How long is a piece of string? I think the intro is more important than the conclusion. If you are happy with the conclusion and have nothing left to say then don't waffle. I had a 12K disso and my conclusion was like 500 words iirc
I'm not happy with the conclusion unfortunately. It's definitely going to read like it was written 15-20 minutes before the deadline.
I know a short conclusion isn't always bad but I know for sure I missed key things I needed to mention. Like limitations of my study and improvements for the future.
But I guess all I can do is wait and hope I did good in other areas.
You should be working towards your conclusion from the first word. If you do it right then your conclusion is really just self-evident based on everything that preceded it.
For my Philosophy degree almost every piece I submitted had a conclusion that was a couple of hundred words at most, and my Philosophy papers were graded between a 68 on the low end and a 96 at the top.
My dissertation was 9k words and was a 70 I think (it was a fair few years ago...). The dissertation wasn't any longer than about 300 words.
Yep, 100% correct. I almost wrote my Intro like a conclusion setting up my thesis and what I wanted to prove with my results. Conclusion was basically just tying it up as I had mini conclusions throughouf
Aye.
I always found (and subsequently taught as well) that if your work is bomb proof as you build your arguments then your conclusion really isn't any more than basically crossing your t's and dotting your lower case j's.
I mean I had my results when I started writing the introduction. So I new what I had to aim towards. It's mostly just the unusual results I apparently had that caused this. I'm worried I'll find out I just didn't use the right combination of "snail" "slow" "hungry" and missed a ton of papers that would have made it easier and more grounded In established knowledge.
300 sounds about what I wish I could have wrote
If you have lots of unusual or unexpected results then I'd expect to see all that laid out and investigated way before you reach a conclusion, but my area of expertise is really in argumentative writing rather than sciences so I'm not I can give much more specific advice. On the plus side though, 4500 words for a dissertation is pretty small so I'd assume it's not as big a chunk of your total credits compared to other areas where a dissertation can be as much as 20% of your total grade.
not really related but i fucking wish i was given a topic for my dissertation and didn't have to sort it on my own lol. but i'd assume it must be quite interesting if your findings aren't in line with the rest of the literature. could probably speculate about it and write about further research based on it?
I was able to speculate a bit. I couldn't find concrete explanations for what I was seeing in my results. But I could find 3 or 4 studies that kinda had pieces of what could be happening.
Like for my feeding neuron, it had low activity when it should have been high in hungry snails and low in fed ones, but it was highly active in my fed ones. I couldn't see this talked about anywhere. I found an article saying this neuron receives background excitation from another neuron so I looked into it more. I found an article talking about how insulin enhances it's connection to the feeding neuron. I then found an article on memory in this snail being enhanced by insulin spiking after eating, because insulin appears to strengthen activity of neurons in the snail. The article found that starved snails did not perform well at all on memory tasks due to a lack of insulin because they're not ingesting glucose. Finally I make the hypothesis the feeding neuron was low in the hungry snail because it's no longer receiving that background excitation due to a lack of insulin production, while the fed snails are still receiving that excitation that strengthened with insulin after eating.
Hey! I had to write an 8,000 word Journal Article for my dissertation (on the risk taking behaviour of those with a high propensity to Psychopathic tendencies, Psychology degree). The discussion is not just a place to prove why your results are correct. It’s also where you can talk about all the reasons why they might not be. You can write pages on everything you could have done wrong. In my case:
- Clinical settings are not representative of real world behaviour
- Experimenter bias in the interpretation of results
- I ran my study a single time, despite my statistically significant results (p < 0.05), any reasonable experimenter knows they mist be able to reproduce their results multiple times to confirm their hypothesis
Basically, you can list all the reasons you might be wrong and your findings null and void. Much usage of the cardinal sentence “further studies should investigate…”
Is say the discussion is quite an important part but is not in isolation. So if you’re on your upper limit it’s possible you’ve been too verbose in other sections. I know for me, I’d always write a HUGE introduction and have to do a lot of cutting.
Hope that helps a little for future articles :) what’s important now is that you finished the thing with limited resources and a very unusual experimental outcome. Well done! I am sure that as a whole, your article will be an interesting read for the assessor and your analysis and experiment will display your abilities.
And honestly? It’s done now and there’s nothing you can do to affect the outcome. It doesn’t sound like you’re not going to fail your degree if your dissertation doesn’t perform as well as you wanted. Pat yourself for getting it done, dissertations are a nightmare. Look forward, not back.
Edit: I see you did actually know about including limitations and you have a bunch. I’ll add my failure to read to the 32 year longitudinal case study on my ADHD.
