Best examples of thesis results format examples for research papers

Examples of thesis results format examples for research papers in 2024–2025

Most students don’t need abstract theory. They need examples of thesis results format examples for research papers that show, line by line, how to present findings. Let’s walk through several realistic formats you can borrow, depending on your method and field.

Example of a quantitative thesis results format (survey-based study)

Imagine a master’s thesis in education analyzing a nationwide survey of 450 high school teachers about technology use in classrooms. A clean, modern Results format might look like this:

Opening structure

The chapter opens with a short orientation paragraph:

“This chapter presents the results of the teacher technology use survey. Findings are organized by research question: (1) frequency of technology use, (2) differences by subject area, and (3) predictors of high technology integration.”

That one paragraph tells the reader how the chapter is organized, which is a pattern you see in many of the best examples of thesis results format for research papers.

Subsection layout

The chapter then moves research-question by research-question:

• Research Question 1: Frequency of technology use
  The student starts with a short text summary, followed by a table:

  “Overall, teachers reported moderate technology use, with a mean of 3.2 days per week (SD = 1.1). Table 4.1 summarizes descriptive statistics for the main usage variables.”

  Then a table shows means, standard deviations, and ranges for each variable. Below the table, a brief interpretation:

  “As shown in Table 4.1, technology use ranged from 0 to 5 days per week, with 78% of teachers using technology at least three days per week.”

• Research Question 2: Differences by subject area
  A similar pattern: short narrative → table → one or two sentences explaining the pattern.

  “An ANOVA indicated statistically significant differences in weekly technology use by subject area, F(3, 446) = 5.21, p = .002. Table 4.2 reports group means.”

• Research Question 3: Predictors of high technology integration
  Here, the student presents regression outputs in a table and highlights key coefficients in prose:

  “In the multiple regression model, teacher self-efficacy (β = .41, p < .001) and administrative support (β = .27, p < .01) were significant predictors of high technology integration, explaining 32% of the variance (R² = .32).”

This is one of the clearest examples of thesis results format examples for research papers in quantitative social science: each section starts with a sentence that answers the research question in plain English, then supports it with a table or figure.

Example of thesis results format for a lab-based experimental study

Now picture a biology PhD thesis reporting a controlled lab experiment on antibiotic resistance. The structure is similar but more tightly linked to hypotheses.

Hypothesis-driven subsections

The chapter is organized by hypothesis rather than research question:

“Results are presented by hypothesis. First, I report the effect of antibiotic concentration on bacterial growth. Second, I examine resistance mutations across conditions.”

Each hypothesis gets its own subsection:

• Hypothesis 1: Higher antibiotic concentrations reduce growth rate
  Starts with a figure of growth curves and a short caption. The text immediately interprets the main pattern:

  “As shown in Figure 3.1, growth rates declined sharply above 8 µg/mL. A repeated-measures ANOVA confirmed a significant effect of concentration on growth, F(4, 96) = 19.45, p < .001.”

• Hypothesis 2: Resistance mutations differ by exposure duration
  The student uses a table summarizing mutation frequencies and a bar chart. The narrative focuses on the pattern, not the raw numbers:

  “Resistance mutations were more frequent in long-exposure cultures (M = 0.63, SD = 0.12) than short-exposure cultures (M = 0.29, SD = 0.09), t(22) = 7.41, p < .001.”

This type of layout is common in STEM fields and appears in many real examples of thesis results format examples for research papers archived in university repositories like Harvard’s DASH or MIT’s DSpace. You see the same pattern: hypothesis heading → figure/table → short, statistical summary.

Examples include qualitative thesis results formats (interviews and themes)

Quantitative formats are relatively standard; qualitative results are where students often get stuck. Good examples of thesis results format examples for research papers in qualitative work share three traits:

• They organize findings by themes, not by interview question.
• They use participant quotes as evidence, not as the entire section.
• They clearly connect each theme back to the research questions.

Imagine a sociology thesis based on 25 in-depth interviews with first-generation college students.

Results chapter organization

The chapter opens with a short reminder of the research questions, then a roadmap:

“This chapter presents three major themes that emerged from the data: (1) navigating institutional culture, (2) financial precarity, and (3) informal support networks.”

Each theme becomes a subsection:

• Theme 1: Navigating institutional culture
  The student starts with a concise description of the theme in their own words:

  “Participants described feeling like ‘outsiders’ who had to decode unwritten rules about office hours, email etiquette, and academic expectations.”

