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How to Write a Conclusion for Research Papers (with Examples)

The conclusion of a research paper is a crucial section that plays a significant role in the overall impact and effectiveness of your research paper. However, this is also the section that typically receives less attention compared to the introduction and the body of the paper. The conclusion serves to provide a concise summary of the key findings, their significance, their implications, and a sense of closure to the study. Discussing how can the findings be applied in real-world scenarios or inform policy, practice, or decision-making is especially valuable to practitioners and policymakers. The research paper conclusion also provides researchers with clear insights and valuable information for their own work, which they can then build on and contribute to the advancement of knowledge in the field.

The research paper conclusion should explain the significance of your findings within the broader context of your field. It restates how your results contribute to the existing body of knowledge and whether they confirm or challenge existing theories or hypotheses. Also, by identifying unanswered questions or areas requiring further investigation, your awareness of the broader research landscape can be demonstrated.

Remember to tailor the research paper conclusion to the specific needs and interests of your intended audience, which may include researchers, practitioners, policymakers, or a combination of these.

Table of Contents

What is a conclusion in a research paper, summarizing conclusion, editorial conclusion, externalizing conclusion, importance of a good research paper conclusion, how to write a conclusion for your research paper, research paper conclusion examples.

• How to write a research paper conclusion with Paperpal? 

Frequently Asked Questions

A conclusion in a research paper is the final section where you summarize and wrap up your research, presenting the key findings and insights derived from your study. The research paper conclusion is not the place to introduce new information or data that was not discussed in the main body of the paper. When working on how to conclude a research paper, remember to stick to summarizing and interpreting existing content. The research paper conclusion serves the following purposes: 1

• Warn readers of the possible consequences of not attending to the problem.
• Recommend specific course(s) of action.
• Restate key ideas to drive home the ultimate point of your research paper.
• Provide a “take-home” message that you want the readers to remember about your study.

Types of conclusions for research papers

In research papers, the conclusion provides closure to the reader. The type of research paper conclusion you choose depends on the nature of your study, your goals, and your target audience. I provide you with three common types of conclusions:

A summarizing conclusion is the most common type of conclusion in research papers. It involves summarizing the main points, reiterating the research question, and restating the significance of the findings. This common type of research paper conclusion is used across different disciplines.

An editorial conclusion is less common but can be used in research papers that are focused on proposing or advocating for a particular viewpoint or policy. It involves presenting a strong editorial or opinion based on the research findings and offering recommendations or calls to action.

An externalizing conclusion is a type of conclusion that extends the research beyond the scope of the paper by suggesting potential future research directions or discussing the broader implications of the findings. This type of conclusion is often used in more theoretical or exploratory research papers.

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The conclusion in a research paper serves several important purposes:

• Offers Implications and Recommendations : Your research paper conclusion is an excellent place to discuss the broader implications of your research and suggest potential areas for further study. It’s also an opportunity to offer practical recommendations based on your findings.
• Provides Closure : A good research paper conclusion provides a sense of closure to your paper. It should leave the reader with a feeling that they have reached the end of a well-structured and thought-provoking research project.
• Leaves a Lasting Impression : Writing a well-crafted research paper conclusion leaves a lasting impression on your readers. It’s your final opportunity to leave them with a new idea, a call to action, or a memorable quote.

Writing a strong conclusion for your research paper is essential to leave a lasting impression on your readers. Here’s a step-by-step process to help you create and know what to put in the conclusion of a research paper: 2

• Research Statement : Begin your research paper conclusion by restating your research statement. This reminds the reader of the main point you’ve been trying to prove throughout your paper. Keep it concise and clear.
• Key Points : Summarize the main arguments and key points you’ve made in your paper. Avoid introducing new information in the research paper conclusion. Instead, provide a concise overview of what you’ve discussed in the body of your paper.
• Address the Research Questions : If your research paper is based on specific research questions or hypotheses, briefly address whether you’ve answered them or achieved your research goals. Discuss the significance of your findings in this context.
• Significance : Highlight the importance of your research and its relevance in the broader context. Explain why your findings matter and how they contribute to the existing knowledge in your field.
• Implications : Explore the practical or theoretical implications of your research. How might your findings impact future research, policy, or real-world applications? Consider the “so what?” question.
• Future Research : Offer suggestions for future research in your area. What questions or aspects remain unanswered or warrant further investigation? This shows that your work opens the door for future exploration.
• Closing Thought : Conclude your research paper conclusion with a thought-provoking or memorable statement. This can leave a lasting impression on your readers and wrap up your paper effectively. Avoid introducing new information or arguments here.
• Proofread and Revise : Carefully proofread your conclusion for grammar, spelling, and clarity. Ensure that your ideas flow smoothly and that your conclusion is coherent and well-structured.

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Remember that a well-crafted research paper conclusion is a reflection of the strength of your research and your ability to communicate its significance effectively. It should leave a lasting impression on your readers and tie together all the threads of your paper. Now you know how to start the conclusion of a research paper and what elements to include to make it impactful, let’s look at a research paper conclusion sample.

How to write a research paper conclusion with Paperpal?

A research paper conclusion is not just a summary of your study, but a synthesis of the key findings that ties the research together and places it in a broader context. A research paper conclusion should be concise, typically around one paragraph in length. However, some complex topics may require a longer conclusion to ensure the reader is left with a clear understanding of the study’s significance. Paperpal, an AI writing assistant trusted by over 800,000 academics globally, can help you write a well-structured conclusion for your research paper. 

• Sign Up or Log In: Create a new Paperpal account or login with your details.  
• Navigate to Features : Once logged in, head over to the features’ side navigation pane. Click on Templates and you’ll find a suite of generative AI features to help you write better, faster.  
• Generate an outline: Under Templates, select ‘Outlines’. Choose ‘Research article’ as your document type.  
• Select your section: Since you’re focusing on the conclusion, select this section when prompted.  
• Choose your field of study: Identifying your field of study allows Paperpal to provide more targeted suggestions, ensuring the relevance of your conclusion to your specific area of research. 
• Provide a brief description of your study: Enter details about your research topic and findings. This information helps Paperpal generate a tailored outline that aligns with your paper’s content. 
• Generate the conclusion outline: After entering all necessary details, click on ‘generate’. Paperpal will then create a structured outline for your conclusion, to help you start writing and build upon the outline.  
• Write your conclusion: Use the generated outline to build your conclusion. The outline serves as a guide, ensuring you cover all critical aspects of a strong conclusion, from summarizing key findings to highlighting the research’s implications. 
• Refine and enhance: Paperpal’s ‘Make Academic’ feature can be particularly useful in the final stages. Select any paragraph of your conclusion and use this feature to elevate the academic tone, ensuring your writing is aligned to the academic journal standards. 

By following these steps, Paperpal not only simplifies the process of writing a research paper conclusion but also ensures it is impactful, concise, and aligned with academic standards. Sign up with Paperpal today and write your research paper conclusion 2x faster .  

The research paper conclusion is a crucial part of your paper as it provides the final opportunity to leave a strong impression on your readers. In the research paper conclusion, summarize the main points of your research paper by restating your research statement, highlighting the most important findings, addressing the research questions or objectives, explaining the broader context of the study, discussing the significance of your findings, providing recommendations if applicable, and emphasizing the takeaway message. The main purpose of the conclusion is to remind the reader of the main point or argument of your paper and to provide a clear and concise summary of the key findings and their implications. All these elements should feature on your list of what to put in the conclusion of a research paper to create a strong final statement for your work.

A strong conclusion is a critical component of a research paper, as it provides an opportunity to wrap up your arguments, reiterate your main points, and leave a lasting impression on your readers. Here are the key elements of a strong research paper conclusion: 1. Conciseness : A research paper conclusion should be concise and to the point. It should not introduce new information or ideas that were not discussed in the body of the paper. 2. Summarization : The research paper conclusion should be comprehensive enough to give the reader a clear understanding of the research’s main contributions. 3 . Relevance : Ensure that the information included in the research paper conclusion is directly relevant to the research paper’s main topic and objectives; avoid unnecessary details. 4 . Connection to the Introduction : A well-structured research paper conclusion often revisits the key points made in the introduction and shows how the research has addressed the initial questions or objectives. 5. Emphasis : Highlight the significance and implications of your research. Why is your study important? What are the broader implications or applications of your findings? 6 . Call to Action : Include a call to action or a recommendation for future research or action based on your findings.

The length of a research paper conclusion can vary depending on several factors, including the overall length of the paper, the complexity of the research, and the specific journal requirements. While there is no strict rule for the length of a conclusion, but it’s generally advisable to keep it relatively short. A typical research paper conclusion might be around 5-10% of the paper’s total length. For example, if your paper is 10 pages long, the conclusion might be roughly half a page to one page in length.

In general, you do not need to include citations in the research paper conclusion. Citations are typically reserved for the body of the paper to support your arguments and provide evidence for your claims. However, there may be some exceptions to this rule: 1. If you are drawing a direct quote or paraphrasing a specific source in your research paper conclusion, you should include a citation to give proper credit to the original author. 2. If your conclusion refers to or discusses specific research, data, or sources that are crucial to the overall argument, citations can be included to reinforce your conclusion’s validity.

The conclusion of a research paper serves several important purposes: 1. Summarize the Key Points 2. Reinforce the Main Argument 3. Provide Closure 4. Offer Insights or Implications 5. Engage the Reader. 6. Reflect on Limitations

Remember that the primary purpose of the research paper conclusion is to leave a lasting impression on the reader, reinforcing the key points and providing closure to your research. It’s often the last part of the paper that the reader will see, so it should be strong and well-crafted.

• Makar, G., Foltz, C., Lendner, M., & Vaccaro, A. R. (2018). How to write effective discussion and conclusion sections. Clinical spine surgery, 31(8), 345-346.
• Bunton, D. (2005). The structure of PhD conclusion chapters.  Journal of English for academic purposes ,  4 (3), 207-224.

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Writing a Research Paper Conclusion | Step-by-Step Guide

Published on October 30, 2022 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on April 13, 2023.

• Restate the problem statement addressed in the paper
• Summarize your overall arguments or findings
• Suggest the key takeaways from your paper

The content of the conclusion varies depending on whether your paper presents the results of original empirical research or constructs an argument through engagement with sources .

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Table of contents

Step 1: restate the problem, step 2: sum up the paper, step 3: discuss the implications, research paper conclusion examples, frequently asked questions about research paper conclusions.

The first task of your conclusion is to remind the reader of your research problem . You will have discussed this problem in depth throughout the body, but now the point is to zoom back out from the details to the bigger picture.

While you are restating a problem you’ve already introduced, you should avoid phrasing it identically to how it appeared in the introduction . Ideally, you’ll find a novel way to circle back to the problem from the more detailed ideas discussed in the body.

For example, an argumentative paper advocating new measures to reduce the environmental impact of agriculture might restate its problem as follows:

Meanwhile, an empirical paper studying the relationship of Instagram use with body image issues might present its problem like this:

“In conclusion …”

Avoid starting your conclusion with phrases like “In conclusion” or “To conclude,” as this can come across as too obvious and make your writing seem unsophisticated. The content and placement of your conclusion should make its function clear without the need for additional signposting.

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Having zoomed back in on the problem, it’s time to summarize how the body of the paper went about addressing it, and what conclusions this approach led to.

Depending on the nature of your research paper, this might mean restating your thesis and arguments, or summarizing your overall findings.

Argumentative paper: Restate your thesis and arguments

In an argumentative paper, you will have presented a thesis statement in your introduction, expressing the overall claim your paper argues for. In the conclusion, you should restate the thesis and show how it has been developed through the body of the paper.

Briefly summarize the key arguments made in the body, showing how each of them contributes to proving your thesis. You may also mention any counterarguments you addressed, emphasizing why your thesis holds up against them, particularly if your argument is a controversial one.

Don’t go into the details of your evidence or present new ideas; focus on outlining in broad strokes the argument you have made.

Empirical paper: Summarize your findings

In an empirical paper, this is the time to summarize your key findings. Don’t go into great detail here (you will have presented your in-depth results and discussion already), but do clearly express the answers to the research questions you investigated.

Describe your main findings, even if they weren’t necessarily the ones you expected or hoped for, and explain the overall conclusion they led you to.

Having summed up your key arguments or findings, the conclusion ends by considering the broader implications of your research. This means expressing the key takeaways, practical or theoretical, from your paper—often in the form of a call for action or suggestions for future research.

Argumentative paper: Strong closing statement

An argumentative paper generally ends with a strong closing statement. In the case of a practical argument, make a call for action: What actions do you think should be taken by the people or organizations concerned in response to your argument?

If your topic is more theoretical and unsuitable for a call for action, your closing statement should express the significance of your argument—for example, in proposing a new understanding of a topic or laying the groundwork for future research.

Empirical paper: Future research directions

In a more empirical paper, you can close by either making recommendations for practice (for example, in clinical or policy papers), or suggesting directions for future research.

Whatever the scope of your own research, there will always be room for further investigation of related topics, and you’ll often discover new questions and problems during the research process .

Finish your paper on a forward-looking note by suggesting how you or other researchers might build on this topic in the future and address any limitations of the current paper.

Full examples of research paper conclusions are shown in the tabs below: one for an argumentative paper, the other for an empirical paper.

• Argumentative paper
• Empirical paper

While the role of cattle in climate change is by now common knowledge, countries like the Netherlands continually fail to confront this issue with the urgency it deserves. The evidence is clear: To create a truly futureproof agricultural sector, Dutch farmers must be incentivized to transition from livestock farming to sustainable vegetable farming. As well as dramatically lowering emissions, plant-based agriculture, if approached in the right way, can produce more food with less land, providing opportunities for nature regeneration areas that will themselves contribute to climate targets. Although this approach would have economic ramifications, from a long-term perspective, it would represent a significant step towards a more sustainable and resilient national economy. Transitioning to sustainable vegetable farming will make the Netherlands greener and healthier, setting an example for other European governments. Farmers, policymakers, and consumers must focus on the future, not just on their own short-term interests, and work to implement this transition now.

As social media becomes increasingly central to young people’s everyday lives, it is important to understand how different platforms affect their developing self-conception. By testing the effect of daily Instagram use among teenage girls, this study established that highly visual social media does indeed have a significant effect on body image concerns, with a strong correlation between the amount of time spent on the platform and participants’ self-reported dissatisfaction with their appearance. However, the strength of this effect was moderated by pre-test self-esteem ratings: Participants with higher self-esteem were less likely to experience an increase in body image concerns after using Instagram. This suggests that, while Instagram does impact body image, it is also important to consider the wider social and psychological context in which this usage occurs: Teenagers who are already predisposed to self-esteem issues may be at greater risk of experiencing negative effects. Future research into Instagram and other highly visual social media should focus on establishing a clearer picture of how self-esteem and related constructs influence young people’s experiences of these platforms. Furthermore, while this experiment measured Instagram usage in terms of time spent on the platform, observational studies are required to gain more insight into different patterns of usage—to investigate, for instance, whether active posting is associated with different effects than passive consumption of social media content.

If you’re unsure about the conclusion, it can be helpful to ask a friend or fellow student to read your conclusion and summarize the main takeaways.

• Do they understand from your conclusion what your research was about?
• Are they able to summarize the implications of your findings?
• Can they answer your research question based on your conclusion?

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The conclusion of a research paper has several key elements you should make sure to include:

• A restatement of the research problem
• A summary of your key arguments and/or findings
• A short discussion of the implications of your research

No, it’s not appropriate to present new arguments or evidence in the conclusion . While you might be tempted to save a striking argument for last, research papers follow a more formal structure than this.

All your findings and arguments should be presented in the body of the text (more specifically in the results and discussion sections if you are following a scientific structure). The conclusion is meant to summarize and reflect on the evidence and arguments you have already presented, not introduce new ones.

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The conclusion is intended to help the reader understand why your research should matter to them after they have finished reading the paper. A conclusion is not merely a summary of the main topics covered or a re-statement of your research problem, but a synthesis of key points derived from the findings of your study and, if applicable based on your analysis, explain new areas for future research. For most college-level research papers, two or three well-developed paragraphs is sufficient for a conclusion, although in some cases, more paragraphs may be required in describing the key findings and highlighting their significance.

Conclusions. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Conclusions. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University.

Importance of a Good Conclusion

A well-written conclusion provides important opportunities to demonstrate to the reader your understanding of the research problem. These include:

• Presenting the last word on the issues you raised in your paper . Just as the introduction gives a first impression to your reader, the conclusion offers a chance to leave a lasting impression. Do this, for example, by highlighting key findings in your analysis that advance new understanding about the research problem, that are unusual or unexpected, or that have important implications applied to practice.
• Summarizing your thoughts and conveying the larger significance of your study . The conclusion is an opportunity to succinctly re-emphasize  your answer to the "So What?" question by placing the study within the context of how your research advances past studies about the topic.
• Identifying how a gap in the literature has been addressed . The conclusion can be where you describe how a previously identified gap in the literature [first identified in your literature review section] has been addressed by your research and why this contribution is significant.
• Demonstrating the importance of your ideas . Don't be shy. The conclusion offers an opportunity to elaborate on the impact and significance of your findings. This is particularly important if your study approached examining the research problem from an unusual or innovative perspective.
• Introducing possible new or expanded ways of thinking about the research problem . This does not refer to introducing new information [which should be avoided], but to offer new insight and creative approaches for framing or contextualizing the research problem based on the results of your study.

Bunton, David. “The Structure of PhD Conclusion Chapters.” Journal of English for Academic Purposes 4 (July 2005): 207–224; Conclusions. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Kretchmer, Paul. Twelve Steps to Writing an Effective Conclusion. San Francisco Edit, 2003-2008; Conclusions. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Assan, Joseph. "Writing the Conclusion Chapter: The Good, the Bad and the Missing." Liverpool: Development Studies Association (2009): 1-8.

Structure and Writing Style

I.  General Rules

The general function of your paper's conclusion is to restate the main argument . It reminds the reader of your main argument(s) strengths and reiterates the most important evidence supporting those argument(s). Do this by clearly summarizing the context, background, and the necessity of examining the research problem in relation to an issue, controversy, or a gap found in the literature. However, make sure that your conclusion is not simply a repetitive summary of the findings. This reduces the impact of the argument(s) you have developed in your paper.

When writing the conclusion to your paper, follow these general rules:

• Present your conclusions in clear, concise language. Re-state the purpose of your study, then describe how your findings differ or support those of other studies and why [i.e., describe what were the unique, new, or crucial contributions your study made to the overall research about your topic].
• Do not simply reiterate your findings or the discussion of your results. Provide a synthesis of arguments presented in the paper to show how these converge to address the research problem and the overall objectives of your study.
• Indicate opportunities for future research if you haven't already done so in the discussion section of your paper. Highlighting the need for further research provides the reader with evidence that you have an in-depth awareness of the research problem but that further analysis should take place beyond the scope of your investigation.

Consider the following points to help ensure your conclusion is presented well:

• If the argument or purpose of your paper is complex, you may need to summarize the argument for your reader.
• If, prior to your conclusion, you have not yet explained the significance of your findings or if you are proceeding inductively, use the end of your paper to describe your main points and explain their significance.
• Move from a detailed to a general level of consideration that returns the topic to the context provided by the introduction or within a new context that emerges from the data [this is opposite of the introduction, which begins with general discussion of the context and ends with a detailed description of the research problem]. 

The conclusion also provides a place for you to persuasively and succinctly restate the research problem, given that the reader has now been presented with all the information about the topic . Depending on the discipline you are writing in, the concluding paragraph may contain your reflections on the evidence presented. However, the nature of being introspective about the research you have conducted will depend on the topic and whether your professor wants you to express your observations in this way. If asked to think introspectively about the topic, do not delve into idle speculation. Being introspective means looking within yourself as an author to try and understand an issue more deeply, not to guess at possible outcomes or make up scenarios not supported by the evidence.

II.  Developing a Compelling Conclusion

Although an effective conclusion needs to be clear and succinct, it does not need to be written passively or lack a compelling narrative. Strategies to help you move beyond merely summarizing the key points of your research paper may include any of the following:

• If your paper addresses a critical, contemporary problem, warn readers of the possible consequences of not attending to the problem proactively based on the evidence presented in your study.
• Recommend a specific course or courses of action that, if adopted, could address a specific problem in practice or in the development of new knowledge leading to positive change.
• Cite a relevant quotation or expert opinion already noted in your paper in order to lend authority and support to the conclusion(s) you have reached [a good source would be from a source cited in your literature review].
• Explain the consequences of your research in a way that elicits action or demonstrates urgency in seeking change.
• Restate a key statistic, fact, or visual image to emphasize the most important finding of your paper.
• If your discipline encourages personal reflection, illustrate your concluding point by drawing from your own life experiences.
• Return to an anecdote, an example, or a quotation that you presented in your introduction, but add further insight derived from the findings of your study; use your interpretation of results from your study to recast it in new or important ways.
• Provide a "take-home" message in the form of a succinct, declarative statement that you want the reader to remember about your study.

III. Problems to Avoid

Failure to be concise Your conclusion section should be concise and to the point. Conclusions that are too lengthy often have unnecessary information in them. The conclusion is not the place for details about your methodology or results. Although you should give a summary of what was learned from your research, this summary should be relatively brief, since the emphasis in the conclusion is on the implications, evaluations, insights, and other forms of analysis that you make. Strategies for writing concisely can be found here .

Failure to comment on larger, more significant issues In the introduction, your task was to move from the general [topic studied within the field of study] to the specific [the research problem]. However, in the conclusion, your task is to move the discussion from specific [your research problem] back to a general discussion framed around the implications and significance of your findings [i.e., how your research contributes new understanding or fills an important gap in the literature]. In short, the conclusion is where you should place your research within a larger context [visualize the structure of your paper as an hourglass--start with a broad introduction and review of the literature, move to the specific method of analysis and the discussion, conclude with a broad summary of the study's implications and significance].

Failure to reveal problems and negative results Negative aspects of the research process should never be ignored. These are problems, deficiencies, or challenges encountered during your study. They should be summarized as a way of qualifying your overall conclusions. If you encountered negative or unintended results [i.e., findings that are validated outside the research context in which they were generated], you must report them in the results section and discuss their implications in the discussion section of your paper. In the conclusion, use negative or surprising results as an opportunity to explain their possible significance and/or how they may form the basis for future research.

Failure to provide a clear summary of what was learned In order to discuss how your research fits within your field of study [and possibly the world at large], you need to summarize briefly and succinctly how it contributes to new knowledge or a new understanding about the research problem. This element of your conclusion may be only a few sentences long, but it often represents the key takeaway for your reader.

