Goals, Strategies, and Language Use in Results
This book is running in a long beta. Revisions are currently underway. Check back in January 2025 for updated content.
As a reminder, there are different tools for each section of the research article, and all these tools can be categorized into three sets: Goals, Strategies, and Language Use. Goals are used to communicate your overall argumentative intent. Strategies are used to achieve your goals, and Language Use connects the Goals and Strategies in meaningful ways to enable explicit and cohesive expression of ideas.
- There are three overarching Goals of a Results section. What do you think they are?
- What common Language Use expressions (e.g., Table 1 illustrates…) have you used in Results? What do those expressions intend to communicate?
Communicative Goals in Results
In research writing, our intent in the Results section is to begin reporting our findings to support our research argument. You can create a case from credible evidence by using three sets of Goals. Approach the Niche includes any information relevant to understanding your Results. This information was likely presented earlier in the manuscript and is used here to reinforce understanding of the study specifics leading to the actual Results. Occupy the Niche is where you highlight your Results in the form of in-text description or visual representations. Construe the Niche applies to those disciplines where a specific report of results may include some commentary that starts to expand outside the study, but this should be minimal at this point, if seen at all.
Goal One: Approach the Niche
Starting with the first Goal, Approach the Niche, much of the information matches what has been disclosed in prior sections. This information is useful for focusing the reader’s attention to the central argument introduced in the Introduction and the main steps of gathering and analyzing data from the Methods. Sometimes, this information is new to the reader. That is, the information was not presented in the Introduction, Literature Review, or Methods sections. Background information that is new to the reader should not be central to the research argument but it might be useful for fully understanding how the Results came about to approach the gap or problem in the field.
Goal Two: Occupy the Niche
The second goal, Occupy the Niche, is likely the most extensive goal of the Results section. In fact, it is quite common for Results sections to start with this Goal. This Goal is all about study specific results, displayed either intertextually or by using visual presentations of your data. Visuals may include tables, figures, photos, or other types of artifacts. We will talk more about visuals later in the chapter.
Goal Three: Construe the Niche
Construe the Niche is for those few occasions when you begin commenting on specific results from the study. This commentary provides clarity to how the study results connect with what is known in the established research territory. This commentary is not about the study as a whole but rather it is about specific results. Broader discussion is left for the Discussion section, or sections with combined Results and Discussion. This Goal may be excluded or used minimally in many disciplines.
Writing Strategies for Achieving Goals in Results
In the next sections, you will learn about the eight Strategies that will help you achieve the three Goals of Results. These Strategies will be useful for (1) analyzing model articles by visualizing how published authors achieve their communicative Goals and (2) facilitating your writing process by helping you utilize similar tools while maintaining your individual style and identity as a researcher. In this section, we will also provide examples of the Language Use for realizing each of the Strategies.