  Then they present 2–4 short quotes that illustrate variation within the theme, followed by a brief synthesis linking back to the research question.

• Theme 2: Financial precarity
  Similar structure: analytic description → evidence (quotes) → interpretation.

This pattern—analytic paragraph, then evidence, then synthesis—is one of the best examples of thesis results format for research papers using qualitative methods. For more detailed guidance, many programs point students to qualitative reporting standards from the APA and similar organizations.

Mixed-methods examples of thesis results format examples for research papers

Mixed-methods theses add another layer: how to integrate quantitative and qualitative results without confusing the reader.

A strong example of a mixed-methods thesis results format might use a segmented but parallel structure:

• First half of the chapter: quantitative results organized by research question.
• Second half: qualitative themes that explain or extend those quantitative patterns.
• Final section: a short integration subsection.

For instance, in a public health thesis on vaccine hesitancy:

• The quantitative section reports survey statistics on hesitancy rates, demographic differences, and logistic regression models predicting hesitancy.
• The qualitative section reports themes from follow-up interviews (e.g., mistrust of institutions, misinformation, previous negative experiences with healthcare).

The integration section might read:

“Quantitative analyses showed significantly higher hesitancy among adults without a primary care provider. Qualitative interviews helped explain this association: participants without regular providers described fragmented care and limited opportunities to ask questions, which reinforced mistrust of vaccination recommendations.”

This kind of integrated summary is increasingly common in 2024–2025, especially in health and education research, and you’ll find similar real examples in open-access theses hosted by public universities like the University of Michigan’s Deep Blue or UNC’s repository.

Field-specific examples of results formats you can model

Different disciplines lean toward different examples of thesis results format examples for research papers. A few concrete patterns:

Psychology and behavioral sciences

Psychology theses often mirror APA journal article structure. A typical Results chapter:

• Starts with a short recap of the analytic plan.
• Presents manipulation checks first.
• Moves to main hypothesis tests (ANOVAs, regressions, mediation models).
• Ends with exploratory or secondary analyses.

Sentences tend to be compact and statistics-heavy:

“Participants in the high-stress condition reported significantly higher state anxiety (M = 42.3, SD = 9.1) than those in the control condition (M = 31.7, SD = 7.8), t(118) = 7.04, p < .001, Cohen’s d = 1.29.”

APA’s own guidelines on reporting results, available through APA Style, are some of the best examples you can follow.

Engineering and computer science

In engineering and CS, results often revolve around performance metrics and comparisons to baselines. A typical example of a results format:

• Early subsection: description of datasets, testbeds, or benchmark tasks.
• Middle subsections: tables and plots comparing the proposed method to baseline models (accuracy, latency, error rates).
• Final subsection: ablation studies or sensitivity analyses.

The narrative keeps a tight focus on improvement over baselines:

“Our model achieved an F1 score of 0.91 on the validation set, outperforming the previous state-of-the-art by 4.3 percentage points (Table 5.3).”

Public health and medical research

Health-related theses often follow patterns similar to NIH-funded research reports. A common structure:

• Participant flow and sample description.
• Primary outcome analyses.
• Secondary outcomes and subgroup analyses.
• Sensitivity analyses.

You can see patterns in real examples through NIH-funded article databases like PubMed Central, which many graduate programs quietly expect you to mimic in thesis form.

How to choose the right example of a thesis results format for your paper

With so many examples of thesis results format examples for research papers out there, how do you decide what fits your project?

A practical approach:

• Match your method. If your study is experimental and hypothesis-driven, look at experimental psychology or lab science theses. If it is narrative or ethnographic, study qualitative dissertations in your field.
• Check your department’s guidelines. Many universities publish thesis manuals or sample chapters. For instance, the University of Wisconsin–Madison Graduate School and Cornell Graduate School offer clear expectations for formatting and structure.
• Use journal articles as models. Most programs want theses that look like extended versions of peer-reviewed articles in your field, especially in how the Results section is organized.

When you scan real examples, pay attention not just to content but to rhythm:

• Short paragraph that summarizes the finding.
• Table or figure that shows the data.
• One or two sentences that highlight the key pattern from that table or figure.

That rhythm shows up again and again in the best examples of thesis results format for research papers, regardless of discipline.

Common mistakes in thesis results formats (and better examples to copy)

Seeing what not to do can be just as helpful as seeing polished examples.

