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OK in this lecture I want to show you how we can deal with limitations because that tends to be one

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of the most tricky parts of the discussion section.

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And first of all I want to say that it's normal to have limitations.

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In fact, your reader assumes that you have limitations because every study has limitations.

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Therefore, one of the worst things you can do is to claim that you have no limitations or at least to

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not mention any and so to implicitly claim that you don't have limitations. That will make your reader

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very suspicious and make you a reader trust your results less.

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So you have to mention some limitations.

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Okay now suppose that you have limitations and you're worried that they prevent you from giving a convincing

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answer to your question.

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What can you do in that case?

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And the first recommendation I want to give to you is to simply look at the whole pattern of your results.

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Because I've seen people arguing about some limitations that they may or may not have while completely

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losing sight of the fact that even if they have this limitation they can still make the argument that

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their conclusion is right based on other results.

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So always make sure that you look at the whole pattern of your results.

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Another advice that I want to give you is to incorporate findings from other sources. You've already

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seen that briefly in the example that I just showed you of the discussion outline.

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So in the example an alternative explanation was that the placebo group increased depression. But

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then I pointed to other research (previous research) that ruled that alternative explanation out. And that's

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how you can do this. It is not necessary that your results by themselves provide the convincing answer.

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You can also use findings from previous research and use them together with your findings to form a

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conclusion.

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Another advice that I want to give to you is to compare your research with previous research.

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Sometimes it happens that you have a limitation simply because what you're trying to do is for example

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very very difficult. Sometimes, in some areas, it's simply not possible to have a perfect study.

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A typical example is correlational research.

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For example, if you investigate differences between genders then that research tends to be correlational

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because you can't manipulate gender.

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You just have to take it as it is.

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And that means that you can only observe.

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You cannot manipulate and if that's the case for your research then it is worth pointing out that you

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may have limitations but these are actually standard limitations in your topic. And maybe you can even

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argue that while you have limitations they are actually less serious than the limitations of previous

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studies.

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As long as you can give the feeling that your study is State of the art or even better it's not necessarily

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a problem if you have limitations.

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OK.

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Finally I want to repeat my earlier advice, which is that if you cannot draw a convincing conclusion

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it may make sense to adjust your question.

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It may be that your question is too ambitious the way it's phrased and by rephrasing it, making it a

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bit more narrow, and making it a bit more modest,

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you may suddenly be able to answer your question.

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OK.

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So if you have serious limitations these are my suggestions for dealing with it.

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And in the next lecture I'm going to get into the writing of the whole discussion section including

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the limitations subsection.