Failure to match the objectives of your research Often research objectives in the social and behavioral sciences change while the research is being carried out due to unforeseen factors or unanticipated variables. This is not a problem unless you forget to go back and refine the original objectives in your introduction. As these changes emerge they must be documented so that they accurately reflect what you were trying to accomplish in your research [not what you thought you might accomplish when you began].

Resist the urge to apologize If you've immersed yourself in studying the research problem, you presumably should know a good deal about it [perhaps even more than your professor!]. Nevertheless, by the time you have finished writing, you may be having some doubts about what you have produced. Repress those doubts! Don't undermine your authority as a researcher by saying something like, "This is just one approach to examining this problem; there may be other, much better approaches that...." The overall tone of your conclusion should convey confidence to the reader concerning the validity and realiability of your research.

Assan, Joseph. "Writing the Conclusion Chapter: The Good, the Bad and the Missing." Liverpool: Development Studies Association (2009): 1-8; Concluding Paragraphs. College Writing Center at Meramec. St. Louis Community College; Conclusions. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina; Conclusions. The Writing Lab and The OWL. Purdue University; Freedman, Leora  and Jerry Plotnick. Introductions and Conclusions. The Lab Report. University College Writing Centre. University of Toronto; Leibensperger, Summer. Draft Your Conclusion. Academic Center, the University of Houston-Victoria, 2003; Make Your Last Words Count. The Writer’s Handbook. Writing Center. University of Wisconsin Madison; Miquel, Fuster-Marquez and Carmen Gregori-Signes. “Chapter Six: ‘Last but Not Least:’ Writing the Conclusion of Your Paper.” In Writing an Applied Linguistics Thesis or Dissertation: A Guide to Presenting Empirical Research . John Bitchener, editor. (Basingstoke,UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), pp. 93-105; Tips for Writing a Good Conclusion. Writing@CSU. Colorado State University; Kretchmer, Paul. Twelve Steps to Writing an Effective Conclusion. San Francisco Edit, 2003-2008; Writing Conclusions. Writing Tutorial Services, Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning. Indiana University; Writing: Considering Structure and Organization. Institute for Writing Rhetoric. Dartmouth College.

Writing Tip

Don't Belabor the Obvious!

Avoid phrases like "in conclusion...," "in summary...," or "in closing...." These phrases can be useful, even welcome, in oral presentations. But readers can see by the tell-tale section heading and number of pages remaining that they are reaching the end of your paper. You'll irritate your readers if you belabor the obvious.

Assan, Joseph. "Writing the Conclusion Chapter: The Good, the Bad and the Missing." Liverpool: Development Studies Association (2009): 1-8.

Another Writing Tip

New Insight, Not New Information!

Don't surprise the reader with new information in your conclusion that was never referenced anywhere else in the paper. This is why the conclusion rarely has citations to sources that haven't been referenced elsewhere in your paper. If you have new information to present, add it to the discussion or other appropriate section of the paper. Note that, although no new information is introduced, the conclusion, along with the discussion section, is where you offer your most "original" contributions in the paper; the conclusion is where you describe the value of your research, demonstrate that you understand the material that you have presented, and position your findings within the larger context of scholarship on the topic, including describing how your research contributes new insights to that scholarship.

Assan, Joseph. "Writing the Conclusion Chapter: The Good, the Bad and the Missing." Liverpool: Development Studies Association (2009): 1-8; Conclusions. The Writing Center. University of North Carolina.

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How to Write Conclusion in Research Paper (With Example)

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Writing a strong conclusion is a crucial part of any research paper. It provides a final opportunity to summarize your key findings, restate your thesis, and leave a lasting impression on your reader. However, many students struggle with how to effectively write a conclusion that ties everything together.

In this article, we’ll provide some tips and strategies for writing a compelling conclusion, along with an example to help illustrate the process. By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your research paper ends on a high note and leaves a lasting impact on your audience.

Why Conclusion is Important in Research Paper

The conclusion is the final chapter of your research paper journey, sealing the deal on all your hard work. After thoroughly laying out your main points and arguments in the body paragraphs, the conclusion gives you a chance to tie everything together into a neat, cohesive package.

More than just summarizing your key ideas, an effective conclusion shows readers the bigger picture of your research and why it matters. It highlights the significance of your findings , explains how your work contributes to the field, and points to potential future directions stemming from your study.

The conclusion is your last chance to leave a lasting impact and compel readers to seriously consider your perspective. With the right phrasing and tone, you can amplify the power of your work. Choose your words wisely, be persuasive yet diplomatic, and guide readers to walk away feeling satisfied by your reasoning and conclusions.

Approach the conclusion thoughtfully, reflect deeply on the larger meaning of your research, and craft impactful final sentences that linger in the reader’s mind. Wield your conclusion skillfully to make your research paper transformative and memorable. A powerful, thoughtful conclusion inspires action, sparks curiosity, and showcases the valuable insights you bring to the academic conversation.

How to Write Conclusion for a Research Paper

Crafting an effective conclusion in research paper requires thoughtful consideration and deliberate effort. After presenting your findings and analysis, the conclusion allows you to close your work with a flourish.

Begin by briefly summarizing the main points of your paper, provide a quick recap of your thesis, methodology, and key findings without repeating too much details from the body. Use this as an opportunity to reinforce your main argument and position within the field.

Next, highlight the significance and implications of your research. What new insights or perspectives does your work contribute? Discuss how your findings can inform future studies or practical applications. Convey why your research matters and how it moves the needle forward in your discipline.

Address any limitations of the current study and propose potential next steps that could be taken by you or other scholars to further the research. This shows readers you have critically considered ways to continue expanding knowledge in this area.

Finally, close with a memorable statement that captures the essence of your work and leaves a lasting impression. This could be an apt metaphor, a call to action, or a thought provoking question for readers to ponder. Choose words that will resonate with your audience and demonstrate the impact of your research.

With care and creativity, your conclusion can elevate your paper and cement your scholarly authority. Revisit often as you write to ensure your conclusion accomplishes its purpose, to convince readers of the value of your study and ignite further progress in your field.

What Not to Include in a Research Paper Conclusion

1. New Data: In a research paper conclusion, avoid presenting new data or evidence that wasn’t discussed earlier in the paper. It’s the time to summarize, analyze, or explain the significance of data already provided, not to introduce new material.

2. Irrelevant Details: The conclusion is not the spot for extraneous details not directly related to your research or its findings. Be focused and concise, tying up the paper neatly without going off-target.

3. Personal Opinions: Try not to include personal beliefs or subjective opinions unless your paper calls for it. Stick to empirical evidence, facts, and objective interpretation of your research.

4. Vague Summarization: While summarizing is the essence of a conclusion, too much of a broad or vague narrative should be avoided. Your conclusion shouldn’t be a generalization of the research but should specifically state your significant findings and their implications.

5. Overstating Results: No matter how exhilarating your research may be, don’t exaggerate its implications or general applications. Remember to acknowledge limitations or potential areas for future exploration.

6. Procrastinating: Refrain from leaving unresolved issues for future research. The conclusion is meant to tie up loose ends, not create more.

7. Repetition: While some reiteration is necessary, completely repeating the same phrases and points made previously can make your conclusion sound boring and redundant. Instead, try to look at your argument from a fresh, summarized perspective.

8. Apologies: Do not apologize or discredit your research efforts. Avoid phrases like, “This research was only” or “Although the study wasn’t able to prove”. A conclusion should confidently present your research results even if they’re unexpected or differ from your hypothesis.

9. Impractical Recommendations: While it’s often good to suggest directions for future research, don’t go overboard by proposing impractical or unachievable goals. Keep your recommendations relevant to your findings and within the realm of possibility.

10. Too Much Jargon: While it’s appropriate to use technical language throughout your research paper, remember the conclusion might be what a layman reads. Stick with a happy medium of professional lingo intermixed with understandable, plain language.

Also Check:   Conclusion for Internship Report

Conclusion in research Example

Research: Impact of Social Media Use on Adolescent Mental Health.

In conclusion, this study has demonstrated the significant impact of social media use on adolescent mental health. Our findings indicate that frequent social media use is associated with higher levels of anxiety and depression, particularly among girls. These results underscore the need for continued research in this area, as well as the development of interventions and strategies to promote healthy social media use among young people. By addressing this issue, we can help to ensure the well-being and success of the next generation.

Conclusion in Research Paper Example

Research: Impact of climate change on coral reefs in Florida.

In conclusion, the effect of climate change on Florida’s coral reefs presents a significant concern for the state’s ecosystem and economy. The data collected during this investigation reveal a direct correlation between rising ocean temperatures and coral bleaching events. This pattern has increased over the past decade, indicating that coral reefs’ health directly correlates with climate change effects.

Example Conclusion in Research

Research: The Influence of Social Media on Consumer Buying Behavior

Social media significantly shapes consumer buying behavior. Its power to influence is seen through peer opinions, online advertising, and brand communication. However, with the potential for misinformation, the reliability and quality of information are areas for further study. Despite these concerns, businesses leveraging social media can effectively boost their market reach and sales.

Research Paper Conclusion

Research: Impacts of Remote Work on Employee Productivity

Remote work has been found to notably enhance employee productivity. The elimination of commuting time, flexible scheduling, and comforting environment contribute to this increase. However, factors like home distractions and technological difficulties offer room for further research. Yet, integrating remote work can be a strategic pathway towards improved efficiency and workforce satisfaction.

These examples demonstrate techniques for crafting an effective conclusion in a research paper, providing your thesis with a powerful final statement. Now it is your turn to compose a strong concluding paragraph that summarizes your findings, reinforces your central argument, and leaves readers with a memorable takeaway.

Remember to restate your thesis without repeating it verbatim, highlight your main points without introducing new evidence, and end on a note that conveys the significance of your research. With a clear structure and purpose, proper grammar, and impactful writing, you can give your paper the persuasive conclusion it deserves.

Writing an effective conclusion takes practice, but by honing these skills you will elevate your academic writing to new heights. Use the strategies outlined here as a guide, believe in your capabilities, and soon you will be adept at concluding research papers powerfully. The final paragraph is your last chance to impress readers, so make it count!

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Writing An Accurate Conclusion In A Research Study: 5 Step-By-Step Guide

Introduction.

When conducting a research study, it is crucial to provide a well-written and accurate conclusion. The conclusion serves as the final piece of the puzzle, summarizing the main findings, interpreting the results, addressing limitations, providing recommendations, and reiterating the importance of the study. A well-crafted conclusion in a research study not only helps to solidify the research study but also allows readers to understand the significance of the findings and their implications.

In this step-by-step guide, we will walk you through the process of writing an accurate conclusion in a research study. By following these steps, you will be able to effectively summarize your findings, analyze the results, acknowledge any limitations, offer recommendations, and emphasize the importance of your study. So let’s dive in and learn how to write the most accurate conclusion in a research study.

Understanding the Role of a Conclusion In A Research Study

The conclusion of a research study plays a crucial role in summarizing the main findings and providing closure to the study. It is not simply a restatement of the research problem or a summary of the main topics covered. Instead, it is a synthesis of the key points derived from the study. The purpose of a conclusion is to leave a lasting impression on the reader and prompt reflection and contemplation. A well-crafted conclusion goes beyond summarizing the findings; it emphasizes the importance of the study and provides recommendations for future research or action. In essence, the conclusion serves as the final opportunity to convey the significance of the research and its contribution to the field.

Step 1: Summarize the Main Findings

The first step in writing an accurate conclusion for a research study is to summarize the main findings. This is an essential part of the conclusion as it allows the reader to quickly understand the key results of the study. To summarize the main findings, you should revisit the research statement or question that guided your study. Identify the key points or outcomes that answer the research question or support the research statement. In this step, you should avoid introducing new information or discussing any implications or recommendations. The focus should solely be on summarizing the main findings of the study.

It is important to be concise and clear in your summary. Use clear and straightforward language to communicate the main findings without unnecessary jargon or technical terms. By summarizing the main findings in this step, you provide a foundation for the rest of the conclusion, allowing the reader to understand the key results before delving into the interpretation, limitations, and recommendations.

Step 2: Interpret the Results

After summarizing the main findings, the next step in writing an accurate conclusion in a research study is to interpret the results. Interpreting the results involves analyzing the data collected during the study and drawing meaningful conclusions from it. To interpret the results effectively, it is important to consider the research question or hypothesis and compare the findings with existing literature reviews or previous studies. This step allows researchers to determine the significance of their findings and understand the implications of the results. It is essential to provide a clear and concise interpretation of the results, avoiding any biased or subjective opinions. Researchers should objectively analyze the data and present the findings in an unbiased manner.

Additionally, it is important to discuss any unexpected or contradictory results and provide possible explanations for them. By interpreting the results accurately, researchers can provide a comprehensive understanding of the study’s outcomes and contribute to the existing body of knowledge in the field.

Step 3: Address Limitations

Identify the limitations of your research study and describe them in detail. Explain why these limitations exist and how they may have affected the results. Assess the impact of each limitation in relation to the overall findings and conclusions of your study. If appropriate, suggest ways to overcome these limitations in future research.

Step 4: Provide Recommendations

After interpreting the results of your research study, it is important to provide recommendations based on your findings. When providing recommendations, it is crucial to be specific and relevant to the evidence you have uncovered. Your recommendations should stem directly from your work and address any gaps or limitations identified in your study.

Consider recommending a specific course of action or suggesting changes that can be implemented based on your research findings. This could include proposing new strategies, interventions, or policies that can improve the current situation or address the research problem . To lend authority to your recommendations, you can cite relevant quotations or expert opinions that support the conclusions you have reached. This helps to strengthen the validity and credibility of your recommendations.

Additionally, you can also make recommendations for future research. Identify areas that require further investigation or suggest new research questions that can build upon your study. This demonstrates the significance and potential impact of your research in advancing knowledge in the field. Remember to present your recommendations in clear and concise language. Avoid simply restating your findings or the discussion of your results. Instead, provide actionable and practical suggestions that can be implemented based on your research findings.

By providing well-thought-out recommendations, you not only contribute to the existing body of knowledge but also provide guidance for future researchers and practitioners in the field.

Step 5: Reiterate the Importance of the Study

The final step in writing an accurate conclusion in a research study is to reiterate the importance of the study. This step is crucial as it reminds the readers of the significance and relevance of the research. To reiterate the importance of the study, you can start by summarizing the main findings and their implications. Highlight the key contributions and insights that your research has provided to the field. Emphasize how your study has addressed a gap in the existing knowledge and how it has advanced the understanding of the topic.

Furthermore, discuss the practical implications of your research. Explain how the findings can be applied in real-world scenarios or how they can contribute to decision-making processes. This will demonstrate the practical value of your study and its potential impact on various stakeholders.

Additionally, consider discussing the theoretical implications of your research. Explain how your findings have contributed to existing theories or have opened up new avenues for further research. This will highlight the academic significance of your study and its potential to shape future research in the field.

Finally, conclude by emphasizing the overall importance of your study in the broader context. Discuss how your research has added to the body of knowledge and how it has the potential to influence future research, policies, or practices. This will leave a lasting impression on the readers and reinforce the significance of your study.

By reiterating the importance of the study in the conclusion, you provide a strong and compelling ending to your research paper . Including this in the conclusion of a research study helps readers understand the value of your research and its implications, leaving them with a clear sense of its significance and relevance.

In conclusion, writing an accurate conclusion in a research study is crucial for summarizing the main findings, interpreting the results, addressing limitations, providing recommendations, and reiterating the importance of the study. By following the step-by-step guide outlined in this article, researchers can ensure that their conclusions are comprehensive, concise, and impactful.

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How to write a conclusion for a research paper

Embarking on the final stage of how to write a conclusion to a research paper requires a meticulous approach. A compelling conclusion reiterates the research problem, summarizes the findings, and sows seeds for future scholarly endeavors while underlining implications and offering actionable insights. Let’s explore the structured path of how to end a research paper meaningfully.

Revisiting the Issue: Ensuring a Holistic Circle

Returning to the research problem not only brings your reader back to the core of your investigation but also sets a concise stage for a compelling, cohesive closure, reflecting on the journey and explorations undertaken throughout the paper.

Articulating a Comprehensive Summary

Knowing how to close a research paper effectively often pivots on your capability to tie together the various insights and findings in a coherent, succinct manner. It’s vital to summarize them in a digestible format that reinforces the major takeaways, bridging initial hypotheses, or questions with the findings unveiled through the research.

For Argumentative Papers

· Reasserting Thesis and Arguments : Your conclusion should resound with the initial thesis and arguments, affirming them through the explored evidence and discussions.

· A Summative Reflection : The summary should encapsulate your major arguments and debates, offering a coherent narrative that underscores your thesis and the evidential support presented throughout the paper.

For Empirical Papers

· Highlighting Key Discoveries : Ensure that the critical findings of your research are spotlighted, delineating the patterns and insights that have been unearthed through your investigation.

· Summarizing with Clarity : Deliver a summary that kindles the memory of your findings, ensuring their significance and relation to initial hypotheses are clearly articulated.

Delving into Implications and Future Pathways

Implications lend your research palpable relevance, offering bridges between your findings and the broader theoretical or practical landscapes of your field.

Culminating Argumentative Papers

· Creating a Robust Closing Statement : Conclude with a potent statement that echoes with your main thesis and arguments, ensuring your research firmly integrates within the broader academic dialogue.

· Elevating with a Call to Action : If your research identifies specific issues or pinpoints a need for particular interventions, ensuring a call to action is integrated becomes vital.

Paving Future Avenues in Empirical Papers

• Signposting Future Research : Highlight the trajectories for future exploration, identifying any gaps or limitations in your study that might seed further investigations.

Offering Practical Conclusion Examples

Providing tangible examples often brings theoretical concepts to life, offering a practical lens through which the steps to concluding research can be viewed.

An Argumentative Paper Conclusion Example

"Despite the exponential advancements in renewable energy technologies, global reliance on fossil fuels persistently intertwines with numerous economic and policy-driven barriers. This research aimed to illuminate and navigate through these barriers towards establishing a viable pathway for sustainable energy transitions."

An Empirical Paper Conclusion Example

"In exploring the psychosocial impacts of urban green spaces on inhabitants, a significant correlation between mental wellness and frequent interaction with urban greenery was identified. While the findings hold implications for urban planning and mental health interventions, they also spotlight potential avenues for further exploration, particularly in dissecting the sociodemographic nuances sculpting these correlations."

In conclusion, crafting a comprehensive, succinct, and impactful research paper conclusion revolves around restating the problem, summarizing findings, discussing implications, and illustrating with examples. This ensures your research resonates, offering a firm, coherent closure and establishing a springboard for future scholarly explorations.

Frequently Asked Questions

• What is the primary purpose of a conclusion in a research paper? The conclusion serves to summarize the key findings and arguments of the research paper, restate the research problem, discuss the implications of the findings, and potentially propose directions for future research. It provides closure by bringing together all the points discussed in the paper and demonstrating the overall significance of the study.
• How can I restate the research problem in the conclusion without sounding repetitive? To avoid sounding repetitive, try to rephrase the research problem by providing a new perspective or angle that was developed through the findings of the study. Connect it with the evidence or arguments presented in the body of the paper, thereby showcasing a matured understanding of the issue as the research unfolded.
• How do I ensure that my conclusion effectively summarizes the main findings of my research? Begin by revisiting your research objectives or questions and then succinctly present the most vital findings that address these aspects. Be clear and direct, ensuring each point directly relates to the objectives or questions. Avoid introducing new information and focus on providing a brief, coherent summary that encapsulates the essence of your research outcomes.
• Is it appropriate to introduce new ideas or points in the conclusion section of a research paper? No, the conclusion should not introduce new ideas or points that were not discussed in the body of the paper. It is meant to summarize and synthesize the information already provided, offering a wrap-up of the research findings and discussing their broader implications.
• Can the conclusion of a research paper include a call to action? Yes, including a call to action in the conclusion is appropriate, especially in research that addresses societal issues, policy matters, or practical problems. A call to action urges readers or the relevant stakeholders to act in a specific way, often providing clear, actionable steps that are derived from the research findings and discussions. This can provide practical applications for your research and potentially inspire change or further studies.

Note that the specifics might vary slightly based on the research field or the nature of the research, but these general guidelines and answers typically hold true across disciplines.

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What is APA Style?

Why use apa style in high school, how do i get started with apa style, what apa style products are available, your help wanted.

APA Style is the most common writing style used in college and career. Its purpose is to promote excellence in communication by helping writers create clear, precise, and inclusive sentences with a straightforward scholarly tone. It addresses areas of writing such as how to

• format a paper so it looks professional;
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How to Write a Research Paper Conclusion With Example 

Learn how to write a research paper conclusion in this post. 

Last updated on Mar 2nd, 2024

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Table of Contents

The conclusion is the last part of every research paper or document. Without a conclusion, your research paper will not be complete. A few days ago, I got some comments on our website about how to write a research paper conclusion. Some are interested in knowing about research paper conclusion examples.

Are you finding something where you can get a research paper conclusion?

If you want to get an idea about how to write a research paper conclusion, you are welcome to visit this post. If you explore this post, you will also find a research paper conclusion example.

What is a research paper conclusion?

The research paper’s conclusion is the final goal for the reader. In a research paper conclusion, is where all the information, arguments, and evidence represented throughout the paper converge. The reader concludes to find closure and a sense of fulfillment. Usually, the conclusion should not be taken lightly; it is a basic opportunity to leave a lasting impression on the reader.

Additionally, the conclusion isn’t only a repetition of the introduction or a summary of the main points. It goes beyond that by giving a more profound understanding of the research findings and their suggestions. It permits the writer to reflect on the significance of their work and its potential contributions to the field.

Types of research paper conclusions

Here we are discussing three types of conclusions that you include in your research paper. 

1. Summarizing conclusion: A summarizing conclusion is the last part of the research paper, where you repeat the most important points or arguments discussed, giving closure and leaving a lasting impression on your readers. It’s a concise repetition of key thoughts or findings.

2. Externalizing conclusion: An externalizing conclusion is when you take ideas from outside of the main discussion to provide a broader point of view or relevance to the topic at hand. It includes interfacing the subject matter with larger contexts, such as real-world implications, future contemplations, or related fields of study.

3. Editorial conclusion : An editorial conclusion is when you share your personal experiences and your own opinions on the topic that you discuss.

Tips on How to Write a Research Paper Conclusion 

There are so many writers, especially students, who are confused about how to write a research paper conclusion. So you can find several tips in the research paper’s conclusion. 

Related: How to Write a Research Paper Introduction

1. Repeat the thesis

When you write a research paper conclusion, repeating the thesis statement is a vital step that reminds readers of the research paper’s central focus. However, it should not be a verbatim repetition of the introduction.

