Unit 3- Final Task- Pachado- Quiroz

                                            

                                          A Comparative Analysis of Two Research Articles:

Their Results, Discussions and Conclusions.

          

              Swales and Feak (1994) have extensively worked on how to report data in the results section of a Research Article (RA). These authors have detailed all the conventions to be followed when writing the discussions and the conclusions sections of a RA as well. Such sections should show the writer’s ability to summarize, present a problem and its solution, evaluate the solution, present the drawbacks of the research, and convince the readers that his/her conclusions and recommendations are of utmost importance.

            Results, Discussions and Conclusions are standard parts of RAs and it is necessary to understand these distinctive elements in order to accurately evaluate the research being offered. The various parts of them may be presented in a slightly different manner or be titled differently; still the essential parts of the paper will always be the same. The current paper aims at analysing and contrasting two research articles in different professional fields. One belongs to the field of medicine and the other one to the field of education, respectively. Their results, discussions and conclusions sections will be compared so as to explore the differences and similarities of those sections in both papers. 

          In the  medicine article written by Smith, Kerr, Fenner, Straker (2014) results, discussions and conclusions are blended into two main sections (Results and Discussions). By contrast, in the educational article written by Aydin & Yildiz (2014), results, discussion and conclusion are exposed separately in three different sections (Results, Discussion and Conclusion).

          According to Swales (1990), the results section should summarize the given data by means of using texts, tables, and /or figures to state the results of the study. It is worth noting that while Aydin et al. (2014) makes use of tables and graphs to represent the results which have been obtained, Smith et al. (2014) uses only two tables but no graphs or figures. Instead, the data in this section is summarized in a text format, exposing the results by the use of statistics, especially through representational percentage. For example, in the educational article, in the subcategory “The Effects of Task Type on Form-related vs. Meaning-related Changes” results are presented in a figure which shows that the distribution of the number of meaning-related and form-related changes in the three tasks were more meaning-related changes than form-related changes. This distribution was analysed using descriptive statistics and summarized in tables 1 and 2.

         To turn to the use of tables and figures in the educational article, the standard rules established by the American Psychological Association (2007) are mostly respected. They are appropriately numbered and have an individual title which is italicized and presented with each word capitalized. For instance, “Table 1. Distribution of the number of MRCs in All Three Tasks”. Moreover, the presented tables are correctly referenced in the text of the paper. For example, “Learners participated in three different meaning-focused tasks (Table 1) that were selected to engage them in the collaboration and negotiation of both meaning and form as they produced texts in a wiki-based environment”.

          However, some similarities in the results section can be highlighted. In both papers the results section is isolated from the discussion section. In the same way, the writers of both papers first describe the results and then discuss them. In addition, we can find that past tenses are widely used to describe the results which have been achieved.

          The discussion section in Smith et al.'s (2014) article is divided into ten subsections according to the topics relevant to the research. The first part presents an overview in which the key findings are restated with reference to the initial hypothesis. At the same time, the authors remind the reader of the overall purpose of the study. In Smith et al.’s words, “The present study contributes to the evidence base around experiences of overweight and obese adolescents and their parents in response to text messages designed to support behaviour change in the maintenance period of a larger intervention” (Smith et al., 2014, p.13). Conversely, Aydin et al.’s article’s discussion section is divided into the four same categories which are presented in the results section. Likewise, the results of the study are discussed in relation to theory and previous research, in the light of the data which has been obtained. For instance, in the discussion section of the educational article the results of the study are discussed according to the obtained data and in relation to theory and previous research. Both quantitative and qualitative data provided multiple sources of information regarding the use of wikis in collaborative writing projects and the role of task type during this process.  It is worthwhile mentioning that when analysing the discussions sections of both RAs, the one on the medicine field exposes the conclusion within this section whereas the educational article presents it in an isolated manner.

          Concerning the conclusion section, both articles devote a section of the paper to state and describe the limitations of the investigation. Not only do both research articles use the conclusion to tie the paper together but also to emphasize the fact that further investigation would be of great value for the research. As Smith et al. states, “Future research should be clear on the engagement or efficacy aims for an intervention, develop messages to accommodate adolescent preferences in conjunction with an appropriate theory, and employ appropriate evaluation measures of engagement or effectiveness” (Smith, et al., 2014, p 21).

          Although each research article offers a different layout, both succeeded in including the main RAs’ standard parts showing the writers’ ability to summarize the results of their work, presenting  the problems, providing  solutions  and evaluating them. However, the fact that they both refer to the drawbacks of their investigations makes the reader feel the need to continue reading more about the topic.

To sum up, it can be said that despite both articles come from different fields, authors of both papers intended to present their problems following RAs’ structures, with an introduction, a literature review, a method section, a results, a discussion and a conclusion section in their papers. In this sense, it can be affirmed that both articles belong to a discourse community. One belongs to the medicine discourse community and the other to the educational discourse community, correspondingly.

References

             American Psychological Association (2007). Concise rules of APA style. Washington, DC: British Library Cataloguing-in- Publication Data.

             Aydin, Z. & Yildiz, S. (2014). Using wikis to promote collaborative EFL writing. Language Learning & Technology 18 (1), 160-180. Retrieved fromhttp://llt.msu.edu/issues/february 2014/aydinyildiz.pdf

           Smith, K., Kerr, D., Fenner, A., & Straker, L. (2014) Adolescents Just Do Not Know What They Want: A Qualitative Study to Describe Obese Adolescents’ Experiences of Text Messaging to Support Behaviour Change Maintenance Post Intervention. Journal of MedicalInternetResearch, 2014; 16(4):e103. DOI: 10.2196/jmir.3113.

             Swales, J.M (1990). Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. (Cambridge Applied Linguistics Series). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
             Swales, J. M., & Feak, C.B. (1994).  Academic writing for graduate students: Essential tasks and skills. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.