HOW DO YOU INTERPRET THE RESULTS?

After reporting and explaining the detailed results, researchers conclude a study by summarizing key
findings, developing explanations for results, suggesting limitations in the research, and making
recommendations for future inquiries.

Summarize the Major Results

In the process of interpreting results, researchers first summarize the major findings and present the
broader implications of the research for distinct audiences. A summary is a statement that reviews the
major conclusions to each of the research questions or hypotheses. This summary is different from the
results: It represents general, rather than specific, conclusions. Specific conclusions in the results would
include detail about statistical tests, significance levels, and effect sizes. General conclusions state
overall whether the hypothesis was rejected or whether the research question was supported or not
supported.

The research ends with statements by researchers about positive implications of the study.
Implications are those suggestions for the importance of the study for different audiences. They
elaborate on the significance for audiences presented initially in the statement of the problem. In effect,
now that the study has been completed, the researcher is in a position to reflect (and remark) on the
importance of the study.

Explain Why the Results Occurred

After this summary, researchers explain why their results turned out the way they did. Often this
explanation is based on returning to predictions made from a theory or conceptual framework that
guided the development of research questions or hypotheses. In addition, these explanations may
include discussing the existing literature and indicating how the results either confirmed or disconfirmed
prior studies. Thus, you will frequently find past research studies being presented by authors in this
passage. A concluding passage may contrast and compare results with theories or bodies of literature.

Advance Limitations

Researchers also advance limitations or weaknesses of their study that may have affected the results.
Limitations are potential weaknesses or problems with the study identified by the researcher. These
weaknesses are enumerated one by one, and they often relate to inadequate measures of variables, loss
or lack of participants, small sample sizes, errors in measurement, and other factors typically related to
data collection and analysis. These limitations are useful to other potential researchers who may choose
to conduct a similar or replication study. Advancing these limitations provides a useful bridge for
recommending future studies. Limitations also help readers judge to what extent the finding scan or
cannot be generalized to other people and situations.
Suggest Future Research

Researchers next advance future research directions based on the results of the present study. Future
research directions are suggestions made by the researcher about additional studies that need to be
conducted based on the results of the present research. These suggestions are a natural link to the
limitations of a study, and they provide useful direction for new researchers and readers who are
interested in exploring needed areas of inquiry or applying results to educational practice. These
educators often need an “angle” to pursue to add to the existing knowledge, and future research
suggestions, typically found at the conclusion of a research study, provide this direction. For those
reading a study, future research directions highlight areas that are unknown and provide boundaries for
using information from a specific study. Typically, good quantitative studies end with a positive note
about the contributions of the research.

REEXAMINING DATA ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

IN THE PARENT INVOLVEMENT STUDY

To obtain an overview of the process of quantitative data analysis and interpretation, we can turn once
again to the parent involvement study by Deslandes and Bertrand (2005). With some advanced statistics
used by the authors, it is easy to focus on statistics and miss the overall picture of analysis and
interpretation unfolding in this study.

The authors surveyed 770 parents of secondary-level students attending five public schools in
Quebec. These parents completed several instruments. To look closely at the data analysis used by the
authors, it is helpful to reflect on the question the authors sought to answer and then examine the
statistical analysis they used to obtain answers to the question. The key question can be found in
Paragraph 13: “What are the relative contributions of parents’ role construction, self-efficacy,
perceptions of teacher invitations, and perceptions of adolescent invitations to predict parent
involvement at home and at school in Grades 7, 8, and 9?” (p. 166). In this question, “relative
contribution” means what independent variables best explain the two outcomes, parent involvement at
home and parent involvement at school. Next, let’s scan the tables of statistical information the authors
presented. Table 1 shows demographic, descriptive statistics (percentages) about the parent
participants in the study. Table 2 simply lists the major predictor (independent) variables, the variables
controlled in the data analysis, and the two outcome (dependent) variables. This is a helpful table to use
to think about the data analysis and the statistical procedures. Table 3 shows descriptive statistics
(means, standard deviations) on the four independent variables and the two dependent variables.
Tables 4 and 5 show inferential, multiple regression analyses for the independent variables and the
demographic control variables for the parent involvement at home and the parent involvement at
school dependent variables, respectively. So, from the research question, we know that this study will
build toward an understanding of the importance of the four factors in explaining parent involvement.
Looking back again at Table 6.5 in this chapter on data analysis, we know that when we have two or
more independent variables (four constructs and several control variables in this study) measured with
continuous scales (1 = disagree very strongly to 6 = agree very strongly) and one dependent variable
(either home or school) measured separately as continuous scales, we will use multiple regression as a
statistical procedure. We can look at the two regression tables (Table 4 and Table 5) and see that some
of the variables were statistically significant at the p 6 .05, p 6 .01, and p < .001 levels (as shown by *
markings) as seen in the notes at the bottom of the two tables. Unfortunately, we did not learn about
effect sizes in Table 4 or Table 5. But in terms of data analysis, in Table 4 we can see that “parents’
perceptions of student invitations in academic domain” strongly predicted parent involvement at home
(beta = .44). Then we can read the “Results” section to see the more detailed findings. So our thinking
about the major forms of analysis of data in this journal article went from thinking about the research
question, exploring the tables, recognizing the major types of statistics and using Table 6.5 in this
chapter to assessing why the statistic was chosen and then looking closely at the results presented in
the tables as well as in the results discussion.

The Discussion section (starting at Paragraph 32) provides the “interpretation” of the results
starting with a general summary of them presented by grade level and for each of the dependent
measures, parent involvement at home and parent involvement at school. Note that throughout this
discussion, the authors are introducing references to other studies that highlight similar findings (see,
e.g., Paragraph 36). Also, the article ends with a discussion of implications for school interventions and
for increased parental involvement, and of the importance of teacher–parent contacts. The final section
identifies some of the limitations of the study in terms of sampling (Paragraph 46), advances ideas for
further research (Paragraph 47), and then ends on a positive note about the final importance of the
results of the study (Paragraph 49).