By repeating the thesis concisely and clearly, you’ll effectively tie together the most talked-about thoughts within the body of the paper and emphasize the centrality of the research question. In any case, keep in mind that the repeated thesis should capture the essence of the paper and leave the reader with a clear understanding of the topic and its significance.

2. Summarize the main points

To write an impactful research paper conclusion, summarizing the main points discussed within the body of the paper is essential. This last section gives the author a final opportunity to highlight the importance of their research findings.

Be that as it may, it is similarly important to maintain a strategic distance from reiterating information already discussed within the body of the paper. Instead, you should synthesize and summarize the most significant points and key findings. By doing so, the conclusion can effectively tie together the research findings and give a clear understanding of the significance of the research point.

3. Discuss the results or find research

The next step is to discuss the results or findings of the research. The discussion of the results or findings should not be a repetition of the information presented within the body of the paper.

Instead, it should give a more in-depth analysis of the significance of the findings. This will involve explaining why the findings are critical, what they mean within the setting of the research question, and how they contribute to the field or area of study.

Furthermore, it’s crucial to address any limitations or weaknesses in the research paper’s conclusion. This could provide a more adjusted and nuanced understanding of the research and its suggestions. By doing so, the reader will have a better understanding of the scope and context of the study, which can eventually improve the validity and legitimacy of the research.

4. Highlight importance

Emphasize the importance of your research paper conclusion and how it contributes to the broader field of study.

5. Do not include new points in conclusion 

While you write a research paper conclusion, be careful that you do not include any new ideas or thoughts in your paper. If you include new points in your research paper, the conclusion will become more confusing. There will be no similarity between your whole body of paragraphs and your conclusion.

6. Making Closure

Make your research paper conclusion with a sense of closure, giving the reader a feeling that the paper has come to a fulfilling end. 

Research Paper Conclusion Examples

Now I am sharing with all of you some effective examples of research paper conclusions. It will help you better understand how to write a research paper conclusion.

To sum up, with proper treatment and support, people with aphasia can considerably improve their communication skills. Speech therapy, additional and alternative communication methods, support groups, parents, and family’s self-involvement, and motivation can play significant roles in recovering aphasia patients. By managing these effects and providing a proper treatment approach, people with aphasia can improve their ability to communicate, their lifestyle, and their interactions with society and family.

Apart from being aware that we should not neglect those who are aphasia patients, We must remember that they are humans like us; they are also part of our lives and society. They also need equal rights in their lives. We should also be aware that the people around us treat and respect them well.

The overview of film education and training scenarios in Bangladesh shows that the film industry has significant challenges to workforce development. The difficulties in cinema education and training differ considerably from those in other mediums. The film business in Bangladesh is still active. It is comparable to a candle blazing in a strong wind. The candle, however, is still burning. Though it would be absurd to predict a fast comeback for the film business, one can be sure that it will.

There will be plenty of high-caliber films in the future. Only commitment and a passion for movies are necessary to realize that dream. Often, we see ourselves in the mirror that is cinema, according to Alejandro “Gonzalez Inarritu.” Our favorite pleasure has always been watching movies.

Example 3: 

In terms of error dealing, in both classes I observed that the teacher provided numerous suggestions orally every time the students were unable to form any sentences or words, and he also assisted them in this situation so they could respond accurately. Even though accuracy was appreciated, the teacher did not discourage students from making mistakes, and it aligns with the principle of CLT. However, in the first class, during the reading task, the instructor immediately provided correct pronunciation, which falls under the principle of GTM (Larsen-Freeman and Anderson, 2011). 

Hence, the primary emphasis within the observed classroom resides in the cultivation of both speaking and reading abilities, as well as the refinement of pronunciation and critical thinking skills through the integration of communicative language teaching and the direct method. Additionally, the incorporation of the Grammar-Translation Method (GTM) to address students’ errors has been notable. These principal methodologies collectively proved highly efficacious in enhancing students’ abilities according to their level of learning. Given the successful attainment of the intended learning outcomes through the implementation of these teaching methodologies, my perspective aligns with the belief that the teacher effectively realized the objectives set forth for each lesson.

Example 4: 

To conclude, it can be said that the movie Pirates of the Caribbean is a great creation of magic and illusion, as well as a mixture of social status, prestige, and power. This movie can not only be seen for entertainment purposes, but it can also give a clear picture of that era’s economic colonialism. It also shows the distinction between upper-class and lower-class societies. It also shows some linguistic variation in that colonial society. All in all, it was a great movie to analyze for the researchers about social class and power.

To conclude, it can be said that audiovisual materials can be very effective in learning pronunciation. This is important for language learners and educators to consider when designing a language curriculum. Audiovisuals can improve the learning of different languages. It’s easier to learn an accurate pronunciation of any language. Though it’s a very useful thing for learning pronunciation, it should be noted that audiovisual materials should not get all of the priority among the other teaching methods. It can be used as an alternative so that pronunciation is more clear to the learners.

FAQs About Research Paper Conclusion

What should be included in the conclusion of a research paper.

In a research paper conclusion, you should include in summary of the main points, your opinion, recommendation, and focus on the main arguments. 

What’s the recommended length for an ideal conclusion?

Seven to eight lines are enough to reach an ideal conclusion. Although sometimes it may be more or less depending on the context.

Conclusion 

Writing a conclusion for a research paper is pivotal, serving as the final opportunity to leave an enduring impression on your readers. By concisely summarizing the key focuses and findings, repeating the thesis statement, and refraining from introducing new information, an effective conclusion is shaped. Highlighting the significance of the research, addressing initial goals, and discussing implications contribute to its depth. 

Besides, interfacing back to the introduction and providing closure ensures a sense of completeness. Eventually, through fastidious editing and modification, a well-polished conclusion is achieved, setting the paper’s purpose and clearing out a resounding impression on the audience.

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9 Best Research Paper Conclusion Examples

Explore 9 best research paper conclusion examples to craft compelling endings for your academic work.

Mar 2, 2024

Crafting a compelling Research Paper Conclusion Example is akin to putting the finishing touches on a masterpiece. This crucial section serves as the culmination of your hard work, providing a concise summary of your findings while leaving a lasting impact on your audience.  By understanding the Research Paper Structure and employing effective strategies, you can create a conclusion that not only reinforces your main points but also sparks further discussion and reflection. Dive into this blog to uncover insightful examples and expert tips to enhance your research paper conclusions.

Table of Contents

What is the secret behind writing a great research paper conclusion, common mistakes to avoid when writing a research paper conclusion, supercharge your researching ability with otio — try otio for free today.

The secret to writing a great research paper conclusion lies in its ability to tie together all the threads of your argument succinctly and convincingly. Your conclusion should not only summarize the key points of your paper but also provide a sense of closure and leave a lasting impression on your readers. To achieve this, reiterate the main points of your paper in a clear and concise manner, emphasizing the significance of your findings . Avoid introducing new information in the conclusion; instead, focus on reinforcing the main ideas presented in the body of your paper. Furthermore, consider the broader implications of your research. Discuss how your findings contribute to the existing body of knowledge in your field and suggest avenues for future research. By highlighting the relevance of your work, you can leave your readers with a sense of the importance of your research. Lastly, end your conclusion with a thought-provoking statement or a call to action that encourages further reflection on the topic. This can leave a lasting impact on your readers and make your research paper conclusion memorable.

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In the realm of academic writing , a well-crafted conclusion is essential to tie together all the ideas presented in a research paper. Here are nine examples of compelling research paper conclusions that effectively summarize the key points of the study: 1. In conclusion, this study highlights the importance of incorporating sustainable practices in urban planning to mitigate the impacts of climate change. By integrating green spaces, renewable energy sources, and efficient transportation systems, cities can become more resilient to environmental challenges. 2. In summary, the findings of this research underscore the significance of early childhood education in promoting cognitive development and school readiness. Investing in high-quality preschool programs can have long-term benefits for children, families, and society as a whole. 3. To conclude, this paper has shed light on the complex relationship between technology use and mental health among adolescents. While digital devices offer numerous benefits, it is crucial for parents, educators, and policymakers to implement strategies that promote healthy screen time habits and emotional well-being. 4. In closing, the results of this study suggest that mindfulness-based interventions can be effective in reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression among college students. By incorporating mindfulness practices into campus wellness programs, universities can support the mental health needs of their students. 5. Overall, this research emphasizes the importance of cultural competence in healthcare delivery to diverse patient populations. By fostering awareness, sensitivity, and communication skills among healthcare providers, we can improve patient outcomes and promote health equity. 6. In summary, the evidence presented in this paper supports the hypothesis that exercise has a positive impact on cognitive function in older adults. Incorporating regular physical activity into daily routines can enhance brain health and contribute to overall well-being in aging populations. 7. In conclusion, the findings of this study point to the potential benefits of implementing telecommuting policies in organizations to enhance employee work-life balance and job satisfaction. Embracing remote work arrangements can lead to increased productivity and employee retention. 8. To sum up, this research underscores the need for increased public awareness and policy action to address the global issue of plastic pollution in oceans. By reducing single-use plastics, promoting recycling initiatives, and supporting marine conservation efforts, we can protect marine ecosystems for future generations. 9. In closing, the results of this study highlight the significance of parental involvement in children's education for academic success. By fostering positive parent-child relationships, setting high expectations, and providing support at home, parents can positively impact their children's learning outcomes.

• Research Paper Outline Template • Research Paper Introduction Example • How Long Should A Research Paper Be • How To Quickly Write A Research Paper • Tips For Writing Research Papers • 7 Steps In Writing A Research Paper

When crafting a research paper conclusion, there are several common mistakes that researchers should steer clear of to ensure the effectiveness and impact of their conclusions.

Lack of a Clear Summary

One common mistake is failing to provide a concise and clear summary of the key points discussed in the paper. The conclusion should reiterate the main findings and arguments without introducing new information. It serves as a reminder to the reader of the significance of the research presented.

Introducing New Information

Another pitfall to avoid is introducing new ideas or information in the conclusion. The conclusion is not the place to delve into new findings or arguments. Doing so can confuse the reader and detract from the overall coherence of the paper.

Overly Repetitive

While it is essential to summarize the main points, being overly repetitive can diminish the impact of the conclusion. Researchers should strive to restate key findings in a concise and fresh manner to keep the reader engaged.

Lack of a Strong Closing Statement

A powerful conclusion should culminate in a strong closing statement that leaves a lasting impression on the reader. Researchers should avoid ending abruptly or trailing off without a definitive closing remark that emphasizes the importance of the research.

Failure to Connect Back to the Introduction

A well-crafted conclusion should tie back to the introduction of the paper, creating a cohesive narrative that highlights the progression of the research. Failing to make this connection can make the conclusion feel disjointed from the rest of the paper.

Inadequate Call to Action

Lastly, researchers should not overlook the importance of including a compelling call to action in the conclusion. Whether it is suggesting avenues for further research or proposing practical applications of the findings, a strong call to action can leave the reader with a sense of closure and direction.

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How to Start a Conclusion in Research? [With Examples]

The examples below are from 47,803 full-text PubMed research papers that I analyzed in order to explore common ways to start a Conclusion section.

The research papers included in this analysis were selected at random from those uploaded to PubMed Central between the years 2016 and 2021. Note that I used the BioC API to download the data (see the References section below).

Examples of how to start a Conclusion section

The Conclusion section should remind the reader of the most important finding and its implications. [Source: How to Write & Publish a Research Paper: Step-by-Step Guide ]

It can start with a sentence that:

1. Restates the objective of the study

For example:

“ The aim of this study was to develop novel type of nanobiomaterials for biomedical applications with advanced properties using only biocompatible components.” Source: taken from the conclusion section of this PubMed article

2. Emphasizes the strength of the study

“ To the best of our knowledge, this was the first study that analyzed children’s energy balance, in both a school setting and a summer camp, with the aim of assessing whether the dietary intake of children was adequate to cover their needs during both school and summer camp days.” Source: taken from the conclusion section of this PubMed article

3. Summarizes the most important finding of the study

“ The results of this study demonstrate that early application of combined echinocandins/TMP-SMX treatment for AIDS-PCP patients can improve patient prognosis, increase their survival rate, and decrease their mortality rate.” Source: taken from the conclusion section of this PubMed article

Common words used to start a conclusion

Here’s a decision tree that shows the most popular words used at the start of a conclusion:

5.74% of studies start the Conclusion section with: “In conclusion”

In our sample of 47,803 research papers, 2,744 (5.74%) Conclusion sections started with the words: “In conclusion”.

“ In conclusion, we have identified the radical species that promoted the stereoinversion of vinylic compounds during the preparation of potassium vinyltrifluoroborate salts.” Source: taken from the conclusion section of this PubMed article

“ In conclusion, liver cell injury might occur in the early stage of COVID-19.” Source: taken from the conclusion section of this PubMed article

“ In conclusion, the results of the present study indicate the potential use of themedicinal species for oral candidosis prevention or treatment and emphasize the action of the crude C. sativum essential oil, which demonstrates a strong activity against Candida spp. planktonic cells and C. albicans biofilm.” Source: taken from the conclusion section of this PubMed article

0.07% of Conclusions end with a question

Only 34 out of 47,803 (0.07%) of the Conclusion sections in our sample ended with a question.

“Future experiments may seek the answers to a number of important questions: Are the effects of light quality on plants permanent ? What portion of the blue spectrum is actually needed for the growth of grape plantlets in vitro ? Do the physiological and transcriptional responses of grape plantlets grown in vivo and in vitro differ ? “ Source: taken from the conclusion section of this PubMed article

“The above observations raise an intriguing question: how SAHase, the protein with two Rossmann-folds, had evolved during the development of life on Earth ? “ Source: taken from the conclusion section of this PubMed article

“Researchers using these tools will be able to confirm and verify any hypothesis in HD and answer the question why and how do striatal neurons primarily die ? “ Source: taken from the conclusion section of this PubMed article

• Comeau DC, Wei CH, Islamaj Doğan R, and Lu Z. PMC text mining subset in BioC: about 3 million full text articles and growing,  Bioinformatics , btz070, 2019.

Further reading

• How to Write & Publish a Research Paper: Step-by-Step Guide
• How Long Should a Research Paper Be? Data from 61,519 Examples
• How Many References to Cite? Based on 96,685 Research Papers
• How Old Should References Be? Based on 3,823,919 Examples

How to Write a Good Conclusion Paragraph (+30 Examples)

A good conclusion paragraph is the lasting impression you want to leave with your reader.

Here is a quick summary of how to write a good conclusion paragraph:

Write a good conclusion paragraph by summarizing key points, restating your thesis, and providing a final thought or call to action. Ensure it wraps up your main ideas, reinforces your argument, and leaves the reader with something to ponder.

This ultimate guide will walk you through the steps to craft an effective conclusion, along with 30 examples to inspire you.

5 Steps for Writing a Good Conclusion Paragraph

Table of Contents

There are five main steps to writing a good conclusion.

Let’s go through each step

1. Understand the Purpose

The conclusion is your final opportunity to leave an impact.

It should tie together your main ideas, reinforce your message, and give the reader a sense of closure.

Wrap Up Your Main Ideas

The conclusion should succinctly wrap up the main points of your writing. Think of it as a summary that captures the essence of your arguments without going into detailed explanations.

This helps reinforce what you have discussed and ensures that the reader remembers the core message.

Reinforce Your Thesis

Your thesis statement is the foundation of your writing.

In the conclusion, restate it in a new way to reinforce your central argument. This reminds the reader of the purpose of your writing and underscores its significance.

Give a Sense of Closure

A good conclusion gives a sense of closure to the reader. It signals that the discussion has come to an end and that all points have been addressed. This helps the reader feel that the piece is complete and that their time was well-spent.

Leave the Reader with Something to Think About

The best conclusions go beyond merely summarizing the content.

They leave the reader with a final thought or reflection that stays with them. This could be a call to action, a prediction about the future, or a thought-provoking question that encourages further reflection on the topic.

2. Summarize Key Points

Briefly summarize the key points discussed in the body of your text.

Avoid introducing new information. This helps the reader recall the main ideas.

Brief Summary

The summary should be concise and to the point. Highlight the main ideas discussed in your writing without going into detailed explanations. This helps refresh the reader’s memory of your key points.

Avoid New Information

Introducing new information in the conclusion can confuse the reader. The conclusion is not the place to present new arguments or data. Stick to summarizing what has already been discussed.

Recall Main Ideas

Summarizing the key points helps the reader recall the main ideas of your writing. This reinforces the message and ensures that the reader takes away the most important information from your piece.

“In conclusion, adopting sustainable practices, reducing waste, and promoting renewable energy are essential steps towards a greener future.”

3. Restate the Thesis

Restate your thesis in a new way. This reinforces your argument without sounding repetitive.

Restate, Don’t Repeat

Restating the thesis means expressing it in a new way.

Avoid repeating it verbatim.

Instead, rephrase it to reinforce your argument and show that you have successfully argued your point throughout the piece.

Reinforce the Argument

Restating the thesis helps reinforce your central argument. It reminds the reader of the purpose of your writing and underscores its significance.

Provide Closure Restating the thesis in the conclusion gives a sense of closure.

It signals that the discussion has come full circle and that you have addressed your initial argument.

“By implementing these strategies, we can significantly reduce our carbon footprint and protect our planet for future generations.”

4. Provide a Final Thought

Offer a final thought or reflection to leave a lasting impression. This could be a call to action, a prediction, or a thought-provoking question.

Final Thought or Reflection

A final thought or reflection can leave a lasting impression on the reader.

It shows that you are not just summarizing your points but also offering a deeper insight or perspective.

Call to Action

A call to action encourages the reader to take the next step.

It motivates them to act based on the information or arguments presented in your writing.

Prediction or Question

A prediction about the future or a thought-provoking question can engage the reader and encourage further reflection. This leaves the reader with something to think about even after they have finished reading.

“As we move forward, it’s crucial to remember that every small effort counts. Together, we can make a difference.”

5. Use a Call to Action (if applicable)

If your piece is meant to persuade or encourage action, include a call to action. This motivates the reader to take the next step.

Motivate the Reader

A call to action motivates the reader to take the next step.

It encourages them to act based on the information or arguments presented in your writing.

Encourage Action

Including a call to action is especially important in persuasive writing. It encourages the reader to act on the information provided and make a change or take a specific action.

Provide Clear Steps

A good call to action provides clear steps for the reader to follow.

It should be specific and actionable, guiding the reader on what to do next.

“Join us in making a positive change. Start today by reducing your plastic use and spreading awareness about environmental conservation.”

Check out this video about how to write a good conclusion:

How to Write a Good Conclusion for an Essay

Writing a good conclusion for an essay involves summarizing your main points, restating your thesis, and providing a final thought or reflection.

Here’s how:

• Summarize Main Points : Briefly recap the key points discussed in the body of your essay.
• Restate Thesis : Paraphrase your thesis statement to reinforce your argument.
• Final Thought : Offer a final insight, question, or call to action to leave a lasting impression.

This approach ensures your essay feels complete and leaves the reader with a clear understanding of your argument.

How to Write a Good Conclusion for an Argumentative Essay

A strong conclusion for an argumentative essay should not only summarize the main points and restate the thesis but also emphasize the importance of your argument.

Follow these steps:

• Summarize Arguments : Briefly outline the main arguments presented.
• Restate Thesis : Rephrase your thesis to highlight its significance.
• Address Counterarguments : Acknowledge opposing viewpoints and reinforce why your argument is stronger.
• Call to Action : Encourage the reader to take action or reconsider their position.

How to Write a Good Conclusion for a Research Paper

Crafting a good conclusion for a research paper involves summarizing your findings, discussing their implications, and suggesting future research.

Here’s a guide:

• Summarize Findings : Recap the key results of your research.
• Discuss Implications : Explain the significance of your findings and how they contribute to the field.
• Restate Research Question : Reiterate the research question and how your findings address it.
• Suggest Future Research : Propose areas for further investigation.

This format provides a comprehensive and thoughtful conclusion that underscores the importance of your research and its potential impact.

30 Examples of Good Conclusion Paragraphs

Let’s explore some good examples of good conclusions.

Example 1: Environmental Essay

“In conclusion, the preservation of our natural resources is not just a necessity but a responsibility we owe to future generations. By taking small steps today, we can ensure a healthier planet tomorrow.”

Example 2: Technology Article

“As we embrace the advancements in technology, it is vital to remain vigilant about privacy and security. Staying informed and proactive can help us navigate the digital landscape safely.”

Example 3: Health and Wellness Blog

“Ultimately, achieving a balanced lifestyle requires dedication and mindfulness. By prioritizing our well-being, we can lead healthier and more fulfilling lives.”

Example 4: Business Report

“In summary, the market analysis indicates a positive trend for our product. With strategic planning and execution, we can capitalize on these opportunities and drive growth.”

Example 5: Education Essay

“In the end, fostering a love for learning in students is the key to their success. By creating engaging and supportive educational environments, we can inspire the next generation of leaders.”

Example 6: Travel Blog

“To conclude, exploring new destinations enriches our lives and broadens our perspectives. Embrace the adventure and discover the beauty of our world.”

Example 7: Personal Development Article

“In the final analysis, personal growth is a lifelong journey. Embrace challenges, learn from experiences, and continue striving to become the best version of yourself.”

Example 8: Marketing Case Study

“In closing, the data clearly shows that targeted marketing strategies significantly improve customer engagement and sales. By refining our approach, we can achieve even greater success.”

Example 9: Historical Analysis

“In conclusion, the events of the past continue to shape our present and future. Understanding history is essential to making informed decisions and avoiding past mistakes.”

Example 10: Scientific Research Paper

“Ultimately, the findings of this study contribute to our understanding of the subject and open the door for further research. Continued exploration in this field is vital for advancing knowledge.”

Example 11: Political Commentary

“In the end, civic engagement is crucial for a functioning democracy. Stay informed, participate in discussions, and exercise your right to vote.”

Example 12: Fashion Blog

“To wrap up, fashion is a powerful form of self-expression. Embrace your unique style and let your wardrobe reflect your personality.”

Example 13: Food Blog

“In conclusion, cooking at home not only saves money but also allows you to experiment with flavors and ingredients. Start your culinary journey today and discover the joys of homemade meals.”

Example 14: Sports Article

“Ultimately, teamwork and perseverance are the foundations of success in sports. Keep pushing your limits and strive for excellence on and off the field.”

Example 15: Literature Analysis

“In summary, the themes explored in this novel resonate with readers and offer valuable insights into the human condition. Its timeless message continues to inspire and provoke thought.”

Example 16: Parenting Blog

“In the end, raising children requires patience, love, and commitment. Cherish the moments, and remember that every effort you make shapes their future.”

