Significance & Implications

Confirmation Reports >> Significance and Implications

The Significance and Implications in a Confirmation Report should highlight the originality of the research and the contribution to knowledge and practices in the field. The author needs to demonstrate the practical and theoretical significance of the research and provide initial insights into how the results are expected to answer the research questions. In addition, the Significance and Implications should show how the study may extend existing knowledge in the field and contribute to professional practice to support confirmation as a PhD candidate.

The purpose of the Significance and Implications is to highlight, but not overstate, what is new or important about the findings. The author should avoid merely repeating the results reported with a superficial commentary.

In a Confirmation Report, the Significance and Implications are normally quite short and include the author’s interpretation of what the results mean in light of the research objective. There may also be acknowledgement of the limitations or problems connected with the preliminary findings or methods which will inform any suggestions for how they can be addressed in the main study. The author should always check with their supervisor for the preferred structure.

The Significance and Implications may include the following items.

Reference to overall aims of the study and a brief summary of the major findings
Reference to key results
Discussion of the significance of the study and results (what they mean)
Discussion of the implications of the study and results (how they affect the wider field)
Limitations of the preliminary results.
Discussion of changes, if any, in research design for the main study.

Some key questions to help decide what information to include are:

Have your preliminary results confirmed your expectations?
What have been your most significant findings so far?
Were there any issues with your methodology which may have restricted or influenced your results? What are the implications of your results (e.g. Will some parts of your original research design have to be changed?)
Are there any generalisations you can make from the results?

Example of Significance and Implications

Below is an extract from an Electronic and Information Engineering Confirmation Report which shows an example of the Significance and Implications with the key functions highlighted.

Statement to recall key preliminary findings about two methods used to exploit gene ontology for subcellular localization prediction	The results presented in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 have shown that one key difference between the two approaches to prediction of the location of subcellular proteins gene ontology (GO) methods is the way of retrieving the GO terms. The InterProGSVM method uses InterProScan to search the GO terms, whereas GOASVM uses the accession numbers (AN) of the sequences as the keys to search against the Gene Ontology Annotation (GOA) database.
Implications of the results with suggestion of how the proposed methods overcome a problem	Both methods are based on the same notion- taking advantage of functional-domain based methods and overcoming their disadvantages. One advantage of functional-domain based methods is that their performance is slightly better than other methods. But the disadvantage is that they are not applicable to all the protein sequences because some sequences may not have any annotated GO terms. The two proposed methods attempt to surmount the disadvantage from different perspectives.
Statement of the significance of findings for the first approach	The fusion of InterProGOSVM and PairProSVM attempts to use homology-based method to complement the functional-domain based method. This is one of the most effective approaches and the results suggest that this approach is feasible as was initially expected.
Limitation of the approach with comments on research design changes	However, the numbers of distinct GO terms can run into thousands and so the size of the dataset may become too large. This may lead to prohibitively expensive computational costs. To avoid this scenario, only the relevant GO terms should be selected in the main study.
Adapted from: S. Wan, “Protein Subcellular Localization Protein Based on Gene Ontology and SVM”, PhD confirmation report, Dept. of Elec. and Inf. Eng., POLYU, Hong Kong, 2011.

The Significance and Implications is structured around the author’s comments about the meaning and significance of the results. As the purpose is to evaluate and interpret the results in terms of their significance and implications, it is often necessary to begin the chapter with a brief summary of the key findings which support the author’s claims about the importance of the study. Alternatively, the author may begin by referring back to the objectives of the study, especially if the author wishes to highlight the innovative nature of the research approach.

Below are some questions to help decide what to include:

What is most significant about the study?

The novel or innovative approach to the research question?
The results which confirm a theory or have practical applications?
The significant contributions of the study to existing knowledge?

A clear argument should flow with reference to the results and methods which support any claims made. In this way, the chapter is structured from the specific (results and methods) to general (wider implications and significance of the results). The author should consider how and why the research area is important.

Key communicative features of the Significance and Implications may include the following items. Moves 2- 5 are flexible and do not necessarily all appear in one Confirmation Report.

Background information with reference to the objectives or methods applied to obtain the results.
Statement of key preliminary results to support any claims.
Evaluation of the findings mean in terms of their significance and
Problems arising during the initial research.
Implication of the results (e.g. Can the original research design be used as it is or do modifications need to be made for the main study?).

