16 September 2026 · 8 min read
Two chapters, two jobs. Results reports what the data showed. Discussion argues what it means against the literature you reviewed in chapter two. Nearly every thesis that comes back from a supervisor with “restructure this” written on it has collapsed the two — tables interpreted as they appear, findings compared to other studies before the reader has been told what the findings are, and no chapter that can be read on its own.
Results is descriptive and it is ruthless about it. You present the data, in the order your objectives were stated, with no interpretation and no reference to anyone else's study. A reader who disagrees with your entire argument should still be able to read this chapter and accept it.
The most common padding in a Nepali results chapter is a table followed by a paragraph that reads the table aloud. If the sentence says nothing the reader could not get from the row above it, cut it. Point at the pattern instead: which group is highest, where the relationship holds, where it does not.
Discussion is argumentative, and it is the chapter examiners read hardest at viva. Take each finding in turn, say what it means in the context of your study, and put it next to the literature: who agrees, who does not, and what might explain the difference. This is where your thesis stops being a report and starts being research.
One rule keeps the boundary clean: no new numbers appear in the discussion, and no other author's name appears in the results. If you find yourself writing “this is consistent with Shrestha (2021)” in the results chapter, that sentence belongs one chapter later.
Some departments and some supervisors do want a combined “Results and Discussion” chapter, and that is a legitimate structure — common in medical and engineering theses, less so in management. Ask before you write, because converting a combined chapter into two, or two into one, is a week of work you did not need to spend.
If it is combined, keep the two voices separate inside each section: present the finding, close the description, then interpret. The reader should always be able to tell which sentences are data and which are argument. A combined chapter is not permission to blur them.
Formatting complaints on these chapters are predictable and cheap to avoid. Use one table style throughout, keep the caption above the table and below the figure if that is your department's convention, and never paste an SPSS output block straight in — retype the numbers you need into a clean table. A raw SPSS screenshot is the fastest way to have a chapter sent back without anyone reading the argument in it.
Check that every table is cited in the text, that the numbers in the text match the numbers in the table, and that percentages add up. Examiners who find one arithmetic slip start checking everything, and that is a bad mood to be read in.
Read the results chapter with the discussion covered and ask whether it answers your objectives one by one. Then read the discussion with the results covered and ask whether every claim in it is traceable to a finding. Anything that fails either test is in the wrong chapter, unsupported, or not needed.
Run the similarity check on both chapters before they go in. Results is normally the cleanest chapter in a thesis because it is your own data; discussion sits in the middle, and problems there are usually citation placement rather than copied wording. Both are cheaper to fix now than after your supervisor has built comments on top of them.
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Send us the chapter and your objectives list, and we will tell you which sentences are in the wrong chapter before your supervisor does.