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Okay let's talk about the outline of your discussion section. And you've already seen this quite thorough

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overview of what you usually find in the Discussion section. And in this lecture I want to show you an

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example of that to make more vivid what you're supposed to do for each of these points. So as for every

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main section, you can find a PDF. This time called "discussion outline and writing template". And on the

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first page you can again find a sample of an outline and what you can see here are the main points

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that we already discussed:

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Summary, interpretation, integration, implications, limitations, summary and conclusion.

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And I recommend that you start by putting bullet points under all of these headings. So let's use our

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example again of the Depression study.

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So the research question there was whether the so-called refocus treatment actually works and the study

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was basically just a treatment group and a placebo group and the finding was that depression was lower

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after the refocus treatment compared to the placebo.

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And ideally you want to describe the results without statistics and most importantly you don't want

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to interpret it yet.

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First, just state the results and then we move into the interpretation.

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So in this case you can think of two explanations for the results. Maybe even more.

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But I could think of two and the first explanation is that the refocus treatment reduced depression. But

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an alternative explanation is that the placebo treatment increased depression.

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-This is conceivable because we didn't have a pre measure of depression so we don't know whether depression

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increased or decreased.

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But in this case there is an additional note, which says" "However, Explanation 2 is unlikely because the

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same placebo was used in studies A,B,C and there it didn't increase depression.

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So although our results leave room for the possibility that the placebo increased depression, that is

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actually ruled out by previous findings.

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Now let's move to the integration with previous research and there we may for example say that previous

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research focused on the question how unprocessed traumas could cause depression and we are the first

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who tested the focus explanation of depression that people have this focus on the negative and instead

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of the positive.

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So we are saying here both (1) how our research compares to previous research and most importantly (2) what

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it adds to that research.

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What's new? You want to make that clear in the Discussion section.

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Okay let's move to the implications and here we could say that it is widely believed that depression

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is caused by unprocessed traumas.

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Our findings offer a novel perspective.

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Depression may be caused by a certain information processing style that is focused on the negative.

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And that means that there could be a new approach to understanding and treating depression, which opens

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up the door for a new line of research to understand depression and new types of treatments.

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So this is basically the value of the answer we gave to the research question.

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This is what you can do with it.

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You can understand depression better.

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You can conduct more research to even better understand depression and you can think of new treatments

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that hopefully work better than previous treatments.

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All right.

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So hopefully at this point the reader is really enthusiastic about our research but now we get to the

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limitations.

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So what are limitations here?

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Well, an obvious limitation is that there was no measure of depression prior to the treatments and the

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reader will likely wonder: why not?

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So we should give a reason.

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And in this case we may say for example that asking people to score their depression twice can lead

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to problems and give some references for that.

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So that's the reason why depression was only measured once per person.

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And the consequence is that we don't know whether depression decreased in the treatment group (explanation 1)

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or increased in the placebo group (explanation 2).

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However as mentioned before it is unlikely that depression increased.

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So now we have made clear that there is a definite limitation.

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We have explained why we couldn't get rid of it and we have explained why it isn't a problem.

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So we are all good here.

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We can still give a convincing and valuable answer to our research question.

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Okay what else?

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Maybe another problem was that the sample size was relatively low.

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So why was it low?

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Well, it's hard to find enough people with a major depression. That may be the reason.

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However our results were significant despite the low sample size.

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This speaks to the effectiveness of the treatment... because you could argue that "hey" if we get significant

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results even though we had a low sample size then that must mean that the treatment is relatively effective.

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Otherwise, we wouldn't have found a significant result.

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So sometimes it's even possible to turn a limitation at least a little bit into a strength.

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But you need to be a little bit careful about that.

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And we're going to talk about that in more detail in the next two lectures when I'm going to tell you

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in more detail how you can deal with limitations and how you can write them down.

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Okay.

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Finally comes the summary and conclusion.

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So what happened in the study?

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We investigated whether depression can be treated by training a positive focus and our findings confirm

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this.

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This gives us a novel perspective on depression but more research is needed that investigates this novel

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approach in more detail and also replicates the results that we found in this study.

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And it would be desirable to develop more treatments that follow this new approach.

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So it's always nice to end your paper not just with your answer to the question but also with a very

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rough hint

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what the next steps could be after your research. Because that also adds more value to your research.

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If the reader feels that "Oh" not only did you give an interesting answer but you actually INSPIRE me

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and other researchers to create more interesting research then that makes your research even more valuable.

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So it's very nice to

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end on that note.

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Okay so that's the example of the discussion outline.

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I recommend that you try to put bullet points for your specific research under each of these blue headings

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here. And in the next lecture we're going to zoom into the limitation section in a little bit more detail

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because that tends to be one of the most tricky sections.

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So join me for that in the next lecture.