IMRaD Conclusions - GMU Notes

In IMRaD reports, conclusions are usually part of the discussion; in some fields they are separated.
The GMU Writing Center provides common moves and sample language.
Important moves include restating aims, summarizing findings, discussing implications, indicating significance or contribution, acknowledging limitations, giving recommendations for future research, and offering practice or policy recommendations.
Remember that move availability varies by discipline, journal, or paper purpose.

Restating the aims of the study
- The aim of the present research was to examine …
- The purpose of the current study was to determine …
- The main goal of the current study was to determine …
Summarizing main research findings
- These experiments confirmed that …
- X made no significant difference to …
- This study has shown that …
Suggesting implications for the field of knowledge
- The results of this study indicate that …
- These findings suggest that in general …
- The findings of this study suggest that …
Explaining significance or contribution of the study
- The study contributes to our understanding of …
- These results add to the rapidly expanding field of …
- The contribution of this study has been to confirm …
Acknowledging limitations
- A major limitation of this study is …
- Being limited to X, this study lacks …
- The small sample size did not allow …
Providing recommendations for future research
- More research using controlled trials is needed to …
- A further study could assess the long-term effects of …
- Considerably more work will need to be done to determine …
Offering recommendations for practice or policy
- Greater efforts are needed to ensure …
- These findings suggest several courses of action for …
- Continued efforts are needed to make X more accessible to …
Note on variation
- Depending on the discipline, journal, or purpose of the paper, certain moves may or may not be present.

The sample article shows moves in a sequence: restating aim, summarizing findings, noting implications, stating significance, acknowledging limitations and offering recommendations.
Example content highlights: study of adolescents knowledge and attitudes toward e-cigarette ingredients etc. We will summarize:
In the sample, adolescents who have ever used tobacco perceive greater prevalence among parents and peers, and there is a need to develop educational messages to correct misperceptions.
Limitations: school-based convenience sample from California; relatively low response rate; generalizability is limited.
Implications for practice: health care providers should understand basic facts about e-cigarettes and adolescents attitudes toward these products.
Quantitative points in the sample:
- Participants believed about $30\%$ of their closest friends used e-cigarettes, which is approximately $10\%$ higher than self-reported rates.
- The study involved a sample of $9^{th}$ and $12^{th}$ graders.

Choose three different papers in your discipline and look through their conclusions. What moves do you see? What language clues helped you identify them? Are there moves missing that affect interpretation? Consider discussing with others.

Table is based on the information from University of Manchester's Academic Phrasebank
URL: http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/writing-conclusions/
Notes: moves may vary by discipline, journal, or purpose of the paper