Interpretation, findings, conclusions, recommendations

The point of doing the research is to find something out (or to find out what you can’t find out). A definition I quite like is the research is always about asking better questions, i.e. at the end of it all you should have questions that have arisen from what you have found out. It gives you a chance to continue this work, not in this course, having established some useful findings in relation to your question.

It’s debatable as to where something like analysis of data fits into the research system. This is because analysis is always to some extent an interpretive act. So, for that matter, is data collection, say in this case the journal articles you are reviewing. But even when the data collection and analysis is done, there is still a need to “translate” the information you have derived through coherently informed data collection (whether publicly available empirical data, data from literature, or whatever) and analysis into some “findings”, conclusions, and maybe recommendations, suggestions for further research, etc. that relate to your original question. Interpretation takes us beyond analysis to some position or statement in response to your original question.

And here again we have a Matryoshka doll. Our interpretation MUST “fit” with our analysis of data. As you work through your research and the paper that reports it, we will help you make sure of the fit.

In a nut shell or, at least, in a series of Matryoshka dolls, is the notion of research as a system and a logic. It is a system made up of (at least) the key components: question, design, theory, methodology, methods …

It is a logic in the sense that each of the inner Matryoshka dolls has to “follow from” or “cohere with” the other dolls in the manner described.

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