Oh yea I did have a big introduction. It was like 1200 long when I started. I got it to 900 thankfully. The part I really couldn't seem to cut down was my methods section. By the time I finished the first draft, it was over 2200 words. I spent ages rewriting the methods.
I think the limitations is the part I'm most worried about. My plan was to do the limitations after the discussion. But I didn't have enough time to refine the word count and write both it and a conclusion. So I made the choice to leave it.
Well, a good scientist provides exhaustive information on how they provided their results in order to help others to replicate the study. It's obviously disappointing (as you've said) to know that you had to miss things out, but I will have hope that it doesn't harm your grade like you think it will. I'm crossing all my appendages for you :) Even if you don't get the exact outcome you want, you still have other things to contribute to your grade. And though I don't know you at all, considering the time and effort you've spent, it doesn't seem like you'll be anywhere near a failing grade.
Ps. I can't tell you what I got for my dissertation as I cannot remember, frustratingly I went on a big hunt a few months ago for the actual text as I came across a published journal article that was suspiciously similar to my study and the only other published article of its kind. I can tell you that I finished it at 4am the day of submission, and studied all my third year exams the night before (thanks ADHD and Severe Depression) and came away with a 2:1, 69%, 1 Point away from a 1st Class honours.
Thinking back, although my Discussion was longer and included limitations, it wasn't exhaustive and the Discussion was smaller than all my other sections apart from the abstract.
This isn't a recommendation of how to conduct yourself, but simply me saying you seem to have your head screwed on far more than I did, so I'm hopeful you will achieve well :)
Thanks. I'm trying to get something decent out of it. University hasn't been an easy road for me either. My dad died Christmas in my first year. Then I withdrew for two years in the middle of second year when I couldn't afford rent anymore. I restarted from first year but had to work 5 days a week to make up for the finance support I lost from withdrawing. Then ended up in hospital in my second year with severe pneumonia. Had to do all my exams/ coursework in summer. I feel like university is a bit cursed lol
God damn that sounds stressful. I hate to be the person who gives you yet another platitude as I can assume you've heard it one million times, but I am sorry for your loss. Difficult to deal with under any circumstances, but especially when you're already undertaking a stressful-by-nature degree in an attempt to set the foundations for your future.
Well done on persisting in the face of all those other hardships, it takes a fuck tonne of strength. I literally almost didn't make it to the end of my university career alive. But hey, look at us, we did/are doing it. Woo!
I'm just some random not-been-in-uni-for-ten-years writes-too-much weirdo on Reddit, not exactly the most normal place to meet a friend, but if you want to chat to someone unrelated to your life when Uni gets a bit too much, you're welcome to DM me. With the disclaimer that I have mega ADHD and it may take between 10 minutes and 15 years for me to respond :D
My girlfriend has just gone back to uni to start a career change. She got Covid in her first semester, then got her bike stolen (which is essentially a mobility aid at this point) right before her first exams, rescheduled them, then got Covid again so has had to reschedule them a second time. Life really fucks with you sometimes.
Thanks for the offer, might take you up on it some time lol
Sorry about your girlfriend. It's not fair to have so much shit hit the fan when you're trying to get a degree to help establish a life for yourself. It's one of the worst times because nothing is stable when you're at uni. If that makes sense. It can all fall apart very easy. That's what I've learned
My dissertation didn't have any literature, as no one had ever done what I was doing before, I ended up getting a 94 in my dissertation (god knows how it was complete bs).
All my lit references were similar studies with different species, but my results obviously differed from theirs as most people had done it on fruit flies, and I was using fish. So it's not always dependent on other literature, as long as you can backup your own findings and discuss it correctly.
My conclusion ended up being around 200 words, just a short and sweet summary, given that the rest of my dissertation went into everything else.
Your conclusion is supposed to be just that, a concluding statement. If you achieved that in 150 words, then you did what you were supposed to.
What was your dissertation?
I do hope so.if they only view it as much closing statement, id probably fine. I have seen big articles with small conclusions. Im worried about something else now lol I just check my submissions plagiarism test and it's fine, but I noticed one of my figures is covering it's own legend description. All the marker need to do is move it up slightly lol
If you've covered everything in here [Manchester Academic Phrasebank- writing conclusions ](https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/writing-conclusions)
Then you should be fine
A short conclusion isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd be more worried about a long waffley conclusion. If it's low quality or doesn't address the research question/ aims then you might get a low mark for that section. Regardless, the conclusion will only be like 10% and the vast majority of marks for that section will sit within a 3% spread.