Example 17: Finance Article

“To conclude, financial planning is essential for securing your future. Start today by setting clear goals and creating a budget that aligns with your aspirations.”

Example 18: Career Advice Blog

“In conclusion, building a successful career takes time and dedication. Stay focused, seek opportunities for growth, and never stop learning.”

Example 19: Fitness Blog

“Ultimately, regular exercise and a balanced diet are key to maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Stay motivated, and remember that every step counts towards your fitness goals.”

Example 20: DIY Blog

“In summary, DIY projects are a rewarding way to personalize your space and learn new skills. Get creative and start your next project today.”

Example 21: Relationship Advice

“In the end, strong relationships are built on communication, trust, and mutual respect. Nurture your connections and strive for harmony in your interactions.”

Example 22: Pet Care Blog

“To wrap up, responsible pet ownership involves understanding your pet’s needs and providing them with a loving home. Invest in their well-being, and they’ll reward you with unconditional love.”

Example 23: Environmental Science Paper

“In conclusion, addressing climate change requires global cooperation and immediate action. Every effort counts, and together we can create a sustainable future.”

Example 24: Technology Review

“Ultimately, this gadget offers impressive features that enhance convenience and efficiency. Consider it for your next tech upgrade.”

Example 25: Psychology Article

“In summary, understanding human behavior is crucial for improving mental health and well-being. Continue exploring this fascinating field for more insights.”

Example 26: Gardening Blog

“In the end, gardening is a therapeutic and rewarding hobby that connects us with nature. Start your garden today and enjoy the benefits of fresh produce and beautiful blooms.”

Example 27: Home Improvement Article

“To conclude, home improvement projects can significantly enhance your living space and increase property value. Plan carefully and enjoy the transformation.”

Example 28: Social Media Marketing

“In conclusion, effective social media marketing requires consistency, creativity, and engagement. Develop a strategy that resonates with your audience and watch your brand grow.”

Example 29: Automotive Review

“Ultimately, this vehicle combines performance, style, and safety. Take it for a test drive and experience its capabilities firsthand.”

Example 30: Music Blog

“In summary, music has the power to evoke emotions and bring people together. Explore different genres and find the soundtrack to your life.”

Tips for Writing a Strong Conclusion

Here are some simple but good tips for writing a powerful conclusion:

• Keep it Concise – A good conclusion should be short and to the point. Avoid unnecessary details and focus on wrapping up your main ideas.
• Use Clear Language – Ensure your language is clear and easy to understand. Avoid jargon and complex sentences.
• Be Consistent – Maintain the same tone and style as the rest of your text. Consistency helps create a seamless reading experience.
• End on a Positive Note – Whenever possible, end with a positive or uplifting message. This leaves the reader with a good impression.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

There are some common mistakes that many writers make when crafting their conclusions.

• Introducing New Information – Don’t introduce new ideas or arguments in the conclusion. This can confuse the reader and dilute your main points.
• Being Vague – Avoid vague statements that don’t add value. Be specific and clear in your summary.
• Repetitiveness – Don’t repeat the same points over and over. Restate your thesis and key points in a new way.
• Ignoring the Thesis – Make sure to tie your conclusion back to your thesis. This reinforces your argument and gives a sense of closure.

Final Thoughts: How to Write a Good Conclusion Paragraph

Writing a good conclusion paragraph is essential for creating a cohesive and impactful piece of writing.

By summarizing key points, restating the thesis, providing a final thought, and using a call to action, you can craft a strong conclusion that leaves a lasting impression.

Use the 30 examples provided to inspire your own writing and ensure your conclusions are always effective and engaging.

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Educational resources and simple solutions for your research journey

Discussion vs Conclusion: What is the Difference?

Understanding the difference between the discussion and conclusion sections in research papers is crucial for researchers to convey the importance of their work effectively. While both sections interpret research findings, they have distinct focuses.    

The conclusion summarizes the main points, and the discussion goes into more detail about the findings. Both are crucial components, each fulfilling its unique role in presenting and concluding a research study.   

Table of Contents

In this article, we explore these sections, guiding how to structure and articulate discussion vs conclusion clearly. Ultimately, both sections should address the question: What do the research results mean? (1)(2)  

Purpose: Discussion vs Conclusion  

The discussion section, as a comprehensive review of the research findings, plays a pivotal role in connecting all the preceding sections. It acts as a bridge, highlighting and illustrating the connections between them. Here, the author’s interpretation, analysis, and explanation of the research results matter and how they align with existing literature is crucial for the study’s continuity and significance.    

Moreover, the discussion section demands self-reflection, acknowledging the study’s limitations and identifying areas for future exploration. It deep dives into the implications of the findings, drawing meaningful conclusions from their analysis.   

On the other hand, the conclusion section serves as a concise summary of the paper’s main points. While it touches upon key aspects of the research, it does not offer the same level of depth and analysis as the discussion section.    

Rather than delving into interpretation and analysis, the conclusion section presents the essence of the study and emphasizes its significance to the reader. It acts as a final statement, leaving the reader with a clear understanding of the research’s implications without going into the details. (2)(3) 

What to include in the discussion section?

The discussion section can be divided into three parts: introduction, body, and conclusion.   

In the introduction, you present the main idea of your study without repeating what you said in the introduction section. You start with a clear statement and answer critical questions: What’s the issue? What solutions can you suggest? What’s new and innovative about your study? What contribution does it make towards resolving the problem?   

The body of the discussion section interprets your results, discusses their implications, and compares them to previous studies. You explain how your work is similar to or different from others and analyze the results thematically. You also explain why your study is essential for future research.   

In the conclusion section, you mention the strengths of your study while being objective about its limitations. You suggest future directions for research and summarize the main findings in a simple “take-home message.” (4)(5) 

What to include in the c onclusion section?

The conclusion section, as the opportunity to make a final statement on the topics discussed, is not just a summary. It’s a chance to leave a lasting impression. Just like the introduction sets the tone, the conclusion can leave a lasting impact. By highlighting key findings that shed new light on the research problem, are unexpected, or have significant practical implications, you can make your research memorable and impactful.   

Summarize your thoughts and emphasize the broader significance of your study and ideas. Use this section to elaborate on the impact of your findings, especially if your study offers a unique perspective on the research problem.   

Identify how your study fills a gap in the literature that you identified in your literature review. Explain how your research addresses this gap and adds to the understanding of the topic.   

Lastly, in the conclusion section, consider introducing new ways of thinking about the research problem based on your findings. This doesn’t mean adding new information but rather offering fresh insights. This is an opportunity to show the potential of your research to contribute to the field and inspire further studies. (6)(7) 

Discussion vs. Conclusion: Key Differences  

References:  

• Discussion and Conclusion – Springer  
• Discussion Section for Research Papers – San José State University   
• Organizing Academic Research Papers: 9. The Conclusion – Sacred Heart University  
• How to write a discussion section? – National Library of Medicine  
• How to Write the Discussion? – Springer  
• Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper – University of Southern California  
• How to Write a Conclusion for a Research Paper – Mind the Graph  
• Discussion vs Conclusion: Everything You Need to Know – FirstEditing.com  

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Academic Phrases for Writing Conclusion Section of a Research Paper

Overview |   Abstract   | Introduction | Literature Review | Materials & Methods | Results & Discussion | Conclusion & Future Work | Acknowledgements & Appendix

A research paper should end with a well-constructed conclusion. The conclusion is somewhat similar to the introduction. You restate your aims and objectives and summarize your main findings and evidence for the reader. You can usually do this in one paragraph with three main key points, and one strong take-home message. You should not present any new arguments in your conclusion. You can raise some open questions and set the scene for the next study. This is a good place to register your thoughts about possible future work. Try to explain to your readers what more could be done? What do you think are the next steps to take? What other questions warrant further investigation? Remember, the conclusion is the last part of the essay that your reader will see, so spend some time writing the conclusion so that you can end on a high note.

 The conclusion section of your research paper should include the following:

• Overall summary
• Further research

1. Overall summary

The paper concludes by arguing __ On this basis, we conclude that __ The authors concluded that __ is not confined to __ This allows the conclusion that __ The findings of this study can be understood as __ This may be considered a promising aspect of __ This may be considered a further validation of __ Remaining issues are subject of __ In summary, this paper argued that __ This aspect of the research suggested that __ In conclusion, __ seems to improve __ In summary, this paper argued that __ In conclusion, it would appear that __ The analysis leads to the following conclusions: __ It is difficult to arrive at any conclusions with regard to __ The main conclusion that can be drawn is that __ The present findings confirm __ As we have argued elsewhere __ may be considered a promising aspect of __ Ideally, these findings should be replicated in a study where __ By using __ we tested the hypothesis that __ In conclusion, __ seems to improve __ Broadly translated our findings indicate that __ This is an important finding in the understanding of the __ More generally, these basic findings are consistent with research showing that __ In addition, these findings provide additional information about __ Despite the limitations these are valuable in light of __ Overall, our results demonstrate a strong effect of __ Nevertheless, we found __ To our knowledge, this is the first report of __ Our results on __ are broadly consistent with __ The broad implication of the present research is that __ This conclusion follows from the fact that __ Collectively, our results appear consistent with __ Importantly, our results provide evidence for __ Results provide a basis for __ This experiment adds to a growing corpus of research showing __ Our data indicate that __; a result that casts a new light on __ These findings provide a potential mechanism for __ We have shown that __ Our data suggest that we still have a long way to go to __

2. Future work

Future research should consider the potential effects of __ more carefully, for example __ This assumption might be addressed in future studies. Future  research on __ might extend the explanations of __ This is very much the key component in future attempts to overcome __ In future work, investigating __ might prove important. This is desirable for future work. Future investigations are necessary to validate the kinds of conclusions that can be drawn from this study. Future studies could fruitfully explore this issue further by __ Future research is needed to delimitate __ It will be important that future research investigate __ It is a question of future research to investigate __ We believe that apart from looking for __, future research should look for __ Regardless, future research could continue to explore __ This is an issue for future research to explore. Future studies could investigate the association between __ Future studies should aim to replicate results in a larger __  Future research should be devoted to the development of __ This may constitute the object of future studies. Future research could examine __ Interesting research questions for future research that can be derived from __ In future research, more research is needed to apply and test __ This is an interesting topic for future work. Future research should further develop and confirm these initial findings by __ Future research should certainly further test whether __ As also recommended above, future research should __ Future research should examine strategically __ Future research might apply __ In addition, __ might prove an important area for future research. A number of recommendations for future research are given. Therefore, future research should be conducted in more realistic settings to __ Further research on __ issue is warranted. Further work is certainly required to disentangle these complexities in __ Looking forward, further attempts could prove quite beneficial to the literature. Further research is needed to confirm this novel finding. These result warrant further investigation via __ This provides a good starting point for discussion and further research. Further studies should investigate __ The possibility of __ warrants further investigation.

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• Published: 31 August 2024

Knowledge mapping and evolution of research on older adults’ technology acceptance: a bibliometric study from 2013 to 2023

• Xianru Shang   ORCID: orcid.org/0009-0000-8906-3216 1 ,
• Zijian Liu 1 ,
• Chen Gong 1 ,
• Zhigang Hu 1 ,
• Yuexuan Wu 1 &
• Chengliang Wang   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-2208-3508 2  

Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume  11 , Article number:  1115 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

• Science, technology and society

The rapid expansion of information technology and the intensification of population aging are two prominent features of contemporary societal development. Investigating older adults’ acceptance and use of technology is key to facilitating their integration into an information-driven society. Given this context, the technology acceptance of older adults has emerged as a prioritized research topic, attracting widespread attention in the academic community. However, existing research remains fragmented and lacks a systematic framework. To address this gap, we employed bibliometric methods, utilizing the Web of Science Core Collection to conduct a comprehensive review of literature on older adults’ technology acceptance from 2013 to 2023. Utilizing VOSviewer and CiteSpace for data assessment and visualization, we created knowledge mappings of research on older adults’ technology acceptance. Our study employed multidimensional methods such as co-occurrence analysis, clustering, and burst analysis to: (1) reveal research dynamics, key journals, and domains in this field; (2) identify leading countries, their collaborative networks, and core research institutions and authors; (3) recognize the foundational knowledge system centered on theoretical model deepening, emerging technology applications, and research methods and evaluation, uncovering seminal literature and observing a shift from early theoretical and influential factor analyses to empirical studies focusing on individual factors and emerging technologies; (4) moreover, current research hotspots are primarily in the areas of factors influencing technology adoption, human-robot interaction experiences, mobile health management, and aging-in-place technology, highlighting the evolutionary context and quality distribution of research themes. Finally, we recommend that future research should deeply explore improvements in theoretical models, long-term usage, and user experience evaluation. Overall, this study presents a clear framework of existing research in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, providing an important reference for future theoretical exploration and innovative applications.

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Introduction.

In contemporary society, the rapid development of information technology has been intricately intertwined with the intensifying trend of population aging. According to the latest United Nations forecast, by 2050, the global population aged 65 and above is expected to reach 1.6 billion, representing about 16% of the total global population (UN 2023 ). Given the significant challenges of global aging, there is increasing evidence that emerging technologies have significant potential to maintain health and independence for older adults in their home and healthcare environments (Barnard et al. 2013 ; Soar 2010 ; Vancea and Solé-Casals 2016 ). This includes, but is not limited to, enhancing residential safety with smart home technologies (Touqeer et al. 2021 ; Wang et al. 2022 ), improving living independence through wearable technologies (Perez et al. 2023 ), and increasing medical accessibility via telehealth services (Kruse et al. 2020 ). Technological innovations are redefining the lifestyles of older adults, encouraging a shift from passive to active participation (González et al. 2012 ; Mostaghel 2016 ). Nevertheless, the effective application and dissemination of technology still depends on user acceptance and usage intentions (Naseri et al. 2023 ; Wang et al. 2023a ; Xia et al. 2024 ; Yu et al. 2023 ). Particularly, older adults face numerous challenges in accepting and using new technologies. These challenges include not only physical and cognitive limitations but also a lack of technological experience, along with the influences of social and economic factors (Valk et al. 2018 ; Wilson et al. 2021 ).

User acceptance of technology is a significant focus within information systems (IS) research (Dai et al. 2024 ), with several models developed to explain and predict user behavior towards technology usage, including the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis 1989 ), TAM2, TAM3, and the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT) (Venkatesh et al. 2003 ). Older adults, as a group with unique needs, exhibit different behavioral patterns during technology acceptance than other user groups, and these uniquenesses include changes in cognitive abilities, as well as motivations, attitudes, and perceptions of the use of new technologies (Chen and Chan 2011 ). The continual expansion of technology introduces considerable challenges for older adults, rendering the understanding of their technology acceptance a research priority. Thus, conducting in-depth research into older adults’ acceptance of technology is critically important for enhancing their integration into the information society and improving their quality of life through technological advancements.

Reviewing relevant literature to identify research gaps helps further solidify the theoretical foundation of the research topic. However, many existing literature reviews primarily focus on the factors influencing older adults’ acceptance or intentions to use technology. For instance, Ma et al. ( 2021 ) conducted a comprehensive analysis of the determinants of older adults’ behavioral intentions to use technology; Liu et al. ( 2022 ) categorized key variables in studies of older adults’ technology acceptance, noting a shift in focus towards social and emotional factors; Yap et al. ( 2022 ) identified seven categories of antecedents affecting older adults’ use of technology from an analysis of 26 articles, including technological, psychological, social, personal, cost, behavioral, and environmental factors; Schroeder et al. ( 2023 ) extracted 119 influencing factors from 59 articles and further categorized these into six themes covering demographics, health status, and emotional awareness. Additionally, some studies focus on the application of specific technologies, such as Ferguson et al. ( 2021 ), who explored barriers and facilitators to older adults using wearable devices for heart monitoring, and He et al. ( 2022 ) and Baer et al. ( 2022 ), who each conducted in-depth investigations into the acceptance of social assistive robots and mobile nutrition and fitness apps, respectively. In summary, current literature reviews on older adults’ technology acceptance exhibit certain limitations. Due to the interdisciplinary nature and complex knowledge structure of this field, traditional literature reviews often rely on qualitative analysis, based on literature analysis and periodic summaries, which lack sufficient objectivity and comprehensiveness. Additionally, systematic research is relatively limited, lacking a macroscopic description of the research trajectory from a holistic perspective. Over the past decade, research on older adults’ technology acceptance has experienced rapid growth, with a significant increase in literature, necessitating the adoption of new methods to review and examine the developmental trends in this field (Chen 2006 ; Van Eck and Waltman 2010 ). Bibliometric analysis, as an effective quantitative research method, analyzes published literature through visualization, offering a viable approach to extracting patterns and insights from a large volume of papers, and has been widely applied in numerous scientific research fields (Achuthan et al. 2023 ; Liu and Duffy 2023 ). Therefore, this study will employ bibliometric methods to systematically analyze research articles related to older adults’ technology acceptance published in the Web of Science Core Collection from 2013 to 2023, aiming to understand the core issues and evolutionary trends in the field, and to provide valuable references for future related research. Specifically, this study aims to explore and answer the following questions:

RQ1: What are the research dynamics in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance over the past decade? What are the main academic journals and fields that publish studies related to older adults’ technology acceptance?

RQ2: How is the productivity in older adults’ technology acceptance research distributed among countries, institutions, and authors?

RQ3: What are the knowledge base and seminal literature in older adults’ technology acceptance research? How has the research theme progressed?

RQ4: What are the current hot topics and their evolutionary trajectories in older adults’ technology acceptance research? How is the quality of research distributed?

Methodology and materials

Research method.

In recent years, bibliometrics has become one of the crucial methods for analyzing literature reviews and is widely used in disciplinary and industrial intelligence analysis (Jing et al. 2023 ; Lin and Yu 2024a ; Wang et al. 2024a ; Xu et al. 2021 ). Bibliometric software facilitates the visualization analysis of extensive literature data, intuitively displaying the network relationships and evolutionary processes between knowledge units, and revealing the underlying knowledge structure and potential information (Chen et al. 2024 ; López-Robles et al. 2018 ; Wang et al. 2024c ). This method provides new insights into the current status and trends of specific research areas, along with quantitative evidence, thereby enhancing the objectivity and scientific validity of the research conclusions (Chen et al. 2023 ; Geng et al. 2024 ). VOSviewer and CiteSpace are two widely used bibliometric software tools in academia (Pan et al. 2018 ), recognized for their robust functionalities based on the JAVA platform. Although each has its unique features, combining these two software tools effectively constructs mapping relationships between literature knowledge units and clearly displays the macrostructure of the knowledge domains. Particularly, VOSviewer, with its excellent graphical representation capabilities, serves as an ideal tool for handling large datasets and precisely identifying the focal points and hotspots of research topics. Therefore, this study utilizes VOSviewer (version 1.6.19) and CiteSpace (version 6.1.R6), combined with in-depth literature analysis, to comprehensively examine and interpret the research theme of older adults’ technology acceptance through an integrated application of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Data source

Web of Science is a comprehensively recognized database in academia, featuring literature that has undergone rigorous peer review and editorial scrutiny (Lin and Yu 2024b ; Mongeon and Paul-Hus 2016 ; Pranckutė 2021 ). This study utilizes the Web of Science Core Collection as its data source, specifically including three major citation indices: Science Citation Index Expanded (SCIE), Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), and Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI). These indices encompass high-quality research literature in the fields of science, social sciences, and arts and humanities, ensuring the comprehensiveness and reliability of the data. We combined “older adults” with “technology acceptance” through thematic search, with the specific search strategy being: TS = (elder OR elderly OR aging OR ageing OR senile OR senior OR old people OR “older adult*”) AND TS = (“technology acceptance” OR “user acceptance” OR “consumer acceptance”). The time span of literature search is from 2013 to 2023, with the types limited to “Article” and “Review” and the language to “English”. Additionally, the search was completed by October 27, 2023, to avoid data discrepancies caused by database updates. The initial search yielded 764 journal articles. Given that searches often retrieve articles that are superficially relevant but actually non-compliant, manual screening post-search was essential to ensure the relevance of the literature (Chen et al. 2024 ). Through manual screening, articles significantly deviating from the research theme were eliminated and rigorously reviewed. Ultimately, this study obtained 500 valid sample articles from the Web of Science Core Collection. The complete PRISMA screening process is illustrated in Fig. 1 .

Presentation of the data culling process in detail.

Data standardization

Raw data exported from databases often contain multiple expressions of the same terminology (Nguyen and Hallinger 2020 ). To ensure the accuracy and consistency of data, it is necessary to standardize the raw data (Strotmann and Zhao 2012 ). This study follows the data standardization process proposed by Taskin and Al ( 2019 ), mainly executing the following operations:

(1) Standardization of author and institution names is conducted to address different name expressions for the same author. For instance, “Chan, Alan Hoi Shou” and “Chan, Alan H. S.” are considered the same author, and distinct authors with the same name are differentiated by adding identifiers. Diverse forms of institutional names are unified to address variations caused by name changes or abbreviations, such as standardizing “FRANKFURT UNIV APPL SCI” and “Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences,” as well as “Chinese University of Hong Kong” and “University of Hong Kong” to consistent names.

(2) Different expressions of journal names are unified. For example, “International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction” and “Int J Hum Comput Interact” are standardized to a single name. This ensures consistency in journal names and prevents misclassification of literature due to differing journal names. Additionally, it involves checking if the journals have undergone name changes in the past decade to prevent any impact on the analysis due to such changes.

(3) Keywords data are cleansed by removing words that do not directly pertain to specific research content (e.g., people, review), merging synonyms (e.g., “UX” and “User Experience,” “aging-in-place” and “aging in place”), and standardizing plural forms of keywords (e.g., “assistive technologies” and “assistive technology,” “social robots” and “social robot”). This reduces redundant information in knowledge mapping.

Bibliometric results and analysis

Distribution power (rq1), literature descriptive statistical analysis.

Table 1 presents a detailed descriptive statistical overview of the literature in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. After deduplication using the CiteSpace software, this study confirmed a valid sample size of 500 articles. Authored by 1839 researchers, the documents encompass 792 research institutions across 54 countries and are published in 217 different academic journals. As of the search cutoff date, these articles have accumulated 13,829 citations, with an annual average of 1156 citations, and an average of 27.66 citations per article. The h-index, a composite metric of quantity and quality of scientific output (Kamrani et al. 2021 ), reached 60 in this study.

