WRITING THE FINDINGS

Objective

At the end of this topic, you will be able to write your findings

Once you have analysed the data, you are now ready to write out your findings.

What data do you include in your findings?

 Not all the data that you have collected should be included in your findings. Only
data that help develop your conclusions should appear in your findings.
 As all your data have been organised into several headings, you should have a
heading for each of the groups. You can arrange the sub headings in an orderly
fashion.

How to write out your findings

Just like writing essays, only one main idea should be written in one paragraph. When
you write out your paragraph, start with the main idea first, then your supporting details.
That is, you should start with a general statement that best describes the content of your
paragraph. Next, you should provide other sentences that support your main idea. If
you start with the main idea, it will be easier for the reader to understand as you have
already signalled the content of your paragraph in the main idea before writing out the
supporting details.

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 Findings

Study how the analysed data from the survey and interview questions are written as
findings in the following *example:

Reading Materials

Figure 1 below shows that the choices of newspapers available at the library were
satisfactory. More than 90% of the students were satisfied with the selection of
newspapers available compared to only 10% who were not satisfied.

Figure 1: Bar graph showing students’ respose regarding choice of reading

materials available at the library

However, the choice of reference books and journals available at the library still
dissatisfied the majority of the students. More than 72% of the students were
dissatisfied with the selections of reference books. In addition, 70% were also
dissatisfied with the selections of journals and magazines at the library.

It was also found that the students had difficulties getting books which were related to
their studies because of several reasons. According to the students most of the
recommended titles were newly published. Furthermore, the students said that many of
the books on the library shelves were old editions and lacked current information. The
students also had difficulty borrowing books from the library as many of them had been
borrowed by somebody else.

*Note: The main idea is underlined and the supporting details are in italics.

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