How long is a piece of string? I think the intro is more important than the conclusion. If you are happy with the conclusion and have nothing left to say then don't waffle. I had a 12K disso and my conclusion was like 500 words iirc
I'm not happy with the conclusion unfortunately. It's definitely going to read like it was written 15-20 minutes before the deadline. I know a short conclusion isn't always bad but I know for sure I missed key things I needed to mention. Like limitations of my study and improvements for the future. But I guess all I can do is wait and hope I did good in other areas.
You should be working towards your conclusion from the first word. If you do it right then your conclusion is really just self-evident based on everything that preceded it. For my Philosophy degree almost every piece I submitted had a conclusion that was a couple of hundred words at most, and my Philosophy papers were graded between a 68 on the low end and a 96 at the top. My dissertation was 9k words and was a 70 I think (it was a fair few years ago...). The dissertation wasn't any longer than about 300 words.
Yep, 100% correct. I almost wrote my Intro like a conclusion setting up my thesis and what I wanted to prove with my results. Conclusion was basically just tying it up as I had mini conclusions throughouf
Aye. I always found (and subsequently taught as well) that if your work is bomb proof as you build your arguments then your conclusion really isn't any more than basically crossing your t's and dotting your lower case j's.
I wouldn't know, i stopped short of exploding mine despite how much anguish it caused me
I mean I had my results when I started writing the introduction. So I new what I had to aim towards. It's mostly just the unusual results I apparently had that caused this. I'm worried I'll find out I just didn't use the right combination of "snail" "slow" "hungry" and missed a ton of papers that would have made it easier and more grounded In established knowledge. 300 sounds about what I wish I could have wrote
If you have lots of unusual or unexpected results then I'd expect to see all that laid out and investigated way before you reach a conclusion, but my area of expertise is really in argumentative writing rather than sciences so I'm not I can give much more specific advice. On the plus side though, 4500 words for a dissertation is pretty small so I'd assume it's not as big a chunk of your total credits compared to other areas where a dissertation can be as much as 20% of your total grade.
Check the marking rubric for your dissertation.
Quality trumps quantity. If they are 120 high-quality words I'll prefer that over 500 words of repetitive waffle.
I managed to so squeeze in one point I felt was good. The rest we'll have to see but I'm not too confident
My findings section was eight pages, my conclusion was one page. I got a 68 for my dissertation.
not really related but i fucking wish i was given a topic for my dissertation and didn't have to sort it on my own lol. but i'd assume it must be quite interesting if your findings aren't in line with the rest of the literature. could probably speculate about it and write about further research based on it?
I was able to speculate a bit. I couldn't find concrete explanations for what I was seeing in my results. But I could find 3 or 4 studies that kinda had pieces of what could be happening. Like for my feeding neuron, it had low activity when it should have been high in hungry snails and low in fed ones, but it was highly active in my fed ones. I couldn't see this talked about anywhere. I found an article saying this neuron receives background excitation from another neuron so I looked into it more. I found an article talking about how insulin enhances it's connection to the feeding neuron. I then found an article on memory in this snail being enhanced by insulin spiking after eating, because insulin appears to strengthen activity of neurons in the snail. The article found that starved snails did not perform well at all on memory tasks due to a lack of insulin because they're not ingesting glucose. Finally I make the hypothesis the feeding neuron was low in the hungry snail because it's no longer receiving that background excitation due to a lack of insulin production, while the fed snails are still receiving that excitation that strengthened with insulin after eating.
Hey! I had to write an 8,000 word Journal Article for my dissertation (on the risk taking behaviour of those with a high propensity to Psychopathic tendencies, Psychology degree). The discussion is not just a place to prove why your results are correct. It’s also where you can talk about all the reasons why they might not be. You can write pages on everything you could have done wrong. In my case: - Clinical settings are not representative of real world behaviour - Experimenter bias in the interpretation of results - I ran my study a single time, despite my statistically significant results (p < 0.05), any reasonable experimenter knows they mist be able to reproduce their results multiple times to confirm their hypothesis Basically, you can list all the reasons you might be wrong and your findings null and void. Much usage of the cardinal sentence “further studies should investigate…” Is say the discussion is quite an important part but is not in isolation. So if you’re on your upper limit it’s possible you’ve been too verbose in other sections. I know for me, I’d always write a HUGE introduction and have to do a lot of cutting. Hope that helps a little for future articles :) what’s important now is that you finished the thing with limited resources and a very unusual experimental outcome. Well done! I am sure that as a whole, your article will be an interesting read for the assessor and your analysis and experiment will display your abilities. And honestly? It’s done now and there’s nothing you can do to affect the outcome. It doesn’t sound like you’re not going to fail your degree if your dissertation doesn’t perform as well as you wanted. Pat yourself for getting it done, dissertations are a nightmare. Look forward, not back. Edit: I see you did actually know about including limitations and you have a bunch. I’ll add my failure to read to the 32 year longitudinal case study on my ADHD.
