Presenting quantitative research results—either in talks or papers—requires
some planning and practice. In both cases the results should be embedded in
a larger narrative that both describes a social process of interest and what you
did to discover that process. In writing papers, the first step involves preparing
a set of tables and figures that will appear in the paper. This summary
of the data analysis provides you with a structure for your paper. The main
parts of the paper—the introduction, literature review, data and methods
discussion, results section, and discussion—should all be geared to motivating
and explaining this analysis. Indeed, a strong quantitative research paper
will contain no digression or superfluous material. Every sentence, table, and
figure will advance the thesis of the paper.