Hello,

I know what a theory is... but when discussing theoretical implications are you necessarily discussing a specific theory?

You see, my paper has a number of implications. Some are practical (so clearly - practical implications). And then some are not practical but relate to what the findings actually means for doing future research and for our understanding of the topic. Am I right to see these are "theoretical implications"?

I feel like a nitwit asking this (can I not see the wood for the trees anymore?) but would be glad of some advice from people who have written their thesis/papers.

Thanks
Tudor

Hi Tudor,

My thesis is a 'bog standard' type of thesis, and I have written and presented a conference paper but not published journal papers from this yet. (I will shortly though). So my response refers to my thesis, which is pretty much finished (just waiting on some final corrections from second supervisor).

I ended up just having an 'Implications of the study' section in my Chapter 8 Conclusion. There were both implications for practice, and some that questioned theory and policy but I didn't separate them out into separate sections, as in this final chapter I was trying to reduce the number of sections overall.

I indicated within the text and the section clearly whether the implication impacted on practice or theory but did not give these their own subheadings but synthesised it all together into the one section, which consisted of several paragraphs. (They did get their own paragraph though).

I don't know if this is helpful or not, just passing on what I have done. The heading 'theoretical implications' seems fine to me. I imagine your supervisors might comment if they didn't like it (mine certainly have over the process). Thinking as I write, if your implication is criticising a specific theoretical stance that is widely adhered to in practice, it might need more than a short comment however and a fairly rigorous analysis?

Thanks Pjlu. It does help to hear what other have done. I will see what my supervisors say about it anyway. To be honest it probably doesn't deserve a whole section (most of the implications are practical for this paper), and could be summed up in a sentence or two that says theories need to consider this because we found it played a role.

Thanks again :)