Writing Strategy: Acknowledge Limitations

This book is running in a long beta. Revisions are currently underway. Check back in January 2025 for updated content.

Acknowledge Limitations is a Strategy used to point out the limitations of the study specifics and/or tone down their severity. It is important to remember that every study has limitations. Study limitations can exist due to constraints of research design or methodology, and these factors may impact the findings of your study. When limitations impact the findings, those limitations are particularly important to disclose in the Discussion section. Otherwise, they can be highlighted in previous sections, like the Methods or Results. Some researchers are reluctant to discuss the limitations of their study in their manuscripts, feeling that bringing up limitations may undermine the research value in the eyes of readers and reviewers. In spite of the impact limitations might have, you should clearly acknowledge any limitations in your research study in order to show readers—whether journal editors, other researchers, or the general public—that you are aware of these limitations and to explain how they impact the conclusions that can be drawn from the research. Acknowledging limitations is also ethical practice for rigorous and credible research.

Acknowledge Limitations is also a great way to transition into the final Goal in D/C sections where we State Contribution or Propose Directions (See next chapter). See the following sentences as examples of how to use language patterns to alleviate the severity of the limitations:

1. “Even though our results do not show that x = y, they nevertheless highlight that…”
2. “Despite the fact that … was not able to predict …, we believe our results are a major advance on the current state of the art.”
3. “The study contains several limitations that could be addressed in future work.”
4. “Although our study is limited by …., future work might fruitfully explore ….”

In Examples 1 and 2, the introductory phrases are used to acknowledge limitations and then segue into a contribution. Examples 3 and 4 also utilize the introductory phrases to acknowledge limitations, but the segue proposes future directions.

In general, you can acknowledge limitations of your study by using language patterns that come at the beginning or end of the sentence. Limitations can also take the form of full sentences. Here are more Language Use patterns: