Lesson 39: Drawing of Conclusions

Meaning of Conclusion

Conclusion is a type of inferential or interpretative thinking that derives its validity, truthfulness, or reasonableness from your sensory experience. Touching, seeing, hearing, tasting, and smelling things around you lead to a particular conclusion about each of those experiences. The results of your sensory experience are factual data to support the truthfulness of your conclusions.

Drawing Conclusions

In your research work, your next move after analyzing the data you have gathered is drawing conclusions. This makes you form conclusions that arise from the factual data you encountered and analyzed. Any conclusions drawn or deduced by you from facts or statements resulting from logical thinking rather than from another assumption, prediction, or generalization are the only ones included in the conclusion section of your research paper. (Decilo 2014)

Any conclusion that you give about what you found out through your analysis of the data you collected is a “warranted conclusion,” which explains how the evidence or findings resulting from your data analysis stands to prove or disprove your conclusion. And, by and large, the best kind of proof to back up your conclusion is one that is factual and logical or given by correct reasoning. Downplaying, much less, excluding warrants from this section of your paper reserved specifically for stating conclusions about your findings makes your readers cast doubts about the credibility or genuineness of your conclusions. (Thomas 2013, 38).

Research is about discovering things and engaging yourself in an exchange of theoretically supported ideas with those in the academic world. And you state all your discoveries in the conclusion section of your research paper. But it is not merely making your conclusions visible in your paper, but also making these related with the claims or arguments of varied research studies and written works you’ve subjected to your RRL or review of related literature. Creating a link between your discoveries and your review of literature indicates the ability of your paper to expand or enhance any existing knowledge about your research study. (Harding 2013)

Thinking of research as the means by which you, as a member of academic institution, debate or argue with others on some principles in any area of knowledge, you have to write the conclusion section of your paper with conviction. Convinced of the validity of your findings to prove your conclusions, you must confidently state how your conclusions work to debunk or contradict existing theories, correlative assumptions, and published works. Conversely, your conclusions must obviously provide sufficient evidence to justify their alignment with or its support for recent theories and research findings. Most importantly, your conclusions must present your judgment of the truthfulness of your findings and your assessment of their capacity to answer either positively or negatively your research hypotheses or research questions. (Silverman 2013; Morgan 2014)

Pointers in Writing Conclusions

1.      Explain your point in simple and clear sentences.

2.      Use expressions that center on the topic rather than on yourself, the researcher.

3.      Include only necessary items; exclude any piece of information or picture not closely related to your report.

4.      Have your conclusion contain only validly supported findings instead of falsified results.

5.      Practice utmost honesty and objectivity in stating the results of your critical evaluation of outcomes that you expect to support your conclusions.