Example 1

Below is an extract from an Electrical Engineering Confirmation Report which shows an example of the structure of the Significance and Implications with the key moves highlighted:

Move	Purpose	Example
Background information to the Discussion with reference to the objectives of the study	*To contextualize the Discussion and help the reader recall the aim of the study*.	A novel input parallel and output series (IPOS) structure with interleaved converters is proposed to avoid minimization of circulating current in parallel output. A decouple controllers design for the proposed system was investigated in this paper.
Reference to methods applied to achieve preliminary results	*To recall how the results were obtained.*	A 20K Hz integrated IPOS prototype with 200w power was implemented to verify the controller effectiveness.
Significance of the results	*To highlight the significance of the results.*	The experiment results show that the triple loop controllers with a correlation factor compensation provide a better quality sinusoidal waveform within a large operation range.
Implications of the findings	*To convince the reader of the usefulness of the study by highlighting the wider applications.*	The proposed IPOS structure should allow for configuration in High frequency AC (HFAC) power distribution system (PDS) with enhanced power extension. Another benefit is that the decouple controller is simple and feasible and can realise flexible and scalable HFAC PDS. (…) This indicates that the proposed IPOS system and controller can effectively propel HFAC PDS into higher power and long transmission distance applications.
Adapted from: J. Liu, “Investigation of Power Conversion and Control Scheme for High Frequency AC Power Distribution System”, PhD confirmation report, Dept. of Elec. Eng., POLYU, Hong Kong.

Activity 1

Activity 1

Below is an extract from the Significance and Implications of a Computing Confirmation Report.

Identify the move contained in each part and drag the correct label to the left-hand column.

Note: (…) indicates that parts of the text have been removed due to space constraints.

Reference to objectives and procedure

Discussion about the significance of the results

Implication of the result

Statement of key preliminary results

Additional comments about the significance of the results

Move	Extract
	In order to evaluate the overall efficacy of the reordering algorithms, the reordered versions were compared with the reference orderings. (…)
	As expected, the proposed algorithms worked for both J1k and D2k datasets. (…) They also worked for D400, where the largest and statistically significant improvement was over 25%. (…)
	This result demonstrates that in short extracts (≤ 5 sentences) of news articles, global coherence alone cannot guarantee overall coherence. This further shows that the lack of local coherence cannot be compensated for by the global coherence-maximized textual ordering.
	Empirically the connected components algorithms are more effective for either very short or very long source documents (D400 and D2k), whereas the modified k-means algorithms are more effective for medium-length documents (J1k), where the most significant improvement is found.
	Therefore, local tuning works best for “middle-type” news articles (…) and the choice of an optimal reordering algorithm is sensitive to the stylistic features of source documents.
* CC connected components, MKM modified K-means Adapted from: R. Zhang, “Coherence-Based Text Summarization”, PhD confirmation report, Dept. of Comp., POLYU, Hong Kong, 2010.

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When writing the Significance and Implications, the author needs to appropriately position the research in terms of existing knowledge, technical applications and professional practice. As a key criterion of gaining confirmation is to demonstrate how the research will contribute to existing knowledge, the author should ensure that its significance is suitably highlighted.

Common language features of the Significance and Implications include the following items.

Use appropriate tenses (Past Simple to recall key aspects of the experimental or analytical work, Present Simple tense to express writer’s opinion and comments on the results.
Use evaluative language and modal verbs for discussing the significance and implications of the research.
Adopt formal academic style and tone.
Avoid language that overstates the results.
Use synonyms for commonly used words such as “proposed” and “method”.
Use clear referencing without overuse of pronouns such as it”.

Example 1

Below is an extract from the Significance and Implications of an Electronic and Information Engineering Confirmation Report with some of the key language features highlighted.

Click on the numbers in brackets to read an explanation of each one.

(1)The results presented in Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 show that gene ontology (GO) vectors construction, post-processing, classification of the InterProGSVM and GOASVM methods are the same. The (2) only difference between these two kinds of methods is the way of retrieving the GO terms. (…)

Both methods are based on the same notion- taking advantage of functional-domain based methods and overcoming their disadvantages. (3) One advantage of functional-domain based methods is that their performance may be slightly better than other methods. (4) But the disadvantage is that they are not applicable to all the protein sequences because some sequences may not have any annotated GO terms. (5) The two proposed methods attempt to surmount the disadvantage from different perspectives.

The fusion of InterProGOSVM and PairProSVM attempts to use homology-based method to complement the functional-domain based method. (6) This is one of the easiest approaches and the results suggest that this approach is feasible and successful as was initially expected. (…)

(7)This method seems to be much more efficient and achieves significantly better performance than the fusion method of InterProSVM methods and PairProSVM.

