1. Title: Authors: Discussion Objectives of the Research
Methods & Procedures
Charts/Graphs/Pictures
Specify the specific aims for your study.
Lights! Camera! Graphs! Photos! Lurid Data! Yow!
You get the idea. Here is where you put your eyeball grabbing data, amazing graphs, and stupendous radiology and photos. Just don’t get all carried away with the three-D stuff and the retina searing color combinations.
Provide your information in a clear, informative, and yes, entertaining fashion.
Remember to number all Tables and Figures, so that you can easily refer to them in the Results section.
The discussion section is used to summarize the main findings from your study, and to interpret your results relative to current findings in the literature.
Significance/Background
Using the literature, establish any previous work related to your research question. This section should describe the gap(s) in the literature, and how your specific aims will attempt to address the gap.
Analyses
Use this section to provide a brief description of the statistical tests used, your sample size justification (if pertinent to your study), and your criterion for significance (e.g., P < 0.05).
Conclusions & Implications
The big finish, where you get to blow your audience away with your final, pithy comment. This should be brief, three sentences tops. If you’re at a loss for words, you can either do a combined Discussion/Conclusions section, or just do a conclusions section that reiterates the importance of your study.
Design
Results
What research design was used to address your specific aims?
Examples include:
Case series, case-control, retrospective cohort, cross-sectional, prospective cohort, randomized controlled trial
HEY!! - Not only is a retrospective chart review not a study design, it’s redundantly redundant. It’s probably really a case series or retrospective cohort study, but if in doubt, please check with your co-authors, or contact the Research Department.
Here’s where you provide some detail to all of the cool tables and figures that you have provided.
Make sure that the reader is very aware of what you consider to be the major findings from your study. This is also a place to remark upon some of the minor findings that did not make their way into any of your tables and figures.
HEY!! - Don’t just regurgitate the same information that is already present in your tables and figures. Pick out specific pieces of information upon which you would like your reader to focus.
References