often 15 to 30 pages for a master’s thesis, longer for a PhD. Length follows from the number of questions and analyses, not from a target page count. A short, complete chapter beats a long, padded one.
Should I include the questionnaire or interview guide in Chapter 4? No. Instruments belong in the appendices. Chapter 4 reports what the instruments found, not the instruments themselves.
Do I report every analysis I ran? Report every analysis that answers a research question or hypothesis. Leave out exploratory analyses that led nowhere, unless your supervisor asks you to include them. If you ran an analysis and decided not to report it, be prepared to explain why at your defense.
Can I discuss a surprising result in Chapter 4? You can flag it briefly — for example, noting that a result was unexpected — but save the explanation for Chapter 5. One sentence of flagging is fine; a page of speculation is not.
What if my results contradict my hypothesis? That is a normal and acceptable outcome. State the result plainly, report the statistics in full, and discuss possible reasons in Chapter 5. A disproved hypothesis is not a failed thesis.
Final Checklist Before You Submit Chapter 4
Read through the chapter once with only this question in mind: does every research question and hypothesis from Chapter 3 have a clearly labelled answer here, in the same order? Then check that every table and figure is mentioned in the text, every statistic is reported in the style your department requires, and no paragraph drifts into discussion. Finally, ask a colleague to read the summary section alone. If they can tell you what you found, your chapter works.
Writing Chapter 4 is mostly an exercise in discipline: report everything you found, in order, in clean tables and plain sentences, and stop there. Do that well, and Chapter 5 — where you finally get to explain what it all means — becomes much easier to write.