Writing a paper, results and discussion – day 1: stating your findings
Free PreviewStating how a finding is important
In the results or discussion section of your article you will need to highlight why a finding is important. Likely there will be more than one result from your study, but you will need to explain to the readers what is consequential and why. The phrases below can help you to do this:
These results imply that…
This study raises the possibility that…
These findings may help us to understand…
This underlines the importance of…
This may be due to…
These results suggest that [x] is due to [y] rather than…
The benefits of this method are shown by…
This means that we can link [x] and [y]…
This indicates that…
These results show it is clear that…
These findings indicate that…
The most significant aspect is that…
The evidence shows…
We can speculate that…
We can therefore distinguish between…
The consequences of this discovery are…
We might interpret…
There are potentially important implications raised by…
Our interpretation of this is…
Now read through the extract below for the phrases used to describe the findings.
Precision medicine from a citizen perspective: a survey of public attitudes towards pharmacogenomics in Flanders
Discussion
While our sample was representative of a young, active population, half indicated to have experienced side effects or insufficient effect of a drug treatment before. This caused one third of participants to stop their drug due to side effects and almost half due to therapeutic failure. These findings are comparable to previous investigations of patient-reported side effects and medication non-adherence. Up to 40–50% of chronic diseases patients are estimated to be non-adherent, with side effects concerns being an important contributing factor to non-adherence [23]. For example, Cooper et al. reported that up 64% of asthmatic ICS users and 88% of asthmatic OCS users reported one or more side effect of their medication, and side effects concerns were associated with non-adherence [24]. Moreover, our study participants showed an interesting understanding of factors affecting their medication response with attaching more importance to their medication adherence, lifestyle, liver and kidney function than potential genetic effects. While this may not reflect a complete understanding of varying factors affecting medication response towards different drugs, it is in contrast to previous research showing limited understanding of medication research and development and limited knowledge of genetic variants involvement in medication response [25, 26]. The proportions of patients stopping their medication further emphasizes the importance of precision medicine as well as patient-provider communication, and approaches to reduce medication non-adherence.
Edris, A., Callier, E. & Lahousse, L. Precision medicine from a citizen perspective: a survey of public attitudes towards pharmacogenomics in Flanders. BMC Med Genomics 15 (Suppl 3), 193 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12920-022-01308-7
Phrases from the exract
This caused one third of: highlighting the proportion
These findings are comparable to previous investigations: stating which results are similar to other studies
Moreover, our study participants showed: Highlighting a difference in result
While this may not reflect…. it is in contrast to previous research showing: describing how these results differed to other research
further emphasizes the importance of: highlighting a significant result
Further study for this week
This week you can try to write a results or discussion section describing the main findings of a recent study. Try the short quiz below to test your understanding.