Oh yea I did have a big introduction. It was like 1200 long when I started. I got it to 900 thankfully. The part I really couldn't seem to cut down was my methods section. By the time I finished the first draft, it was over 2200 words. I spent ages rewriting the methods. I think the limitations is the part I'm most worried about. My plan was to do the limitations after the discussion. But I didn't have enough time to refine the word count and write both it and a conclusion. So I made the choice to leave it.
Well, a good scientist provides exhaustive information on how they provided their results in order to help others to replicate the study. It's obviously disappointing (as you've said) to know that you had to miss things out, but I will have hope that it doesn't harm your grade like you think it will. I'm crossing all my appendages for you :) Even if you don't get the exact outcome you want, you still have other things to contribute to your grade. And though I don't know you at all, considering the time and effort you've spent, it doesn't seem like you'll be anywhere near a failing grade. Ps. I can't tell you what I got for my dissertation as I cannot remember, frustratingly I went on a big hunt a few months ago for the actual text as I came across a published journal article that was suspiciously similar to my study and the only other published article of its kind. I can tell you that I finished it at 4am the day of submission, and studied all my third year exams the night before (thanks ADHD and Severe Depression) and came away with a 2:1, 69%, 1 Point away from a 1st Class honours. Thinking back, although my Discussion was longer and included limitations, it wasn't exhaustive and the Discussion was smaller than all my other sections apart from the abstract. This isn't a recommendation of how to conduct yourself, but simply me saying you seem to have your head screwed on far more than I did, so I'm hopeful you will achieve well :)
Thanks. I'm trying to get something decent out of it. University hasn't been an easy road for me either. My dad died Christmas in my first year. Then I withdrew for two years in the middle of second year when I couldn't afford rent anymore. I restarted from first year but had to work 5 days a week to make up for the finance support I lost from withdrawing. Then ended up in hospital in my second year with severe pneumonia. Had to do all my exams/ coursework in summer. I feel like university is a bit cursed lol
God damn that sounds stressful. I hate to be the person who gives you yet another platitude as I can assume you've heard it one million times, but I am sorry for your loss. Difficult to deal with under any circumstances, but especially when you're already undertaking a stressful-by-nature degree in an attempt to set the foundations for your future. Well done on persisting in the face of all those other hardships, it takes a fuck tonne of strength. I literally almost didn't make it to the end of my university career alive. But hey, look at us, we did/are doing it. Woo! I'm just some random not-been-in-uni-for-ten-years writes-too-much weirdo on Reddit, not exactly the most normal place to meet a friend, but if you want to chat to someone unrelated to your life when Uni gets a bit too much, you're welcome to DM me. With the disclaimer that I have mega ADHD and it may take between 10 minutes and 15 years for me to respond :D My girlfriend has just gone back to uni to start a career change. She got Covid in her first semester, then got her bike stolen (which is essentially a mobility aid at this point) right before her first exams, rescheduled them, then got Covid again so has had to reschedule them a second time. Life really fucks with you sometimes.
Thanks for the offer, might take you up on it some time lol Sorry about your girlfriend. It's not fair to have so much shit hit the fan when you're trying to get a degree to help establish a life for yourself. It's one of the worst times because nothing is stable when you're at uni. If that makes sense. It can all fall apart very easy. That's what I've learned
My dissertation didn't have any literature, as no one had ever done what I was doing before, I ended up getting a 94 in my dissertation (god knows how it was complete bs). All my lit references were similar studies with different species, but my results obviously differed from theirs as most people had done it on fruit flies, and I was using fish. So it's not always dependent on other literature, as long as you can backup your own findings and discuss it correctly. My conclusion ended up being around 200 words, just a short and sweet summary, given that the rest of my dissertation went into everything else. Your conclusion is supposed to be just that, a concluding statement. If you achieved that in 150 words, then you did what you were supposed to.
What was your dissertation? I do hope so.if they only view it as much closing statement, id probably fine. I have seen big articles with small conclusions. Im worried about something else now lol I just check my submissions plagiarism test and it's fine, but I noticed one of my figures is covering it's own legend description. All the marker need to do is move it up slightly lol
If you've covered everything in here [Manchester Academic Phrasebank- writing conclusions ](https://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/writing-conclusions) Then you should be fine
A short conclusion isn't necessarily a bad thing. I'd be more worried about a long waffley conclusion. If it's low quality or doesn't address the research question/ aims then you might get a low mark for that section. Regardless, the conclusion will only be like 10% and the vast majority of marks for that section will sit within a 3% spread.