Trends in publications and disciplinary distribution

The number of publications and citations are significant indicators of the research field’s development, reflecting its continuity, attention, and impact (Ale Ebrahim et al. 2014 ). The ranking of annual publications and citations in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance studies is presented chronologically in Fig. 2A . The figure shows a clear upward trend in the amount of literature in this field. Between 2013 and 2017, the number of publications increased slowly and decreased in 2018. However, in 2019, the number of publications increased rapidly to 52 and reached a peak of 108 in 2022, which is 6.75 times higher than in 2013. In 2022, the frequency of document citations reached its highest point with 3466 citations, reflecting the widespread recognition and citation of research in this field. Moreover, the curve of the annual number of publications fits a quadratic function, with a goodness-of-fit R 2 of 0.9661, indicating that the number of future publications is expected to increase even more rapidly.

A Trends in trends in annual publications and citations (2013–2023). B Overlay analysis of the distribution of discipline fields.

Figure 2B shows that research on older adults’ technology acceptance involves the integration of multidisciplinary knowledge. According to Web of Science Categories, these 500 articles are distributed across 85 different disciplines. We have tabulated the top ten disciplines by publication volume (Table 2 ), which include Medical Informatics (75 articles, 15.00%), Health Care Sciences & Services (71 articles, 14.20%), Gerontology (61 articles, 12.20%), Public Environmental & Occupational Health (57 articles, 11.40%), and Geriatrics & Gerontology (52 articles, 10.40%), among others. The high output in these disciplines reflects the concentrated global academic interest in this comprehensive research topic. Additionally, interdisciplinary research approaches provide diverse perspectives and a solid theoretical foundation for studies on older adults’ technology acceptance, also paving the way for new research directions.

Knowledge flow analysis

A dual-map overlay is a CiteSpace map superimposed on top of a base map, which shows the interrelationships between journals in different domains, representing the publication and citation activities in each domain (Chen and Leydesdorff 2014 ). The overlay map reveals the link between the citing domain (on the left side) and the cited domain (on the right side), reflecting the knowledge flow of the discipline at the journal level (Leydesdorff and Rafols 2012 ). We utilize the in-built Z-score algorithm of the software to cluster the graph, as shown in Fig. 3 .

The left side shows the citing journal, and the right side shows the cited journal.

Figure 3 shows the distribution of citing journals clusters for older adults’ technology acceptance on the left side, while the right side refers to the main cited journals clusters. Two knowledge flow citation trajectories were obtained; they are presented by the color of the cited regions, and the thickness of these trajectories is proportional to the Z-score scaled frequency of citations (Chen et al. 2014 ). Within the cited regions, the most popular fields with the most records covered are “HEALTH, NURSING, MEDICINE” and “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, SOCIAL”, and the elliptical aspect ratio of these two fields stands out. Fields have prominent elliptical aspect ratios, highlighting their significant influence on older adults’ technology acceptance research. Additionally, the major citation trajectories originate in these two areas and progress to the frontier research area of “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, HEALTH”. It is worth noting that the citation trajectory from “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, SOCIAL” has a significant Z-value (z = 6.81), emphasizing the significance and impact of this development path. In the future, “MATHEMATICS, SYSTEMS, MATHEMATICAL”, “MOLECULAR, BIOLOGY, IMMUNOLOGY”, and “NEUROLOGY, SPORTS, OPHTHALMOLOGY” may become emerging fields. The fields of “MEDICINE, MEDICAL, CLINICAL” may be emerging areas of cutting-edge research.

Main research journals analysis

Table 3 provides statistics for the top ten journals by publication volume in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. Together, these journals have published 137 articles, accounting for 27.40% of the total publications, indicating that there is no highly concentrated core group of journals in this field, with publications being relatively dispersed. Notably, Computers in Human Behavior , Journal of Medical Internet Research , and International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction each lead with 15 publications. In terms of citation metrics, International Journal of Medical Informatics and Computers in Human Behavior stand out significantly, with the former accumulating a total of 1,904 citations, averaging 211.56 citations per article, and the latter totaling 1,449 citations, with an average of 96.60 citations per article. These figures emphasize the academic authority and widespread impact of these journals within the research field.

Research power (RQ2)

Countries and collaborations analysis.

The analysis revealed the global research pattern for country distribution and collaboration (Chen et al. 2019 ). Figure 4A shows the network of national collaborations on older adults’ technology acceptance research. The size of the bubbles represents the amount of publications in each country, while the thickness of the connecting lines expresses the closeness of the collaboration among countries. Generally, this research subject has received extensive international attention, with China and the USA publishing far more than any other countries. China has established notable research collaborations with the USA, UK and Malaysia in this field, while other countries have collaborations, but the closeness is relatively low and scattered. Figure 4B shows the annual publication volume dynamics of the top ten countries in terms of total publications. Since 2017, China has consistently increased its annual publications, while the USA has remained relatively stable. In 2019, the volume of publications in each country increased significantly, this was largely due to the global outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has led to increased reliance on information technology among the elderly for medical consultations, online socialization, and health management (Sinha et al. 2021 ). This phenomenon has led to research advances in technology acceptance among older adults in various countries. Table 4 shows that the top ten countries account for 93.20% of the total cumulative number of publications, with each country having published more than 20 papers. Among these ten countries, all of them except China are developed countries, indicating that the research field of older adults’ technology acceptance has received general attention from developed countries. Currently, China and the USA were the leading countries in terms of publications with 111 and 104 respectively, accounting for 22.20% and 20.80%. The UK, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands also made significant contributions. The USA and China ranked first and second in terms of the number of citations, while the Netherlands had the highest average citations, indicating the high impact and quality of its research. The UK has shown outstanding performance in international cooperation, while the USA highlights its significant academic influence in this field with the highest h-index value.

A National collaboration network. B Annual volume of publications in the top 10 countries.

Institutions and authors analysis

Analyzing the number of publications and citations can reveal an institution’s or author’s research strength and influence in a particular research area (Kwiek 2021 ). Tables 5 and 6 show the statistics of the institutions and authors whose publication counts are in the top ten, respectively. As shown in Table 5 , higher education institutions hold the main position in this research field. Among the top ten institutions, City University of Hong Kong and The University of Hong Kong from China lead with 14 and 9 publications, respectively. City University of Hong Kong has the highest h-index, highlighting its significant influence in the field. It is worth noting that Tilburg University in the Netherlands is not among the top five in terms of publications, but the high average citation count (130.14) of its literature demonstrates the high quality of its research.

After analyzing the authors’ output using Price’s Law (Redner 1998 ), the highest number of publications among the authors counted ( n  = 10) defines a publication threshold of 3 for core authors in this research area. As a result of quantitative screening, a total of 63 core authors were identified. Table 6 shows that Chen from Zhejiang University, China, Ziefle from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and Rogers from Macquarie University, Australia, were the top three authors in terms of the number of publications, with 10, 9, and 8 articles, respectively. In terms of average citation rate, Peek and Wouters, both scholars from the Netherlands, have significantly higher rates than other scholars, with 183.2 and 152.67 respectively. This suggests that their research is of high quality and widely recognized. Additionally, Chen and Rogers have high h-indices in this field.

Knowledge base and theme progress (RQ3)

Research knowledge base.

Co-citation relationships occur when two documents are cited together (Zhang and Zhu 2022 ). Co-citation mapping uses references as nodes to represent the knowledge base of a subject area (Min et al. 2021). Figure 5A illustrates co-occurrence mapping in older adults’ technology acceptance research, where larger nodes signify higher co-citation frequencies. Co-citation cluster analysis can be used to explore knowledge structure and research boundaries (Hota et al. 2020 ; Shiau et al. 2023 ). The co-citation clustering mapping of older adults’ technology acceptance research literature (Fig. 5B ) shows that the Q value of the clustering result is 0.8129 (>0.3), and the average value of the weight S is 0.9391 (>0.7), indicating that the clusters are uniformly distributed with a significant and credible structure. This further proves that the boundaries of the research field are clear and there is significant differentiation in the field. The figure features 18 cluster labels, each associated with thematic color blocks corresponding to different time slices. Highlighted emerging research themes include #2 Smart Home Technology, #7 Social Live, and #10 Customer Service. Furthermore, the clustering labels extracted are primarily classified into three categories: theoretical model deepening, emerging technology applications, research methods and evaluation, as detailed in Table 7 .

A Co-citation analysis of references. B Clustering network analysis of references.

Seminal literature analysis

The top ten nodes in terms of co-citation frequency were selected for further analysis. Table 8 displays the corresponding node information. Studies were categorized into four main groups based on content analysis. (1) Research focusing on specific technology usage by older adults includes studies by Peek et al. ( 2014 ), Ma et al. ( 2016 ), Hoque and Sorwar ( 2017 ), and Li et al. ( 2019 ), who investigated the factors influencing the use of e-technology, smartphones, mHealth, and smart wearables, respectively. (2) Concerning the development of theoretical models of technology acceptance, Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) introduced the Senior Technology Acceptance Model (STAM), and Macedo ( 2017 ) analyzed the predictive power of UTAUT2 in explaining older adults’ intentional behaviors and information technology usage. (3) In exploring older adults’ information technology adoption and behavior, Lee and Coughlin ( 2015 ) emphasized that the adoption of technology by older adults is a multifactorial process that includes performance, price, value, usability, affordability, accessibility, technical support, social support, emotion, independence, experience, and confidence. Yusif et al. ( 2016 ) conducted a literature review examining the key barriers affecting older adults’ adoption of assistive technology, including factors such as privacy, trust, functionality/added value, cost, and stigma. (4) From the perspective of research into older adults’ technology acceptance, Mitzner et al. ( 2019 ) assessed the long-term usage of computer systems designed for the elderly, whereas Guner and Acarturk ( 2020 ) compared information technology usage and acceptance between older and younger adults. The breadth and prevalence of this literature make it a vital reference for researchers in the field, also providing new perspectives and inspiration for future research directions.

Research thematic progress

Burst citation is a node of literature that guides the sudden change in dosage, which usually represents a prominent development or major change in a particular field, with innovative and forward-looking qualities. By analyzing the emergent literature, it is often easy to understand the dynamics of the subject area, mapping the emerging thematic change (Chen et al. 2022 ). Figure 6 shows the burst citation mapping in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance research, with burst citations represented by red nodes (Fig. 6A ). For the ten papers with the highest burst intensity (Fig. 6B ), this study will conduct further analysis in conjunction with literature review.

A Burst detection of co-citation. B The top 10 references with the strongest citation bursts.

As shown in Fig. 6 , Mitzner et al. ( 2010 ) broke the stereotype that older adults are fearful of technology, found that they actually have positive attitudes toward technology, and emphasized the centrality of ease of use and usefulness in the process of technology acceptance. This finding provides an important foundation for subsequent research. During the same period, Wagner et al. ( 2010 ) conducted theory-deepening and applied research on technology acceptance among older adults. The research focused on older adults’ interactions with computers from the perspective of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). This expanded the understanding of technology acceptance, particularly regarding the relationship between behavior, environment, and other SCT elements. In addition, Pan and Jordan-Marsh ( 2010 ) extended the TAM to examine the interactions among predictors of perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, subjective norm, and convenience conditions when older adults use the Internet, taking into account the moderating roles of gender and age. Heerink et al. ( 2010 ) adapted and extended the UTAUT, constructed a technology acceptance model specifically designed for older users’ acceptance of assistive social agents, and validated it using controlled experiments and longitudinal data, explaining intention to use by combining functional assessment and social interaction variables.

Then the research theme shifted to an in-depth analysis of the factors influencing technology acceptance among older adults. Two papers with high burst strengths emerged during this period: Peek et al. ( 2014 ) (Strength = 12.04), Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) (Strength = 9.81). Through a systematic literature review and empirical study, Peek STM and Chen K, among others, identified multidimensional factors that influence older adults’ technology acceptance. Peek et al. ( 2014 ) analyzed literature on the acceptance of in-home care technology among older adults and identified six factors that influence their acceptance: concerns about technology, expected benefits, technology needs, technology alternatives, social influences, and older adult characteristics, with a focus on differences between pre- and post-implementation factors. Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) constructed the STAM by administering a questionnaire to 1012 older adults and adding eight important factors, including technology anxiety, self-efficacy, cognitive ability, and physical function, based on the TAM. This enriches the theoretical foundation of the field. In addition, Braun ( 2013 ) highlighted the role of perceived usefulness, trust in social networks, and frequency of Internet use in older adults’ use of social networks, while ease of use and social pressure were not significant influences. These findings contribute to the study of older adults’ technology acceptance within specific technology application domains.

Recent research has focused on empirical studies of personal factors and emerging technologies. Ma et al. ( 2016 ) identified key personal factors affecting smartphone acceptance among older adults through structured questionnaires and face-to-face interviews with 120 participants. The study found that cost, self-satisfaction, and convenience were important factors influencing perceived usefulness and ease of use. This study offers empirical evidence to comprehend the main factors that drive smartphone acceptance among Chinese older adults. Additionally, Yusif et al. ( 2016 ) presented an overview of the obstacles that hinder older adults’ acceptance of assistive technologies, focusing on privacy, trust, and functionality.

In summary, research on older adults’ technology acceptance has shifted from early theoretical deepening and analysis of influencing factors to empirical studies in the areas of personal factors and emerging technologies, which have greatly enriched the theoretical basis of older adults’ technology acceptance and provided practical guidance for the design of emerging technology products.

Research hotspots, evolutionary trends, and quality distribution (RQ4)

Core keywords analysis.

Keywords concise the main idea and core of the literature, and are a refined summary of the research content (Huang et al. 2021 ). In CiteSpace, nodes with a centrality value greater than 0.1 are considered to be critical nodes. Analyzing keywords with high frequency and centrality helps to visualize the hot topics in the research field (Park et al. 2018 ). The merged keywords were imported into CiteSpace, and the top 10 keywords were counted and sorted by frequency and centrality respectively, as shown in Table 9 . The results show that the keyword “TAM” has the highest frequency (92), followed by “UTAUT” (24), which reflects that the in-depth study of the existing technology acceptance model and its theoretical expansion occupy a central position in research related to older adults’ technology acceptance. Furthermore, the terms ‘assistive technology’ and ‘virtual reality’ are both high-frequency and high-centrality terms (frequency = 17, centrality = 0.10), indicating that the research on assistive technology and virtual reality for older adults is the focus of current academic attention.

Research hotspots analysis

Using VOSviewer for keyword co-occurrence analysis organizes keywords into groups or clusters based on their intrinsic connections and frequencies, clearly highlighting the research field’s hot topics. The connectivity among keywords reveals correlations between different topics. To ensure accuracy, the analysis only considered the authors’ keywords. Subsequently, the keywords were filtered by setting the keyword frequency to 5 to obtain the keyword clustering map of the research on older adults’ technology acceptance research keyword clustering mapping (Fig. 7 ), combined with the keyword co-occurrence clustering network (Fig. 7A ) and the corresponding density situation (Fig. 7B ) to make a detailed analysis of the following four groups of clustered themes.

A Co-occurrence clustering network. B Keyword density.

Cluster #1—Research on the factors influencing technology adoption among older adults is a prominent topic, covering age, gender, self-efficacy, attitude, and and intention to use (Berkowsky et al. 2017 ; Wang et al. 2017 ). It also examined older adults’ attitudes towards and acceptance of digital health technologies (Ahmad and Mozelius, 2022 ). Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic, significantly impacting older adults’ technology attitudes and usage, has underscored the study’s importance and urgency. Therefore, it is crucial to conduct in-depth studies on how older adults accept, adopt, and effectively use new technologies, to address their needs and help them overcome the digital divide within digital inclusion. This will improve their quality of life and healthcare experiences.

Cluster #2—Research focuses on how older adults interact with assistive technologies, especially assistive robots and health monitoring devices, emphasizing trust, usability, and user experience as crucial factors (Halim et al. 2022 ). Moreover, health monitoring technologies effectively track and manage health issues common in older adults, like dementia and mild cognitive impairment (Lussier et al. 2018 ; Piau et al. 2019 ). Interactive exercise games and virtual reality have been deployed to encourage more physical and cognitive engagement among older adults (Campo-Prieto et al. 2021 ). Personalized and innovative technology significantly enhances older adults’ participation, improving their health and well-being.

Cluster #3—Optimizing health management for older adults using mobile technology. With the development of mobile health (mHealth) and health information technology, mobile applications, smartphones, and smart wearable devices have become effective tools to help older users better manage chronic conditions, conduct real-time health monitoring, and even receive telehealth services (Dupuis and Tsotsos 2018 ; Olmedo-Aguirre et al. 2022 ; Kim et al. 2014 ). Additionally, these technologies can mitigate the problem of healthcare resource inequality, especially in developing countries. Older adults’ acceptance and use of these technologies are significantly influenced by their behavioral intentions, motivational factors, and self-management skills. These internal motivational factors, along with external factors, jointly affect older adults’ performance in health management and quality of life.

Cluster #4—Research on technology-assisted home care for older adults is gaining popularity. Environmentally assisted living enhances older adults’ independence and comfort at home, offering essential support and security. This has a crucial impact on promoting healthy aging (Friesen et al. 2016 ; Wahlroos et al. 2023 ). The smart home is a core application in this field, providing a range of solutions that facilitate independent living for the elderly in a highly integrated and user-friendly manner. This fulfills different dimensions of living and health needs (Majumder et al. 2017 ). Moreover, eHealth offers accurate and personalized health management and healthcare services for older adults (Delmastro et al. 2018 ), ensuring their needs are met at home. Research in this field often employs qualitative methods and structural equation modeling to fully understand older adults’ needs and experiences at home and analyze factors influencing technology adoption.

Evolutionary trends analysis

To gain a deeper understanding of the evolutionary trends in research hotspots within the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, we conducted a statistical analysis of the average appearance times of keywords, using CiteSpace to generate the time-zone evolution mapping (Fig. 8 ) and burst keywords. The time-zone mapping visually displays the evolution of keywords over time, intuitively reflecting the frequency and initial appearance of keywords in research, commonly used to identify trends in research topics (Jing et al. 2024a ; Kumar et al. 2021 ). Table 10 lists the top 15 keywords by burst strength, with the red sections indicating high-frequency citations and their burst strength in specific years. These burst keywords reveal the focus and trends of research themes over different periods (Kleinberg 2002 ). Combining insights from the time-zone mapping and burst keywords provides more objective and accurate research insights (Wang et al. 2023b ).

Reflecting the frequency and time of first appearance of keywords in the study.

An integrated analysis of Fig. 8 and Table 10 shows that early research on older adults’ technology acceptance primarily focused on factors such as perceived usefulness, ease of use, and attitudes towards information technology, including their use of computers and the internet (Pan and Jordan-Marsh 2010 ), as well as differences in technology use between older adults and other age groups (Guner and Acarturk 2020 ). Subsequently, the research focus expanded to improving the quality of life for older adults, exploring how technology can optimize health management and enhance the possibility of independent living, emphasizing the significant role of technology in improving the quality of life for the elderly. With ongoing technological advancements, recent research has shifted towards areas such as “virtual reality,” “telehealth,” and “human-robot interaction,” with a focus on the user experience of older adults (Halim et al. 2022 ). The appearance of keywords such as “physical activity” and “exercise” highlights the value of technology in promoting physical activity and health among older adults. This phase of research tends to make cutting-edge technology genuinely serve the practical needs of older adults, achieving its widespread application in daily life. Additionally, research has focused on expanding and quantifying theoretical models of older adults’ technology acceptance, involving keywords such as “perceived risk”, “validation” and “UTAUT”.

In summary, from 2013 to 2023, the field of older adults’ technology acceptance has evolved from initial explorations of influencing factors, to comprehensive enhancements in quality of life and health management, and further to the application and deepening of theoretical models and cutting-edge technologies. This research not only reflects the diversity and complexity of the field but also demonstrates a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of older adults’ interactions with technology across various life scenarios and needs.

Research quality distribution

To reveal the distribution of research quality in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, a strategic diagram analysis is employed to calculate and illustrate the internal development and interrelationships among various research themes (Xie et al. 2020 ). The strategic diagram uses Centrality as the X-axis and Density as the Y-axis to divide into four quadrants, where the X-axis represents the strength of the connection between thematic clusters and other themes, with higher values indicating a central position in the research field; the Y-axis indicates the level of development within the thematic clusters, with higher values denoting a more mature and widely recognized field (Li and Zhou 2020 ).

Through cluster analysis and manual verification, this study categorized 61 core keywords (Frequency ≥5) into 11 thematic clusters. Subsequently, based on the keywords covered by each thematic cluster, the research themes and their directions for each cluster were summarized (Table 11 ), and the centrality and density coordinates for each cluster were precisely calculated (Table 12 ). Finally, a strategic diagram of the older adults’ technology acceptance research field was constructed (Fig. 9 ). Based on the distribution of thematic clusters across the quadrants in the strategic diagram, the structure and developmental trends of the field were interpreted.

Classification and visualization of theme clusters based on density and centrality.

As illustrated in Fig. 9 , (1) the theme clusters of #3 Usage Experience and #4 Assisted Living Technology are in the first quadrant, characterized by high centrality and density. Their internal cohesion and close links with other themes indicate their mature development, systematic research content or directions have been formed, and they have a significant influence on other themes. These themes play a central role in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance and have promising prospects. (2) The theme clusters of #6 Smart Devices, #9 Theoretical Models, and #10 Mobile Health Applications are in the second quadrant, with higher density but lower centrality. These themes have strong internal connections but weaker external links, indicating that these three themes have received widespread attention from researchers and have been the subject of related research, but more as self-contained systems and exhibit independence. Therefore, future research should further explore in-depth cooperation and cross-application with other themes. (3) The theme clusters of #7 Human-Robot Interaction, #8 Characteristics of the Elderly, and #11 Research Methods are in the third quadrant, with lower centrality and density. These themes are loosely connected internally and have weak links with others, indicating their developmental immaturity. Compared to other topics, they belong to the lower attention edge and niche themes, and there is a need for further investigation. (4) The theme clusters of #1 Digital Healthcare Technology, #2 Psychological Factors, and #5 Socio-Cultural Factors are located in the fourth quadrant, with high centrality but low density. Although closely associated with other research themes, the internal cohesion within these clusters is relatively weak. This suggests that while these themes are closely linked to other research areas, their own development remains underdeveloped, indicating a core immaturity. Nevertheless, these themes are crucial within the research domain of elderly technology acceptance and possess significant potential for future exploration.

Discussion on distribution power (RQ1)

Over the past decade, academic interest and influence in the area of older adults’ technology acceptance have significantly increased. This trend is evidenced by a quantitative analysis of publication and citation volumes, particularly noticeable in 2019 and 2022, where there was a substantial rise in both metrics. The rise is closely linked to the widespread adoption of emerging technologies such as smart homes, wearable devices, and telemedicine among older adults. While these technologies have enhanced their quality of life, they also pose numerous challenges, sparking extensive research into their acceptance, usage behaviors, and influencing factors among the older adults (Pirzada et al. 2022 ; Garcia Reyes et al. 2023 ). Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a surge in technology demand among older adults, especially in areas like medical consultation, online socialization, and health management, further highlighting the importance and challenges of technology. Health risks and social isolation have compelled older adults to rely on technology for daily activities, accelerating its adoption and application within this demographic. This phenomenon has made technology acceptance a critical issue, driving societal and academic focus on the study of technology acceptance among older adults.