Adapted from: S. Wan, “Protein Subcellular Localization Protein Based on Gene Ontology and SVM”, PhD confirmation report, Dept. of Elec. and Inf. Eng., POLYU, Hong Kong, 2011.

Avoiding overstating results

When highlighting the importance of the research, the author should not make overstated or unqualified generalizations or claims. This means the author should use language that appropriately emphasizes or limits a claim made about the results

Modal verbs, such as may, might and should, are used to express the degree of certainty, probability, or possibility in a sentence. They are commonly used in the Significance and Implications as the author needs to communicate the probable or possible importance and applications of the research.

Other strategies include:

phrases that create distance from a claim
adverbs that modify the strength of a claim
adjectives that downplay the claim
avoid use of the verb “to prove” as this means 100% certain

Example

Below is a table that shows examples of these strategies.

Strategy	Language	Example in context

Adverbs	possibly probably relatively perhaps	The extent of dimethyl phthalate (DMP) was relatively* minor. The decrease in DMP was possibly* due to the decreasing oxidation potential.
Adjectives	possible probable limited likely unlikely	Only 21.3% of DMP was eliminated after 150 minutes. The possible contribution was found to be negligible.
Distancing phrases to express caution	seems that appears that	It seems that a possible application for the research could be (*modal verb to add further distance) enhancing the effectiveness of this device. The degradation of DMP did not appear to obey first-order kinetics.
Verbs to cautiously express the significance or implications	tend to indicates that believe suggest appear Note: Verbs that express caution are often used with modals like “could”.	Initial findings suggest that this method could yield useful applications. It is believed that the study could lead to further discoveries.
* Adapted from: L. Xu, “Sono-photolytic degradation of dimethyl phthalate without catalyst: Analysis of the synergistic effect and modeling”, PhD confirmation report, Dept. of Civil and Env. Eng., POLYU, Hong Kong.

Note: The author should avoid using the verb “prove” which may be too strong.

Alternatives include: verify, confirm, establish and substantiate.

Example 1: The results of the experiment verify the usefulness of the method.
Example 2: The results substantiate the effectiveness of the device.

Using synonyms to avoid repetition

In order to write a convincing Significance and Implications chapter which highlights the key achievements and significance of the study, a range of vocabulary which appropriately expresses the strength of any claims needs to be used.

A common problem for novice writers may be that their vocabulary range is not extensive enough to appropriately express the key areas of the Significance and Implications. This may lead to overuse or misuse of more common words. Examples of such words include: “proposed” to refer to the research, “suggests” or “shows” to describe the implications of the results. One effective way to tackle this problem is the use synonyms.

Activity 1>> 2>> 3>> 4

Incorrect use of “it” and referencing.

A common problem in writing is the overuse or misuse of pronouns such as “it” which may not have a clear referent. This can create confusion for the reader, particularly when “it” can refer to more than one object.

Below is an extract from the Significance and Implications of a Systems Engineering and Engineering Management Engineering Confirmation Report.

Consider the examples of “it” and “they” highlighted in the extract below and decide whether the reference is clear

Click check to see the suggested answers.

Previous research about the timing of technology substitution shows that newer technology performs better than the old technology when they come to market. Thus the company just needs to consider reducing the time that the rival is a threat and when it is available.

Disruptive technology offers a new performance dimension to it and does not replace it from the time it is first invented. This means for companies it is hard for it to discriminate the boundary of it and the existing technology.

Adapted from: L. Sun, (no title), PhD confirmation report, Dept. of Syst. Eng. and Eng. Mgt., CITYU, Hong Kong, 2016.

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Abstract >> Introduction >> Literature review >> Methodology >> Results >> Significance & Implications >> Future Plan

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Move	Extract
Reference to objectives and procedure	In order to evaluate the overall efficacy of the reordering algorithms, the reordered versions were compared with the reference orderings. (…)
Statement of key preliminary results	As expected, the proposed algorithms worked for both J1k and D2k datasets. (…) They also worked for D400, where the largest and statistically significant improvement was over 25%. (…)
Discussion about the significance of the results	This result demonstrates that in short extracts (≤ 5 sentences) of news articles, global coherence alone cannot guarantee overall coherence. This further shows that the lack of local coherence cannot be compensated for by the global coherence-maximized textual ordering.
Additional comments about the significance of the results	Empirically the connected components algorithms are more effective for either very short or very long source documents (D400 and D2k), whereas the modified k-means algorithms are more effective for medium-length documents (J1k), where the most significant improvement is found.
Implication of the result	Therefore, local tuning works best for “middle-type” news articles (…) and the choice of an optimal reordering algorithm is sensitive to the stylistic features of source documents.