It’s really a good feeling when you’ve completed collecting a lot of data and the temptation now, is to think that it’s just a matter of assembling it. But remember,  your data is of no real value by itself. The value lies only in how well it is able to answer your research question. It must also demonstrate the significance of your work and the contribution it makes to knowledge in your discipline.

Therefore, the first thing you have to do is to revisit your initial research question. Does the data answer this question? Most likely you have gathered data in various ways at different times – this could be, through different experiments, questionnaires, interviews, and existing literature. Now is the time to combine and integrate all this new information so that you can make answer your research question and describe how this new information adds to the existing literature

Here is a fun way to confirm whether the data you’ve gathered was useful in answering your question.Tell yourself a story about it.

For example:

Previous researchers believed ………… (literature review).

But then I wanted to discover……………………… (aims),

And so I did this by ………………………………………… (method),

And look at what I discovered …………………………. (findings),

So now we see that …………………. (contribution to knowledge).

Sometimes  your question will  seem inadequate to express what you’ve found. This means you will need to sharpen its focus. Or, you may find that your data only answered part of the original question. You will now need to decide whether you are going to answer the rest, which means you have to gather more material, or whether you will reformulate and limit the research question.

Once you have your sharpened research question, a clear picture of what it is you’ve found and its significance, you can put it together in a story, your next consideration is how best to present it to do justice to your thesis argument or overall theme.

You will then need to decide how you are going to present the new information you discovered. This can be done using tables, graphs, diagrams, photos etc. Remember that with every change you make, your dissertation chair must be involved so you are both on the same page at every level.