The flow of knowledge at the level of high-output disciplines and journals, along with the primary publishing outlets, indicates the highly interdisciplinary nature of research into older adults’ technology acceptance. This reflects the complexity and breadth of issues related to older adults’ technology acceptance, necessitating the integration of multidisciplinary knowledge and approaches. Currently, research is primarily focused on medical health and human-computer interaction, demonstrating academic interest in improving health and quality of life for older adults and addressing the urgent needs related to their interactions with technology. In the field of medical health, research aims to provide advanced and innovative healthcare technologies and services to meet the challenges of an aging population while improving the quality of life for older adults (Abdi et al. 2020 ; Wilson et al. 2021 ). In the field of human-computer interaction, research is focused on developing smarter and more user-friendly interaction models to meet the needs of older adults in the digital age, enabling them to actively participate in social activities and enjoy a higher quality of life (Sayago, 2019 ). These studies are crucial for addressing the challenges faced by aging societies, providing increased support and opportunities for the health, welfare, and social participation of older adults.

Discussion on research power (RQ2)

This study analyzes leading countries and collaboration networks, core institutions and authors, revealing the global research landscape and distribution of research strength in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, and presents quantitative data on global research trends. From the analysis of country distribution and collaborations, China and the USA hold dominant positions in this field, with developed countries like the UK, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands also excelling in international cooperation and research influence. The significant investment in technological research and the focus on the technological needs of older adults by many developed countries reflect their rapidly aging societies, policy support, and resource allocation.

China is the only developing country that has become a major contributor in this field, indicating its growing research capabilities and high priority given to aging societies and technological innovation. Additionally, China has close collaborations with countries such as USA, the UK, and Malaysia, driven not only by technological research needs but also by shared challenges and complementarities in aging issues among these nations. For instance, the UK has extensive experience in social welfare and aging research, providing valuable theoretical guidance and practical experience. International collaborations, aimed at addressing the challenges of aging, integrate the strengths of various countries, advancing in-depth and widespread development in the research of technology acceptance among older adults.

At the institutional and author level, City University of Hong Kong leads in publication volume, with research teams led by Chan and Chen demonstrating significant academic activity and contributions. Their research primarily focuses on older adults’ acceptance and usage behaviors of various technologies, including smartphones, smart wearables, and social robots (Chen et al. 2015 ; Li et al. 2019 ; Ma et al. 2016 ). These studies, targeting specific needs and product characteristics of older adults, have developed new models of technology acceptance based on existing frameworks, enhancing the integration of these technologies into their daily lives and laying a foundation for further advancements in the field. Although Tilburg University has a smaller publication output, it holds significant influence in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. Particularly, the high citation rate of Peek’s studies highlights their excellence in research. Peek extensively explored older adults’ acceptance and usage of home care technologies, revealing the complexity and dynamics of their technology use behaviors. His research spans from identifying systemic influencing factors (Peek et al. 2014 ; Peek et al. 2016 ), emphasizing familial impacts (Luijkx et al. 2015 ), to constructing comprehensive models (Peek et al. 2017 ), and examining the dynamics of long-term usage (Peek et al. 2019 ), fully reflecting the evolving technology landscape and the changing needs of older adults. Additionally, the ongoing contributions of researchers like Ziefle, Rogers, and Wouters in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance demonstrate their research influence and leadership. These researchers have significantly enriched the knowledge base in this area with their diverse perspectives. For instance, Ziefle has uncovered the complex attitudes of older adults towards technology usage, especially the trade-offs between privacy and security, and how different types of activities affect their privacy needs (Maidhof et al. 2023 ; Mujirishvili et al. 2023 ; Schomakers and Ziefle 2023 ; Wilkowska et al. 2022 ), reflecting a deep exploration and ongoing innovation in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance.

Discussion on knowledge base and thematic progress (RQ3)

Through co-citation analysis and systematic review of seminal literature, this study reveals the knowledge foundation and thematic progress in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. Co-citation networks and cluster analyses illustrate the structural themes of the research, delineating the differentiation and boundaries within this field. Additionally, burst detection analysis offers a valuable perspective for understanding the thematic evolution in the field of technology acceptance among older adults. The development and innovation of theoretical models are foundational to this research. Researchers enhance the explanatory power of constructed models by deepening and expanding existing technology acceptance theories to address theoretical limitations. For instance, Heerink et al. ( 2010 ) modified and expanded the UTAUT model by integrating functional assessment and social interaction variables to create the almere model. This model significantly enhances the ability to explain the intentions of older users in utilizing assistive social agents and improves the explanation of actual usage behaviors. Additionally, Chen and Chan ( 2014 ) extended the TAM to include age-related health and capability features of older adults, creating the STAM, which substantially improves predictions of older adults’ technology usage behaviors. Personal attributes, health and capability features, and facilitating conditions have a direct impact on technology acceptance. These factors more effectively predict older adults’ technology usage behaviors than traditional attitudinal factors.

With the advancement of technology and the application of emerging technologies, new research topics have emerged, increasingly focusing on older adults’ acceptance and use of these technologies. Prior to this, the study by Mitzner et al. ( 2010 ) challenged the stereotype of older adults’ conservative attitudes towards technology, highlighting the central roles of usability and usefulness in the technology acceptance process. This discovery laid an important foundation for subsequent research. Research fields such as “smart home technology,” “social life,” and “customer service” are emerging, indicating a shift in focus towards the practical and social applications of technology in older adults’ lives. Research not only focuses on the technology itself but also on how these technologies integrate into older adults’ daily lives and how they can improve the quality of life through technology. For instance, studies such as those by Ma et al. ( 2016 ), Hoque and Sorwar ( 2017 ), and Li et al. ( 2019 ) have explored factors influencing older adults’ use of smartphones, mHealth, and smart wearable devices.

Furthermore, the diversification of research methodologies and innovation in evaluation techniques, such as the use of mixed methods, structural equation modeling (SEM), and neural network (NN) approaches, have enhanced the rigor and reliability of the findings, enabling more precise identification of the factors and mechanisms influencing technology acceptance. Talukder et al. ( 2020 ) employed an effective multimethodological strategy by integrating SEM and NN to leverage the complementary strengths of both approaches, thus overcoming their individual limitations and more accurately analyzing and predicting older adults’ acceptance of wearable health technologies (WHT). SEM is utilized to assess the determinants’ impact on the adoption of WHT, while neural network models validate SEM outcomes and predict the significance of key determinants. This combined approach not only boosts the models’ reliability and explanatory power but also provides a nuanced understanding of the motivations and barriers behind older adults’ acceptance of WHT, offering deep research insights.

Overall, co-citation analysis of the literature in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance has uncovered deeper theoretical modeling and empirical studies on emerging technologies, while emphasizing the importance of research methodological and evaluation innovations in understanding complex social science issues. These findings are crucial for guiding the design and marketing strategies of future technology products, especially in the rapidly growing market of older adults.

Discussion on research hotspots and evolutionary trends (RQ4)

By analyzing core keywords, we can gain deep insights into the hot topics, evolutionary trends, and quality distribution of research in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance. The frequent occurrence of the keywords “TAM” and “UTAUT” indicates that the applicability and theoretical extension of existing technology acceptance models among older adults remain a focal point in academia. This phenomenon underscores the enduring influence of the studies by Davis ( 1989 ) and Venkatesh et al. ( 2003 ), whose models provide a robust theoretical framework for explaining and predicting older adults’ acceptance and usage of emerging technologies. With the widespread application of artificial intelligence (AI) and big data technologies, these theoretical models have incorporated new variables such as perceived risk, trust, and privacy issues (Amin et al. 2024 ; Chen et al. 2024 ; Jing et al. 2024b ; Seibert et al. 2021 ; Wang et al. 2024b ), advancing the theoretical depth and empirical research in this field.

Keyword co-occurrence cluster analysis has revealed multiple research hotspots in the field, including factors influencing technology adoption, interactive experiences between older adults and assistive technologies, the application of mobile health technology in health management, and technology-assisted home care. These studies primarily focus on enhancing the quality of life and health management of older adults through emerging technologies, particularly in the areas of ambient assisted living, smart health monitoring, and intelligent medical care. In these domains, the role of AI technology is increasingly significant (Qian et al. 2021 ; Ho 2020 ). With the evolution of next-generation information technologies, AI is increasingly integrated into elder care systems, offering intelligent, efficient, and personalized service solutions by analyzing the lifestyles and health conditions of older adults. This integration aims to enhance older adults’ quality of life in aspects such as health monitoring and alerts, rehabilitation assistance, daily health management, and emotional support (Lee et al. 2023 ). A survey indicates that 83% of older adults prefer AI-driven solutions when selecting smart products, demonstrating the increasing acceptance of AI in elder care (Zhao and Li 2024 ). Integrating AI into elder care presents both opportunities and challenges, particularly in terms of user acceptance, trust, and long-term usage effects, which warrant further exploration (Mhlanga 2023 ). These studies will help better understand the profound impact of AI technology on the lifestyles of older adults and provide critical references for optimizing AI-driven elder care services.

The Time-zone evolution mapping and burst keyword analysis further reveal the evolutionary trends of research hotspots. Early studies focused on basic technology acceptance models and user perceptions, later expanding to include quality of life and health management. In recent years, research has increasingly focused on cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality, telehealth, and human-robot interaction, with a concurrent emphasis on the user experience of older adults. This evolutionary process demonstrates a deepening shift from theoretical models to practical applications, underscoring the significant role of technology in enhancing the quality of life for older adults. Furthermore, the strategic coordinate mapping analysis clearly demonstrates the development and mutual influence of different research themes. High centrality and density in the themes of Usage Experience and Assisted Living Technology indicate their mature research status and significant impact on other themes. The themes of Smart Devices, Theoretical Models, and Mobile Health Applications demonstrate self-contained research trends. The themes of Human-Robot Interaction, Characteristics of the Elderly, and Research Methods are not yet mature, but they hold potential for development. Themes of Digital Healthcare Technology, Psychological Factors, and Socio-Cultural Factors are closely related to other themes, displaying core immaturity but significant potential.

In summary, the research hotspots in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance are diverse and dynamic, demonstrating the academic community’s profound understanding of how older adults interact with technology across various life contexts and needs. Under the influence of AI and big data, research should continue to focus on the application of emerging technologies among older adults, exploring in depth how they adapt to and effectively use these technologies. This not only enhances the quality of life and healthcare experiences for older adults but also drives ongoing innovation and development in this field.

Research agenda

Based on the above research findings, to further understand and promote technology acceptance and usage among older adults, we recommend future studies focus on refining theoretical models, exploring long-term usage, and assessing user experience in the following detailed aspects:

Refinement and validation of specific technology acceptance models for older adults: Future research should focus on developing and validating technology acceptance models based on individual characteristics, particularly considering variations in technology acceptance among older adults across different educational levels and cultural backgrounds. This includes factors such as age, gender, educational background, and cultural differences. Additionally, research should examine how well specific technologies, such as wearable devices and mobile health applications, meet the needs of older adults. Building on existing theoretical models, this research should integrate insights from multiple disciplines such as psychology, sociology, design, and engineering through interdisciplinary collaboration to create more accurate and comprehensive models, which should then be validated in relevant contexts.

Deepening the exploration of the relationship between long-term technology use and quality of life among older adults: The acceptance and use of technology by users is a complex and dynamic process (Seuwou et al. 2016 ). Existing research predominantly focuses on older adults’ initial acceptance or short-term use of new technologies; however, the impact of long-term use on their quality of life and health is more significant. Future research should focus on the evolution of older adults’ experiences and needs during long-term technology usage, and the enduring effects of technology on their social interactions, mental health, and life satisfaction. Through longitudinal studies and qualitative analysis, this research reveals the specific needs and challenges of older adults in long-term technology use, providing a basis for developing technologies and strategies that better meet their requirements. This understanding aids in comprehensively assessing the impact of technology on older adults’ quality of life and guiding the optimization and improvement of technological products.

Evaluating the Importance of User Experience in Research on Older Adults’ Technology Acceptance: Understanding the mechanisms of information technology acceptance and use is central to human-computer interaction research. Although technology acceptance models and user experience models differ in objectives, they share many potential intersections. Technology acceptance research focuses on structured prediction and assessment, while user experience research concentrates on interpreting design impacts and new frameworks. Integrating user experience to assess older adults’ acceptance of technology products and systems is crucial (Codfrey et al. 2022 ; Wang et al. 2019 ), particularly for older users, where specific product designs should emphasize practicality and usability (Fisk et al. 2020 ). Researchers need to explore innovative age-appropriate design methods to enhance older adults’ usage experience. This includes studying older users’ actual usage preferences and behaviors, optimizing user interfaces, and interaction designs. Integrating feedback from older adults to tailor products to their needs can further promote their acceptance and continued use of technology products.

Conclusions

This study conducted a systematic review of the literature on older adults’ technology acceptance over the past decade through bibliometric analysis, focusing on the distribution power, research power, knowledge base and theme progress, research hotspots, evolutionary trends, and quality distribution. Using a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, this study has reached the following conclusions:

Technology acceptance among older adults has become a hot topic in the international academic community, involving the integration of knowledge across multiple disciplines, including Medical Informatics, Health Care Sciences Services, and Ergonomics. In terms of journals, “PSYCHOLOGY, EDUCATION, HEALTH” represents a leading field, with key publications including Computers in Human Behavior , Journal of Medical Internet Research , and International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction . These journals possess significant academic authority and extensive influence in the field.

Research on technology acceptance among older adults is particularly active in developed countries, with China and USA publishing significantly more than other nations. The Netherlands leads in high average citation rates, indicating the depth and impact of its research. Meanwhile, the UK stands out in terms of international collaboration. At the institutional level, City University of Hong Kong and The University of Hong Kong in China are in leading positions. Tilburg University in the Netherlands demonstrates exceptional research quality through its high average citation count. At the author level, Chen from China has the highest number of publications, while Peek from the Netherlands has the highest average citation count.

Co-citation analysis of references indicates that the knowledge base in this field is divided into three main categories: theoretical model deepening, emerging technology applications, and research methods and evaluation. Seminal literature focuses on four areas: specific technology use by older adults, expansion of theoretical models of technology acceptance, information technology adoption behavior, and research perspectives. Research themes have evolved from initial theoretical deepening and analysis of influencing factors to empirical studies on individual factors and emerging technologies.

Keyword analysis indicates that TAM and UTAUT are the most frequently occurring terms, while “assistive technology” and “virtual reality” are focal points with high frequency and centrality. Keyword clustering analysis reveals that research hotspots are concentrated on the influencing factors of technology adoption, human-robot interaction experiences, mobile health management, and technology for aging in place. Time-zone evolution mapping and burst keyword analysis have revealed the research evolution from preliminary exploration of influencing factors, to enhancements in quality of life and health management, and onto advanced technology applications and deepening of theoretical models. Furthermore, analysis of research quality distribution indicates that Usage Experience and Assisted Living Technology have become core topics, while Smart Devices, Theoretical Models, and Mobile Health Applications point towards future research directions.

Through this study, we have systematically reviewed the dynamics, core issues, and evolutionary trends in the field of older adults’ technology acceptance, constructing a comprehensive Knowledge Mapping of the domain and presenting a clear framework of existing research. This not only lays the foundation for subsequent theoretical discussions and innovative applications in the field but also provides an important reference for relevant scholars.

Limitations

To our knowledge, this is the first bibliometric analysis concerning technology acceptance among older adults, and we adhered strictly to bibliometric standards throughout our research. However, this study relies on the Web of Science Core Collection, and while its authority and breadth are widely recognized, this choice may have missed relevant literature published in other significant databases such as PubMed, Scopus, and Google Scholar, potentially overlooking some critical academic contributions. Moreover, given that our analysis was confined to literature in English, it may not reflect studies published in other languages, somewhat limiting the global representativeness of our data sample.

It is noteworthy that with the rapid development of AI technology, its increasingly widespread application in elderly care services is significantly transforming traditional care models. AI is profoundly altering the lifestyles of the elderly, from health monitoring and smart diagnostics to intelligent home systems and personalized care, significantly enhancing their quality of life and health care standards. The potential for AI technology within the elderly population is immense, and research in this area is rapidly expanding. However, due to the restrictive nature of the search terms used in this study, it did not fully cover research in this critical area, particularly in addressing key issues such as trust, privacy, and ethics.

Consequently, future research should not only expand data sources, incorporating multilingual and multidatabase literature, but also particularly focus on exploring older adults’ acceptance of AI technology and its applications, in order to construct a more comprehensive academic landscape of older adults’ technology acceptance, thereby enriching and extending the knowledge system and academic trends in this field.

Data availability

The datasets analyzed during the current study are available in the Dataverse repository: https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/6K0GJH .

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This research was supported by the Social Science Foundation of Shaanxi Province in China (Grant No. 2023J014).

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Xianru Shang, Zijian Liu, Chen Gong, Zhigang Hu & Yuexuan Wu

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Shang, X., Liu, Z., Gong, C. et al. Knowledge mapping and evolution of research on older adults’ technology acceptance: a bibliometric study from 2013 to 2023. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 1115 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-03658-2

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• Published: 04 September 2024

Targeting emotion dysregulation in depression: an intervention mapping protocol augmented by participatory action research

• Myungjoo Lee   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-8301-7996 1 ,
• Han Choi   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0406-5605 2 &
• Young Tak Jo   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-0561-2503 1  

BMC Psychiatry volume  24 , Article number:  595 ( 2024 ) Cite this article

Metrics details

Depression is a highly prevalent and often recurrent condition; however, treatment is not always accessible or effective in addressing abnormalities in emotional processing. Given the high prevalence of depression worldwide, identifying and mapping out effective and sustainable interventions is crucial. Emotion dysregulation in depression is not readily amenable to improvement due to the complex, time-dynamic nature of emotion; however, systematic planning frameworks for programs addressing behavioral changes can provide guidelines for the development of a rational intervention that tackles these difficulties. This study proposes an empirical and theoretical art-based emotion regulation (ER) intervention using an integrated approach that combines intervention mapping (IM) with participatory action research (PAR).

We used the IM protocol to identify strategies and develop an intervention for patients with major depressive disorder (MDD). As applied in this study, IM comprises six steps: (a) determining the need for new treatments and determinants of risk; (b) identifying changeable determinants and assigning specific intervention targets; (c) selecting strategies to improve ER across relevant theories and research disciplines; (d) creating a treatment program and refining it based on consultations with an advisory group; (e) developing the implementation plan and conducting a PAR study to pilot-test it; and (f) planning evaluation strategies and conducting a PAR study for feedback on the initial testing.

Following the steps of IM, we developed two frameworks for an art-based ER intervention: an individual and an integrative framework. The programs include four theory- and evidence-based ER strategies aimed mainly at decreasing depressive symptoms and improving ER in patients with MDD. We also developed a plan for evaluating the proposed intervention. Based on our preliminary PAR studies, the intervention was feasible and acceptable for adoption and implementation in primary care settings.

The application of IM incorporated with PAR has resulted in an intervention for improving ER in depression. While changing behavior is perceived as a challenging and elaborate task, this method can be useful in offering a clear structure for developing rational interventions. Further refinement is necessary through rigorous research.

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Depression is a highly prevalent and often recurrent condition that severely impairs psychological functioning and quality of life. According to the Global Health Data Exchange, depression affects 3.8% of the world’s population and, as “a major contributor to the overall global burden of disease,” is associated with substantial societal and personal costs [ 1 , 2 ]. Due to its enormous impact on public health, the World Health Organization (WHO) predicts that depression will rank first among all causes of the burden of disease by 2030 [ 3 ]. As depression is frequently comorbid with other mental and physical disorders, it is particularly challenging to identify risk factors and develop effective interventions.

Depression is a disorder of emotion. Disordered affect is a hallmark of depressive episodes, characterized by complex but apparent abnormalities of emotional functioning [ 4 , 5 ]. Many factors may be associated with the disorder; however, its symptoms evidently indicate failures in emotional self-regulation [ 6 ]. Emotion regulation (ER) refers to an individual’s ability to modulate the intensity, frequency, and duration of emotional responses [ 7 , 8 ]. Decades of empirical research have shown that depression is associated with increases in unpleasant emotions and decreases in positive emotions [ 9 , 10 ]. It has been proposed that difficulties in ER in depression significantly contribute to dysfunctional emotions [ 10 , 11 ].

The complexity and time-dynamic nature of emotion make emotion dysregulation in depression particularly challenging to tackle. Most situations in daily life that evoke emotions are ambiguous. It remains unclear how patients can enhance their ER abilities in treatment [ 12 ]. Dysfunctional ER is a fundamental risk factor for the onset of depression and a range of psychiatric disorders [ 13 , 14 ]; however, the evidence base is diffuse and broad, as its mechanisms remain poorly specified [ 12 , 15 , 16 ]. Although some studies have developed psychological interventions to improve ER, research in this area remains limited [ 12 , 17 , 18 ]. Some have argued that teaching a wide range of ER strategies might not be effective in enhancing patients’ emotional functioning [ 12 , 17 ]. Of note, there is a lack of research on the use of art psychotherapy in this context.

An intervention mapping (IM) study systematically rooted in the evidence and theories of basic affective science is required to increase the likelihood of changing behaviors in ER. To target emotional dysregulation, a systematic, participatory, and integrated approach that benefits from efficient behavior change is crucial [ 19 ]. Accordingly, this study determines effective ways of enhancing patients’ ER capacities and developing an optimized art-based psychotherapy intervention for depression. For this purpose, we followed the standard IM protocol [ 20 ]. While developing a treatment may be time-consuming and burdensome, this study provides a straightforward, stepwise decision-making procedure. Along with its use of participatory action research (PAR), this study aims to benefit from the engagement of patients and mental health professionals in a collaborative manner. This type of collaboration is a practical and powerful tool for developing specialized interventions.