Mistake 1: Results read like a methods section
Students often re-explain sampling, instruments, or procedures in the Results chapter. In stronger examples, methods stay in the Methods chapter; Results focus only on findings.

Better format:

“A total of 312 participants completed the survey. Table 3.1 summarizes demographic characteristics.”

One sentence, then a table. No repeat of the entire recruitment process.

Mistake 2: Wall of numbers without interpretation
A long paragraph of statistics feels unreadable.

Better format:

“Students in the intervention group showed higher posttest scores than controls (Table 4.2). The difference remained significant after adjusting for baseline scores, β = 0.48, p = .004.”

Notice the pattern: claim → pointer to table → key statistic.

Mistake 3: Qualitative results that are just quote dumps
Stringing quotes together with minimal commentary is common in weaker theses.

Better format:

“Participants described a sense of ‘institutional distance’ from faculty. Many felt unsure when it was acceptable to contact professors. As one student explained, ‘I didn’t know if emailing after 5 p.m. was rude or not.’ Others echoed this uncertainty but added that peers with college-educated parents ‘seemed to just know the rules.’”

Here the student’s analytic voice frames the quotes. That’s exactly what you see in high-quality qualitative examples of thesis results format examples for research papers.

2024–2025 trends shaping thesis results formats

A few shifts are quietly changing how Results chapters look in recent years:

More transparency about missing data and limitations in the Results section
Thanks to open science movements and guidelines from organizations like the NIH, more theses include brief notes about missing data, sensitivity checks, and preregistration directly in the Results chapter.

Increased use of effect sizes and confidence intervals
Many programs now expect students to report effect sizes and 95% confidence intervals alongside p-values. You’ll see this in newer examples of thesis results format examples for research papers across psychology, education, and health sciences.

Data visualization over text-heavy tables
Students are relying more on clear, minimalistic graphs to show patterns instead of massive tables. The narrative then highlights the key message of each visualization rather than repeating every number.

Integration with open data and code
Some cutting-edge theses now reference online appendices or repositories (e.g., OSF, GitHub) where full analysis code and datasets are stored. While the Results chapter remains text-based, it often includes a short note:

“All analysis scripts and de-identified data are available in the project repository (see Appendix E).”

These trends don’t change the core structure of a good Results chapter, but they do influence what counts as the best examples of thesis results format for research papers in 2024–2025.

FAQ: examples of thesis results formats and common questions

Q1. Can you give a short example of a thesis results paragraph for a quantitative study?
Here is a compact example of a results paragraph that would fit many social science theses:

“Of the 382 respondents, 61% reported voting in the last national election. Voting rates were higher among respondents aged 45 and older (72%) than among those under 30 (49%), χ²(1, N = 382) = 14.37, p < .001. Table 2.3 presents voting rates by age group, education, and income. Logistic regression analyses indicated that age and education remained significant predictors of voting after controlling for income (see Table 2.4).”

This is one of the cleaner examples of thesis results format examples for research papers: it summarizes, cites tables, and highlights key statistics without drowning the reader in detail.

Q2. What are good examples of structuring qualitative thesis results?
Strong examples include: organizing by themes, starting each theme with a concise analytic statement, using a small number of carefully chosen quotes, and ending each theme with a short synthesis that connects back to the research questions or theoretical framework.

Q3. Should I interpret my results in the Results chapter or wait for the Discussion?
Most programs expect light interpretation in the Results (e.g., “Group A scored higher than Group B”), with deeper theoretical interpretation, implications, and speculation reserved for the Discussion. Look at real examples from your department to see the local norm.

Q4. Where can I find real examples of thesis results format examples for research papers online?
Check your university’s digital repository first. If you need broader samples, explore open repositories like Harvard’s DASH, MIT’s DSpace, or public university archives. Also look at NIH-funded articles in PubMed Central for health research, and APA journals for psychology, since many theses mimic those formats.

Q5. How long should my Results chapter be?
There is no universal page count. In many U.S. programs, master’s thesis Results chapters run anywhere from 15–40 double-spaced pages, while doctoral dissertations can be substantially longer. The better question is whether your Results chapter presents all findings needed to answer your research questions clearly, without redundancy.

If you treat these real-world patterns as templates—not scripts—you’ll have a solid starting point. Study a handful of strong examples of thesis results format examples for research papers in your own field, borrow the structural moves that work, and adapt them to your data, your methods, and your committee’s expectations.