Intervention mapping protocol

This study mapped out the process of development based on IM, a program-planning framework. IM provides a step-by-step process for planning theory/evidence-based interventions from the needs to potential methods addressing those needs [ 20 , 21 ]. Since its development in the healthcare field in 1998, IM has been widely used and applications have emerged in other fields, including health promotion. It has been used to develop intervention programs to better target specific behaviors, including health, discrimination, and safety behaviors [ 22 ]. In particular, mental health researchers have largely applied the IM approach for either creating new interventions or adapting existing ones: strategies have been developed for the treatment and prevention of depression through IM, such as an internet-based intervention for postpartum depression [ 23 ], an online-coaching blended program for depression in middle-aged couples [ 24 ], a return-to-work intervention for depression [ 25 ], music therapy for depressive symptoms in young adults [ 26 ], and life-review therapy for depressive symptoms in nursing home residents [ 27 ]. The use of IM has proven to be a useful instrument for the development and optimization of treatments for depression that are tailored to different contexts and target populations.

Over the course of the development of the entire program, four perspectives characterizing IM are applied: (a) a participation approach that engages intended participants, allies, and implementers in program development, implementation, and evaluation; (b) a systems approach acknowledging that an intervention is an event occurring in a system that includes other factors influencing the intervention; (c) a multi-theory approach that stimulates the use of multiple theories; and (d) an ecological approach recognizing the relevance of social, physical, and political environmental conditions.

The IM protocol includes six core steps: (i) justifying the rationale for developing a new treatment; (ii) selecting targeted determinants and setting treatment goals; (iii) determining theoretical and empirical methods for behavior change; (iv) developing a treatment and program materials; (v) planning for adoption and implementation; and (vi) specifying the evaluation design [ 20 , 21 , 28 ]. The development process is cumulative: subsequent steps are based on completed tasks from the previous step. Figure  1 presents the six steps of IM. This article presents the details of our study methods and the results as the six steps of the IM process.

Overview of the intervention mapping (IM) process [ 20 ]

Steps 1–3 of IM: Literature review

To address Steps 1, 2, and 3, we conducted a literature review using PubMed, ProQuest, Scopus, PsycArticles, and Google Scholar. Search strategies were devised using subject headings such as “emotion regulation,” “depression,” “emotional psychopathology,” “emotion regulation therapy,” and “art psychotherapy” as appropriate for each database. Furthermore, the program planners identified and included additional free text words. Due to the heterogeneity of emotion-related processes, the search strategies for Steps 1–3 were broad [ 15 ]. Additionally, we conducted an inclusive literature review of relevant databases to identify articles related to art-based interventions for ER, limited to published articles in English. This literature study identified effective ER strategies for improving regulatory capacities in depression. We describe the theoretical details related to ER and ER strategies in the Results section.

Steps 4–6 of IM: Participatory action research combined

Steps 4–6 of IM occasionally incorporate further studies for pilot testing and refining the intervention under development. As such, our study added participatory components to the IM process. PAR is “a participatory and consensual approach towards investigating problems and developing plans to deal with them.” [ 29 ] PAR empowers research participants compared with other approaches, where study participants are often considered subjects who passively follow directions [ 30 ]. The involvement of patients, care providers, and health professionals in research design is increasingly recognized as an essential approach for improving the quality of primary care [ 31 ] and bridging the gap between research and health care [ 32 ]. Indeed, PAR has been applied in many fields and achieved successful results, particularly in the field of mental health [ 33 ].

In particular, patient involvement is a meaningful partnership with stakeholders, including patients, carers, and public stakeholders, who actively participate in improving healthcare practices [ 31 ]. Involvement can occur at different levels and commonly includes patient engagement and advisory boards [ 32 ]. We conducted participatory action studies to combine systematic studies with the development of practical treatments [ 33 ] and anticipated the benefits of experiential knowledge. Figure  2 elaborates on how we incorporated PAR in the IM framework. It also presents our strategies to address the IM protocol and the results from each step. As described in Fig.  2 , the PAR in this current study comprises three phases:(a) consultation with an advisory board; (b) initial testing of intervention; and (c) mixed methods feedback studies using focus group interviews and survey research.

Study procedure combined with PAR, strategies applied for each step, and results for each step

Noted. The figure specifies strategies to adopt in addressing the six steps of IM protocol and the actions for each step. It represents how IM can be applied and how it can augment its protocols through PAR. In the application of IM, this study relied on literature research and empirical studies: we conducted a literature study to address Steps 1–3 and combined the participatory action approach with IM methodology to address Steps 4–6

(a) PAR 1: Consultation with the advisory board

First, we established an advisory board that included a psychiatrist, an expert on methodology, a trained integrative medicine professional, and a professor in a graduate art psychotherapy program. The advisory board provided feedback at the individual level and comments during subsequent consultations. We engaged and managed the advisory board throughout Step 4, the intervention development process.

(b) PAR 2: Initial testing of intervention being developed 

In addition, we conducted a participatory action study to facilitate patient engagement and elicit their voices in a collaborative relationship with researchers. Based on voluntary participation, this study aimed to pretest art-based ER strategies and treatment designs. We conducted an art therapy program as part of routine inpatient therapeutic programs involving willing patients. The participants’ reports of their experiences during the sessions were obtained using structured questionnaires and unstructured interviews. For research purposes, we conducted a retrospective chart review for therapeutic sessions between February 2023 and February 2024. This review was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Kangdong Sacred Heart Hospital (IRB no. 2024–02-019) and exempted from requiring patients’ informed consent because it was part of a routine clinical practice.

(c) PAR 3: A mixed-method approach

In this study, we employed a mixed-methods approach to plan evaluation strategies by combining a quantitative online survey with focus group interviews. The primary aim of this study is to ensure that the intervention developed in Step 4 can be adopted and maintained over time. For this purpose, we are gathering feedback regarding the initial interventions from clinic staff, consisting of nurses and psychiatrists. This PAR study is currently ongoing and will last for four months. At the environmental level of the organization, the process will be managed to best leverage the intervention in primary care settings. This study was approved by the Institutional Review Board of Kangdong Sacred Heart Hospital (IRB no. 2023–12-002). PAR 2 and PAR 3 are currently being conducted; the results of those studies will be available after their completion.

This section focuses on the explanation of outputs obtained through the IM protocol. The details of the theoretical and empirical bases, designed frameworks, and strategies for the implementation and evaluation of the program are categorized into six steps:

Step 1. Needs and Logic for the Program

For the first step, we identified the target group and analyzed their determinants. This step included determining the rationale and need for a new art-based ER intervention for depression. The target population comprised patients diagnosed with major depressive disorder (MDD). Predefined behaviors targeted were core symptoms of major depression, namely, consistent depressed mood and anhedonia [ 6 ].

Theoretical evidence

Prior research has highlighted difficulties in ER contributing to the etiology and maintenance of numerous psychiatric symptoms, such as depression, chronic anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, eating disorders, and worry [ 15 , 34 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 ]. In particular, research on depression has emphasized that apparent failure to modulate emotions is a hallmark of this disorder [ 6 ] and has attempted to link it to emotional abnormalities in depression [ 10 , 11 ]. ER, which influences the onset, magnitude, and duration of emotional response [ 41 ], is a distinct and differentiated higher-order construct from emotion itself (i.e., fear, anxiety, and depression) at different levels of analysis (e.g., behavioral or neural) [ 42 , 43 ]. From this perspective, ER is an important determinant affecting lower-order factor variability, whereas emotion determines variance downwards in the lower-order indicators [ 42 ].

A literature review revealed that ER difficulties play a role in understanding psychological health in major depression. This suggests the importance of altering problematic patterns of emotional reactivity in depression and identifies emotion dysregulation as a determinant of the predefined target behaviors [ 17 , 44 , 45 , 46 , 47 ]. According to imaging studies utilizing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), functional abnormalities in specific neural systems support the processing of emotion and ER in patients with depressive disorders [ 6 ]. Moreover, decades of empirical evidence supports the notion that depressive symptoms, characterized by consistently elevated depressed mood and relatively low positive mood, are associated with difficulties in ER [ 9 , 10 , 16 ]. Our review allowed us to analyze and specify the determinants of depressive symptoms (Fig.  3 ). Without this analysis, it would be challenging for psychological treatments to address emotion dysregulation in MDD.

Summary of the determinants influencing symptoms of major depression

Needs assessment for a new intervention

Although emotion dysregulation is a critical target in psychological treatments, intervention research examining ER is limited [ 18 , 48 ]. Psychotherapeutic approaches, including cognitive-behavioral and acceptance-based behavioral treatments, have positive effects on overall ER, and studies suggest that these improvements may mediate further improvements for psychiatric outcomes [ 18 , 48 ]: examples include cognitive behavioral therapy approaches (CBT) [ 49 , 50 ], acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT) [ 51 ], dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) [ 52 , 53 ], and acceptance-based behavioral therapy (ABBT) [ 54 ]. However, most research assessing treatment efficacy precludes making any decisions about clinical mechanisms essential for improving ER. This is because they examine the impact of non-ER-focused interventions or interventions to target ER as part of a comprehensive program [ 18 , 48 ]. Due to the multi-component nature of the interventions, the specific components contributing to changes in ER remains unclear and whether the changes underlie improvements in other distressing symptoms has not yet been clarified. Thus, efforts to identify and inform the development of interventions leading to adaptive ER based on these studies are limited.

At present, patients who have distress disorders, such as generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), MDD, and particularly GAD diagnosed along with comorbid depression, often fail to respond well or experience sufficient gains from treatments: however, the reason for their lack of response is unknown [ 17 , 55 ]. Between 50 and 80% of patients receiving interventions for emotional disorders achieve the status of “responder.” [ 17 ] Between 50 and 60% of GAD patients showed meaningful improvement in response to treatment with traditional CBT [ 55 ]. While ER-focused interventions, such as the Unified Protocol (UP) [ 56 ], Emotion Regulation Group Therapy (ERGT) [ 57 ], and enhanced CBT emphasizing ER [ 58 ] were found to be effective in improving ER, research investigating these remains limited [ 18 , 59 , 60 ]. No substantial changes were found in the essential dimensions of ER after the application of several ER-focused interventions, implying that these were not present in a sufficient dose to promote ER [ 53 , 61 , 62 ]. Further, recent research identifying treatment response predictors for ERGT showed relatively few significant predictors [ 63 ]. In particular, the findings from a study that examined a treatment designed to enhance inpatient CBT for depression suggest that the addition of ER skills to CBT may not sufficiently change ER, although improvements were noted in ER strategies and depressive symptoms [ 58 ]. Another problem arises from the manualized CBT protocols, which are distinct and complex to use [ 17 , 64 ]. These protocols make it difficult to access and use CBT.

The limitations of the current interventions suggest the need for developing an ER-specific treatment. Designing more effective and targeted interventions requires a specific understanding of affective science to provide a broad framework for ER treatments. For example, recently, it has been identified that emotions can be generated and regulated not only through a top-down process but also through a bottom-up process: [ 65 ] current models of emotion generation and its regulation are based on these two processes, which are opposed but interactive [ 66 ]. The top-down mechanism is based on a view that focuses on cognition, where either individuals’ goal states or cognitive evaluations are thought to influence the variations in their emotional responses [ 67 ]. These processes are mapped to prefrontal cortical areas. Meanwhile, bottom-up mechanisms refer to processes based on a stimuli-focused view: in this mode of processing, emotions are mostly elicited by perceptions [ 68 ]. In everyday life, emotion can be processed through interactions between the bottom-up and top-down mechanisms [ 69 ].

Most research to date, however, has focused on top-down ER strategies, and few studies have focused on bottom-up regulation procedures [ 65 ]. In particular, CBT-based treatments, which are mainstream psychotherapies, focus on instruction in an array of cognitive means of coping with emotions; CBT traditionally tends to deal more directly with cognitive rather than emotional processes. One top-down strategy is cognitive reappraisal, an active component of most CBT-based treatments [ 70 ]. However, studies suggest that relying primarily on this strategy may be less effective for certain disorders, including depression, than treatments employing a flexible approach [ 65 ]. Such an approach would be straightforward and essential for researchers as they synthesize different research results, such as findings concerning bottom-up ER and its clinical implications for the investigation of interventions.

One intervention approach to bottom-up experiential ER is art psychotherapy. This type of treatment, which targets emotion dysregulation, may hold promise for improving ER in cases of depression. Patients with depression can benefit from experiential ER that emphasizes bottom-up means of coping with their emotional experiences over the course of art-based ER intervention. This perspective is supported by behavioral and neurocognitive findings indicating difficulties in top-down regulatory processes in individuals with depression [ 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 ]. Research examining neural activities between individuals with and without depression indicated different patterns between them: when downregulating negative emotions, individuals with depression show bilateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) activation, whereas individuals without depression show left-lateralized activation [ 74 ]. When given an effortful reappraisal task, moreover, the relationship patterns of individuals with depression between activation in the left ventrolateral PFC and the amygdala are different from those of individuals without depression. These findings indicate that the pathophysiology of depression underlies struggles of downregulation [ 74 ].

Thus, it is vital to design a new intervention for depression that focuses not only on top-down ER but also on bottom-up ER. In particular, this study examines art-based ER in the form of a client-centered and experiential psychotherapeutic approach allowing patients to attempt top-down and bottom-up regulation. While pursuing active engagement in art-based ER practices, patients can process their emotional experiences in a way that produces greater fine-tuning and depth. Art-based treatment is open and non-interventional as well as less demanding cognitively, enabling it to reach a diverse population with depressive symptoms. More promisingly, art-based ER primarily deals with visible and tangible works leading to visual representations. Emotional memory is perceptual [ 75 ], implying that art-based practices can influence its retrieval and manipulative process: the artworks that patients make in treatments are visual representations that are identical or similar to their emotional experiences. Importantly, creation involves colors, images, and spaces acting as new stimuli, allowing patients to manipulate and generate new emotions through a bottom-up process. As processes of emotion generation interact with those of ER [ 67 ], an art-based experiential approach can facilitate adaptive ER, potentially benefiting individuals who have emotional dysfunction.

However, few studies have explored ER in depression within the field of art psychotherapy [ 76 ]. The therapeutic strategies applied in relevant studies [ 77 , 78 , 79 ] are not explicitly identified or targeted with respect to the mechanisms of ER. For instance, earlier literature tested the effects of art therapy on ER in psychiatric disorders; most of these approaches focused on improving psychopathological symptoms related to specific disorders and considered ER to be a secondary therapeutic outcome. Thus, we identified a need to develop an effective art-based intervention specifically targeting emotion dysregulation in major depression.

Step 2: Formulation of change objectives

The second step required the specification of intervention goals, which involved moving from understanding what influences depressive symptoms, especially in terms of emotional abnormalities in depression, to clarifying what needs to be changed. Based on the needs assessment, the overall expected outcome was “a decrease in depressive symptoms and an improvement in ER.” In this process, the analysis of the determinants in Step 1 resulted in selecting key determinants to target, which were provided by a comprehensive review of the empirical literature and research evidence. It is difficult to understand generative and regulatory emotion processes that are enacted internally without the instigation of extrinsic stimuli [ 80 ]. Thus, it can be challenging to identify the right determinants to target and design an effective treatment that addresses problems related to ER. Based on our review, we determined and chose four important and changeable determinants and further divided them into five key determinants (see Table  1 ).

To apply IM, the construction of matrices of change consisting of performance and change objectives forms the basis for program development [ 20 , 81 ]. Overall, the program objectives were subdivided into performance objectives expected to be accomplished by the target group in the proposed intervention. While drawing on the key determinants and performance objectives, more general objectives, namely, change objectives, were formulated. The result of Step 2 is this change matrix, which further forms the basic factors for designing the intervention for major depression.

Step 3: Theory- and evidence-based strategies selection

In IM, Step 3 entails selecting theoretically grounded and evidence-based methods and strategies. For this process, we first conducted a comprehensive review of theories and empirical studies for therapeutic strategies, including the following characteristics: (i) they need to be confirmed as an efficient ER strategy based on empirical research evidence; (ii) they need to be effective not only in decreasing depressive symptoms but also in improving ER capacities of patients; and (iii) they can be translated into art-based practices. In iterations of reviewing theories related to and research evidence with regard to emotion regulatory strategies, we identified appropriate, theoretically sound therapeutic strategies for at least one program target.

Once an ER method was selected, we translated this method into art-based emotion regulation (ABER) strategies for practical applications. Practical applications refer to the practical translation of the chosen behavior change methods [ 19 , 20 , 21 , 81 ]. The end product of Step 3 is an initial set of theory- and evidence-based strategies selected and translated to address emotion dysregulation in major depression. Table 2  lists the strategies with supporting evidence and applications: art-based distraction, art-based positive rumination, art-based self-distancing (SD), and art-based acceptance. Based on an integrative view of emotional processing, which posits interactions between top-down and bottom-up systems [ 67 , 69 , 82 , 83 ], these strategies aim to modulate emotions through the use of top-down and bottom-up mechanisms.

In particular, as art-based ER involves visual-spatial processing that could exert influence as new sets of stimuli, this approach could lead to a more experiential bottom-up ER. For instance, distraction and cognitive defusion are usually considered cognitive forms of ER; however, both are translated and applied to art-based strategies. Individuals’ performance in art-based ER would differ from that on a given cognitive task, as their immersion experiences in the artistic and creative process involve the generation of colors, images, and spatial features, which may elicit new bottom-up processing. This may be associated with the superior ER effects of art-based distraction, as shown in some studies that compared the ER effects of artistic activities with those of non-artistic activities, such as completing verbal puzzles [ 98 , 99 , 100 ].

In addition, art-based SD promotes intuitive and experiential ER. Individuals are trained to adopt a self-distanced perspective in some treatments while reflecting on their emotions, such as mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) and ERT. They meditate to take a decentered stance. Art-based SD may help those who have difficulty creating an internal distance. As individuals create visual forms of their inner feelings and thoughts, a spatially generated distance from the artworks representing their experiences allows them to adopt and maintain a more self-distanced perspective. As such, art-based SD is more intuitive but requires less mental energy. Importantly, this art-based experiential distancing may reconstrue individuals’ appraisals by facilitating a bottom-up mechanism.

Step 4: Program development

Step 4 concerns creating an actual program plan, leading to the ABER intervention model proposed in the current study. The intervention's elementary components, organization, and structure were created based on the findings of the preparation steps (Steps 1–3). Once the list of therapeutic strategies and their practical applications was generated, we designed a structured intervention framework that would be feasible and realistic to deliver in primary care settings.

The intervention framework developed in Step 4 is based on the process model of ER [ 7 ], supported by considerable empirical research [ 101 , 102 , 103 ]. Based on the extended model, a series of steps involved in the process of regulation with different ER strategies are considered while designing the conceptual framework. Accordingly, the primary areas of the intervention involve emotion perception, attention, and cognition. We developed specific art-based ER strategies, focusing primarily on antecedent- rather than response-focused regulation. Further, this intervention is meant to complement the process model in a framework that is designed to apply one or more strategies in a single session: this would be ideal for improving ER in real life, as current research on ER has found that people generally try multiple strategies simultaneously [ 104 ], whereas the process model examines a within-situation context, within which a single ER strategy is utilized [ 12 ]. In addition, we find that this treatment will be effective in improving ER as it attempts both top-down and bottom-up ER: actively engaging in artworks through the use of the body, a patient can apply experiential self-focus [ 64 ]. In treatment with art-making, patients can be provided with sufficient time and space to find personal meaning in their experiences and process emotions, which enables them to achieve change.

Table 3 presents an overview of the proposed intervention frameworks. As shown, we designed two frameworks to guide the intervention: an individual framework for short-term intervention and an integrative framework for long-term intervention. Each style of the ABER model draws on a different implementation design to build the framework, and each model has slightly different aims. In Step 4, the advisory board reviewed the draft frameworks, including the determinants, performance and change objectives, and therapeutic strategies. The advisory board acted as a support group throughout the review process, helping tailor the program to the target population. In response to the board’s reviews, supplementary resources were added.

Individual framework

First, a plan for an individual framework was devised that accounted for the scope and phase of a short-term intervention. As shown in Fig.  4 , this framework focuses on producing initial or short-term behavioral changes pertaining to achieving short-term clinical efficacy. That is, the individual model does not aim only at emotional changes in patients, such as increases or decreases in specific emotions. The therapeutic aim is not set in an emotion-specific manner, but in terms of effectiveness, it relates to the use of regulatory strategies [ 105 ]. Accordingly, an expected outcome is to increase the quantity and frequency of adaptive ER strategies. Patients are trained in rudimentary ER skills, including one or several combination ABER strategies, as designed in the previous step. These practices aim to enhance attentional, followed by cognitive control. The expected duration of individual sessions is around 1–1.5 h.

Individual intervention model diagram. Noted. The panel shows the individual intervention model in an inpatient setting as an example: each patient (patient i ) has a different time of admission (t 0 ) and inpatient discharge (t d ). Thus, the number of participating patients can differ per session. During the hospital stay, patients are trained in rudimentary emotion regulation (ER) skills, including one or a combination of several art-based ER strategies (aber i ). The application of the therapeutic strategies is flexible: it depends on the patient’s cognitive functions, depressive symptoms, and severity of the symptoms. The time of inpatient discharge (t d ) affects each patient’s treatment duration

Integrative framework

While an individual framework comprises a single phase, an integrative framework includes stepwise sequential phases. In addition to skill development in the individual treatment, three phases of the integrative model are designed to foster adaptive motivational responses and cognitive-behavioral flexibility, which enables patients to achieve greater emotional clarity [ 106 ]. In the integrative treatment, all three phases are performed for 6–12 weeks.

The first phase of the integrative model begins with psychoeducation, in which the patient is taught the concept of ER and the importance of identifying his or her habitual reactions, such as in terms of rumination and dampening [ 91 ], that have characterized his or her life. This therapeutic process is important because ER is an automatic process requiring the consideration of motivation [ 107 ]. Psychoeducation regarding ER and monitoring patients’ responses to emotional experiences precede the skill development procedure. For instance, for patients’ self-monitoring, retrospective self-report questionnaires can capture data on ER skill use. While these methodologies are easy to use and cost-efficient [ 108 ], they are demanding tools for use in capturing natural fluctuating patterns in ER [ 109 ]. As an alternative, ecological momentary assessment can be used in treatment to capture situational context and adaptiveness of the skill use [ 108 ]. In addition to patients’ self-monitoring, a psychotherapist should monitor their emotional responses during and between therapy sessions: psychotherapists function as human raters. Because self-monitoring may not be feasible for all patients, assessing the typical patterns with which patients use maladaptive emotion regulatory strategies is important. Specifically, therapists need to assess a patient’s ER repertoire: the quantity of ER strategies, the frequency of strategy use, and how the patient’s strategy use changes.

The second phase entails adopting and implementing ER strategies with processes resembling those of the individual model. These processes entail the selection and repetition of adaptive strategies. They differ from the individual model in that the duration of Phase II can vary from one patient to another depending on the severity of depressive symptoms and the frequency of maladaptive strategies used. The ER practices delivered in Phase II are art-based tasks through which therapists and patients explore and try adaptive strategies. As shown in Fig.  5 , the intervention program includes four ABER strategies selected and translated in Step 3: art-based distraction, art-based SD, art-based positive rumination, and art-based acceptance. The patients work with therapists in 4–8 1.5-h sessions to engage in art-based practices.

Summary steps and components for the integrative intervention model

Finally, the integrative framework includes a third phase for evaluation. While the previous sessions in Phase II focus on skill development, the sessions in Phase III focus on assessing changes in patients. All individual progress in ER is tracked and monitored. In this task, therapists help patients assess changes in their emotion-regulatory skill use and their achievements in terms of self-perception, effectiveness, and adaptiveness. Patients are given opportunities to take a broad view of the changes in their artworks during all treatment phases. Furthermore, patients receive a few tasks as homework to briefly review their strategy use in daily life from the beginning of the treatment until the current moment. The review process helps them assess their progress and supports their strengthening. It takes 6–12 weeks to complete the integrative treatment course, depending on the clinical impression. For instance, the duration of Phase II is expected to take 4–8 weeks, according to the clinical impression. A therapist or clinician renders his or her impression regarding the degree of the patients’ severity of depressive symptoms, use of maladaptive ER strategies, willingness to participate in the intervention, and insight into their treatment.

Step 5: Adoption and implementation

Implementation is an essential aspect of program development. In Step 5 of IM, the focus is on planning the adoption and implementation of the proposed intervention. This process is required at the environmental level [ 21 ] and ensures successful adoption and sustainable use in collaborating organizations. Thus, pilot tests can be conducted to gain practical insights into implementation decisions and refine the intervention. Using a PAR framework, we pilot-tested the individual model to ensure that the intervention is appropriate and helpful for patients. This PAR pilot study was performed to inform future practices while connecting intervention research with actual action in a primary care setting.

The advisory group’s results, which indicated that the intervention needed to be sufficiently pliable to be used in a variety of primary care settings, informed and supported the step for pretesting. Implementation was prepared in a primary care setting, in which the program was pretested with a steering group of psychiatrists, nurses, and an art psychotherapist. Two clinicians were in charge of informing the intervention program and facilitating patient involvement. The therapist, who had received appropriate training and instruction, was responsible for delivering the intervention and supporting all practical aspects of patient engagement. With support from the therapist, the patients were in charge of applying one or a combination of two strategies in therapeutic sessions.

We performed this initial testing in a psychiatric ward in Seoul. Between February 2023 and February 2024, during the first two phases of the pilot testing, approximately 24 sessions were conducted, and 45 inpatients, including 16 patients with depressive disorders, voluntarily participated in the program. At the end of each session, the participants were asked to report their experiences through free narratives and complete a short questionnaire survey (quantitative and free-text comments) that provided additional information regarding their involvement. The mean time expenditure for the patients was 1.1 h (SD: 18.0; range: 0.5–2). Patients’ emotional experiences were reflected in their artworks, and Fig.  6 shows a short overview of their art products. The detailed findings from these pilot trials are outside the scope of the IM protocol and will be available in a future publication.

Examples of the art products of the participating patients with depression. Noted. Figure 6 briefly outlines patient engagement through their artworks made during the treatment sessions in the first pilot phase: a shows an artwork a patient made in a treatment session, which applied art-based acceptance; b shows an artwork showing a patient’s reflection on his experience, which applied art-based self-distancing and acceptance; c and d show artworks in which patients apply art-based positive rumination and distraction. Different art materials were provided in each session depending on the ER strategies used. The art-based practices of ER promoted relaxation and expression of the patient’s inner feelings and thoughts

Step 6. Evaluation plan

The sixth step of IM is the planning of evaluation strategies to assess the potential impacts of the proposed intervention [ 20 ]. For this purpose, we designed two phases based on a PAR framework: patient feedback and expert feedback. The rationale for this plan was that comprehensive evaluations could investigate the necessity of refinement and what is needed to produce a more feasible and effective intervention. In particular, we expected that the engagement of patients as well as health professionals in the evaluation process would integrate the organizational perspective into patient-oriented quality improvements. From these two phases, we developed questions and measures for evaluation, conducting preliminary PAR studies to determine the feasibility and efficacy of the complete program. Table 4 presents the evaluation strategies for gaining patient and expert feedback. Meanwhile, Table  5 presents an overview and timeline of PAR 2 and PAR 3.

First, we developed a set of patient-reported outcome measures to obtain patient feedback. Quantitative assessments of treatment satisfaction, perceived helpfulness of treatment, and perceived difficulty were conducted following the end of a therapeutic session. Patient evaluations must be carried out regularly during treatment to assess the efficacy of the integrative model. At the end of the program, unstructured or semi-structured interviews are recommended to explore patients’ experiences of the treatment process. In addition, we planned a two-phase mixed-methods study to obtain feedback from participating healthcare professionals using an online survey and focus group interviews. The assessments included process measures, such as perceived difficulty, program appropriateness, and recommendations for improvements to its implementation on a professional level. A web-based survey was disseminated among clinicians and nurses to assess the feasibility of the intervention. Together, this enabled us to increase the time efficiency and cost-effectiveness of the evaluation process.

Feasibility was assessed in five ways. First, the feasibility with which patients participated in the program was described. In our preliminary study, for instance, we calculated the percentage of patients approached for program participation relative to those who did not. Second, the feasibility of retaining patients in a treatment session was reported. To capture the feasibility of retention in treatment, we calculated the percentage of patients who failed to complete treatment compared with the percentage of those who completed it. Third, the feasibility of administering treatment was measured with a self-reported survey of patients’ perceived difficulty in participation and a survey of healthcare professionals’ perceived difficulty in implementation. To report the feasibility of administering treatment, we calculated the mean hours a patient spent in completing treatment. In addition to feasibility, acceptability was operationalized in three ways: a quantitative self-report survey of patient satisfaction, patient perceptions of helpfulness of treatment, and patient willingness to recommend program participation were used. In our preliminary study, we developed responses for the patient survey and calculated the means and standard deviations for each item.

We received patient feedback in the first two pilot phases (PAR 2), and the results showed that the intervention program was feasible and acceptable for implementation in the primary care setting (the mean scores were as follows: Treatment satisfaction = 4.82, Perceived helpfulness of treatment = 4.57, Perceived difficulty = 4.45). The patients provided further recommendations for improved intervention in free-text comments. In addition to this patient feedback, we began conducting PAR3 in February 2024. The feedback research is being conducted through an online questionnaire that includes multiple-choice questions and open-ended questions, with focus group interviews being conducted virtually through Zoom. The results for PAR 2 and PAR 3 will be reported in separate articles.

In this paper, we proposed conceptual frameworks for an intervention that targets emotion dysregulation in depression. IM was used as the conceptual protocol to develop the intervention. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first art-based ER intervention incorporating previous theories, research evidence, and review data in relation to affective science and intervention research, combining PAR components with IM. We developed the intervention following the rationale and stepwise process of IM, which identifies theory- and evidence-based strategies to address key barriers to ER. In addition, to evaluate the developed intervention, preliminary PAR studies were conducted, including the acceptability of the trials and the ABER intervention to patients; the rate of recruitment, attendance, and attrition; perceived difficulties in intervention implementation; and psychological outcomes. Consequently, the intervention is theoretically underpinned and supported by empirical evidence regarding ER and the results of our pilot studies.

The current study benefits from integrating the PAR approach into the IM framework in two ways. First, using PAR studies in the IM resulted in the cogeneration of knowledge among academic researchers, implementers, and the intended participants. PAR ensured experiential knowledge to deliver content that addressed difficulties in ER in collaborative partnerships. Another contribution was enhancing the feasibility and acceptability of the proposed intervention. In particular, preliminary PAR studies helped investigate whether modifications were needed before the intervention’s adoption. Even though IM is a time-consuming process, the use of PAR made it more cost-effective and time-efficient.

In addition to these strengths, it is crucial to acknowledge and affirm the study’s limitations. First, the current study offers only preliminary evidence for the given conceptual framework. Although the proposed intervention may precisely target emotional dysfunction in depression, such as in the restrictive use of adaptive ER skills with repetitive use of maladaptive strategies, the integrative and individual frameworks of ABER have not been evaluated through randomized clinical trials. As the current study pilot-tested the intervention in an inpatient setting that served an acute, transdiagnostic population, implementers could extend the use of these frameworks by performing a fine-grained analysis of treatment contexts (e.g., by adapting the model for depressed outpatients in primary care). As such, the intervention must be examined and refined on the basis of the results of empirical studies on multidisciplinary design. In addition, this article did not examine the therapists’ capability of delivering treatment, fidelity of implementation, and feasibility of measuring tools. Intervention researchers interested in these variables are encouraged to extend our models by testing the broad contextual variables that influence its process. Similarly, further research is required to investigate standardized forms of assessment in treatment (e.g., a measurable rating scale for patient monitoring) to increase the efficiency of the intervention.

Conclusions

This article proposes empirical and theoretical intervention frameworks that can improve ER in depression. This IM study is unique, as the development process incorporates PAR components. Moreover, the intervention consists of four art-based regulatory strategies that enrich the present literature on intervention research targeting dysfunctional ER in major depression. Our participatory action studies demonstrate that, in a primary care setting, the individual protocol is feasible and acceptable for implementation. This result represents a potential step forward toward filling a gap in current mental health treatments for patients with MDD. Despite the tiresome and time-consuming process of intervention development, the application of IM augmented by PAR is helpful in optimizing chances for an effective behavior change. Further testing is required to assess the impact of the therapeutic program proposed in this study.

Availability of data and materials

The author confirms that the data generated or analysed during this study are included in this published article: however, raw datasets are not publicly available due to local legal restrictions. Since the data being generated by PAR2 and PAR3 are outside the scope of the current intervention mapping study, they are available elsewhere.

Abbreviations

Art-based emotion regulation

Cognitive-behavioral therapy

• Emotion regulation

Emotion Regulation Group Therapy

Generalized anxiety disorder

• Intervention mapping

Mindfulness-based stress reduction

Major depressive disorder

• Participatory action research

The Self-Assessment Manikin

Self-distancing

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Acknowledgements

The present researchers express their gratitude to the Kangdong Sacred Heart Hospital for its help and support in this research. Appreciation is also extended to all participating patients, clinicians, health care professionals, and the advisory board in all steps of the development. There are no individuals or funding organizations, other than the co-authors, who contributed directly or indirectly to this article.

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Myungjoo Lee & Young Tak Jo

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ML contributed to plan and design the study with support from the rest of the study team. YT registered the trial. ML collected, and analyzed participant data. ML drafted and edited the manuscript. All authors reviewed and/or approved the final manuscript for submission.

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Lee, M., Choi, H. & Jo, Y.T. Targeting emotion dysregulation in depression: an intervention mapping protocol augmented by participatory action research. BMC Psychiatry 24 , 595 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-024-06045-y

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Cellphones don’t cause brain cancer: WHO study

New research hopes to settle longstanding debate.

By Lois M. Collins

Cellphones do not cause brain cancer.

That’s the conclusion of an international team of researchers from 10 countries who did a comprehensive review of research in hopes of settling a debate that’s been ongoing since cellphones were invented.

The researchers, who were commissioned and partially funded by the World Health Organization, reviewed 28 years of research into whether the radio waves from cellphones increase risk of brain cancer or otherwise cause health issues. The answer, they said, is no.

Their findings , which included reviewing 63 studies from 22 countries between 1994 and 2022, were published in the journal Environment International.

Most of the studies examined the risk of brain tumors. Ten looked at whether fixed-site transmitters increased the risk of childhood leukemia or pediatric brain tumors. Some considered other health risks.

They said there was no increase in brain cancer over time related to cellphone use, either, even among those who’d had cellphones for more than a decade. Nor do cellphone towers create extra health concerns, the researchers concluded. And modern ones emit less radio frequency than older ones, as well.

The findings echo the conclusion of the National Cancer Institute, which published a fact sheet on cellphones and cancer. It noted that cellphone frequencies “fall in the nonionizing range of the spectrum, which is low frequency and low energy. The energy is too low to damage DNA.” Nor has the incidence of brain and central nervous system cancers changed since cellphone use increased, the institute reported.

The new study found that prolonged use of a cellphone or total time spent on the cellphone didn’t alter the findings.

Birth of a cancer worry

The controversy over cancer risk from cellphones erupted in 1993, when a Florida man sued his wife’s cell phone carrier, NEC America, claiming that she died of brain cancer because of her phone’s radiation, according to Newatlas.com . He maintained in the lawsuit that her phone “was equipped with an antenna so positioned as to cause exposure to microwave radiation in an excessive and unsafe amount to the portion of the brain where the tumor was found.”

The lawsuit was dismissed in 1995, the article said, but the idea has persisted in some quarters.

As The Washington Post reported , WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer had “classified radio wave exposure as a possible carcinogen to humans in 2011 — based on limited evidence from observational studies.” The article noted that “the WHO classification doesn’t mean that radio waves are a definite carcinogen — like the chemicals in cigarette smoke.”

More studies have been done that questioned that classification, which is why WHO commissioned the study.

How fear spreads

Fear sometimes spreads simply because new technology is, well, new.

“Worries about the health effects of new technology are common and tend to increase when a new technology is adopted widely or adopted quickly,” Keith Petrie, a University of Auckland expert who was not involved in the review of the studies, told the Post.

“This was seen during the COVID-19 pandemic when people attacked radio cell towers believing a baseless theory that 5G towers spread the coronavirus,” he added.

39 Different Ways to Say ‘In Conclusion’ in an Essay (Rated)

Chris Drew (PhD)

Dr. Chris Drew is the founder of the Helpful Professor. He holds a PhD in education and has published over 20 articles in scholarly journals. He is the former editor of the Journal of Learning Development in Higher Education. [Image Descriptor: Photo of Chris]

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The phrase “In conclusion …” sounds reductive, simple and … well, just basic.

You can find better words to conclude an essay than that!

So below I’ve outlined a list of different ways to say in conclusion in an essay using a range of analysis verbs . Each one comes with an explanation of the best time to use each phrase and an example you could consider.

Read Also: How to Write a Conclusion using the 5C’s Method

List of Ways to Say ‘In Conclusion’ in an Essay

The following are the best tips I have for to say in conclusion in an essay.

1. The Weight of the Evidence Suggests…

My Rating: 10/10

Overview: This is a good concluding phrase for an evaluative essay where you need to compare two different positions on a topic then conclude by saying which one has more evidence behind it than the other.

You could also use this phrase for argumentative essays where you’ve put forward all the evidence for your particular case.

Example: “The weight of the evidence suggests that climate change is a real phenomenon.”

2. A Thoughtful Analysis would Conclude…

My Rating: 9/10

Overview: I would use this phrase in either an argumentative essay or a comparison essay. As an argument, it highlights that you think your position is the most logical.

In a comparison essay, it shows that you have (or have intended to) thoughtfully explore the issue by looking at both sides.

Example: “A thoughtful analysis would conclude that there is substantial evidence highlighting that climate change is real.”

Related Article: 17+ Great Ideas For An Essay About Yourself

3. A Balanced Assessment of the Above Information…

Overview: This phrase can be used to show that you have made a thoughtful analysis of the information you found when researching the essay. You’re telling your teacher with this phrase that you have looked at all sides of the argument before coming to your conclusion.

Example: “A balanced assessment of the above information would be that climate change exists and will have a strong impact on the world for centuries to come.”

4. Across the Board…

My Rating: 5/10

Overview: I would use this phrase in a less formal context such as in a creative discussion but would leave it out of a formal third-person essay. To me, the phrase comes across as too colloquial.

Example: “Across the board, there are scientists around the world who consistently provide evidence for human-induced climate change.”

5. Logically…

My Rating: 7/10

Overview: This phrase can be used at the beginning of any paragraph that states out a series of facts that will be backed by clear step-by-step explanations that the reader should be able to follow to a conclusion.

Example: “Logically, the rise of the automobile would speed up economic expansion in the United States. Automobiles allowed goods to flow faster around the economy.

6. After all is Said and Done…

Overview: This is a colloquial term that is more useful in a speech than written text. If you feel that the phrase ‘In conclusion,’ is too basic, then I’d also avoid this term. However, use in speech is common, so if you’re giving a speech, it may be more acceptable.

Example: “After all is said and done, it’s clear that there is more evidence to suggest that climate change is real than a hoax.”

7. All in All…

Overview: ‘All in all’ is a colloquial term that I would use in speech but not in formal academic writing. Colloquialisms can show that you have poor command of the English language. However, I would consider using this phrase in the conclusion of a debate.

Example: “All in all, our debate team has shown that there is insurmountable evidence that our side of the argument is correct.”

8. All Things Considered…

My Rating: 6/10

Overview: This term is a good way of saying ‘I have considered everything above and now my conclusion is..’ However, it is another term that’s more commonly used in speech than writing. Use it in a high school debate, but when it comes to a formal essay, I would leave it out.

Example: “All things considered, there’s no doubt in my mind that climate change is man-made.”

9. As a Final Note…

My Rating: 3/10

Overview: This phrase gives me the impression that the student doesn’t understand the point of a conclusion. It’s not to simply make a ‘final note’, but to summarize and reiterate. So, I would personally avoid this one.

Example: “As a final note, I would say that I do think the automobile was one of the greatest inventions of the 20 th Century.”

10. As Already Stated…

My Rating: 2/10

Overview: I don’t like this phrase. It gives teachers the impression that you’re going around in circles and haven’t organized your essay properly. I would particularly avoid it in the body of an essay because I always think: “If you already stated it, why are you stating it again?” Of course, the conclusion does re-state things, but it also adds value because it also summarizes them. So, add value by using a phrase such as ‘summarizing’ or ‘weighing up’ in your conclusion instead.

Example: “As already stated, I’m going to repeat myself and annoy my teacher.”

11. At present, the Best Evidence Suggests…

My Rating: 8/10

Overview: In essays where the evidence may change in the future. Most fields of study do involve some evolution over time, so this phrase acknowledges that “right now” the best evidence is one thing, but it may change in the future. It also shows that you’ve looked at the latest information on the topic.

Example: “At present, the best evidence suggests that carbon dioxide emissions from power plants is the greatest influence on climate change.”

12. At the Core of the Issue…

Overview: I personally find this phrase to be useful for most essays. It highlights that you are able to identify the most important or central point from everything you have examined. It is slightly less formal than some other phrases on this list, but I also wouldn’t consider it too colloquial for an undergraduate essay.

Example: “At the core of the issue in this essay is the fact scientists have been unable to convince the broader public of the importance of action on climate change.”

13. Despite the shortcomings of…

Overview: This phrase can be useful in an argumentative essay. It shows that there are some limitations to your argument, but , on balance you still think your position is the best. This will allow you to show critical insight and knowledge while coming to your conclusion.

Often, my students make the mistake of thinking they can only take one side in an argumentative essay. On the contrary, you should be able to highlight the limitations of your point-of-view while also stating that it’s the best.

Example: “Despite the shortcomings of globalization, this essay has found that on balance it has been good for many areas in both the developed and developing world.”

14. Finally…

My Rating: 4/10

Overview: While the phrase ‘Finally,’ does indicate that you’re coming to the end of your discussion, it is usually used at the end of a list of ideas rather than in a conclusion. It also implies that you’re adding a point rather that summing up previous points you have made.

Example: “Finally, this essay has highlighted the importance of communication between policy makers and practitioners in order to ensure good policy is put into effect.”

15. Gathering the above points together…

Overview: While this is not a phrase I personally use very often, I do believe it has the effect of indicating that you are “summing up”, which is what you want out of a conclusion.

Example: “Gathering the above points together, it is clear that the weight of evidence highlights the importance of action on climate change.”

16. Given the above information…

Overview: This phrase shows that you are considering the information in the body of the piece when coming to your conclusion. Therefore, I believe it is appropriate for starting a conclusion.

Example: “Given the above information, it is reasonable to conclude that the World Health Organization is an appropriate vehicle for achieving improved health outcomes in the developing world.”

17. In a nutshell…

Overview: This phrase means to say everything in the fewest possible words. However, it is a colloquial phrase that is best used in speech rather than formal academic writing.

Example: “In a nutshell, there are valid arguments on both sides of the debate about socialism vs capitalism.”

18. In closing…

Overview: This phrase is an appropriate synonym for ‘In conclusion’ and I would be perfectly fine with a student using this phrase in their essay. Make sure you follow-up by explaining your position based upon the weight of evidence presented in the body of your piece

Example: “In closing, there is ample evidence to suggest that liberalism has been the greatest force for progress in the past 100 years.”

19. In essence…

Overview: While the phrase ‘In essence’ does suggest you are about to sum up the core findings of your discussion, it is somewhat colloquial and is best left for speech rather than formal academic writing.

Example: “In essence, this essay has shown that cattle farming is an industry that should be protected as an essential service for our country.”

20. In review…

Overview: We usually review someone else’s work, not our own. For example, you could review a book that you read or a film you watched. So, writing “In review” as a replacement for “In conclusion” comes across a little awkward.

Example: “In review, the above information has made a compelling case for compulsory military service in the United States.”

21. In short…

Overview: Personally, I find that this phrase is used more regularly by undergraduate student. As students get more confident with their writing, they tend to use higher-rated phrases from this list. Nevertheless, I would not take grades away from a student for using this phrase.

Example: “In short, this essay has shown the importance of sustainable agriculture for securing a healthy future for our nation.”

22. In Sum…

Overview: Short for “In summary”, the phrase “In sum” sufficiently shows that you are not coming to the moment where you will sum up the essay. It is an appropriate phrase to use instead of “In conclusion”.

But remember to not just summarize but also discuss the implications of your findings in your conclusion.

Example: “In sum, this essay has shown the importance of managers in ensuring efficient operation of medium-to-large enterprises.”

23. In Summary…

Overview: In summary and in sum are the same terms which can be supplemented for “In conclusion”. You will show that you are about to summarize the points you said in the body of the essay, which is what you want from an essay.

Example: “In summary, reflection is a very important metacognitive skill that all teachers need to master in order to improve their pedagogical skills.”

24. It cannot be conclusively stated that…

Overview: While this phrase is not always be a good fit for your essay, when it is, it does show knowledge and skill in writing. You would use this phrase if you are writing an expository essay where you have decided that there is not enough evidence currently to make a firm conclusion on the issue.

Example: “It cannot be conclusively stated that the Big Bang was when the universe began. However, it is the best theory so far, and none of the other theories explored in this essay have as much evidence behind them.”

25. It is apparent that…

Overview: The term ‘ apparent ’ means that something is ‘clear’ or even ‘obvious’. So, you would use this word in an argumentative essay where you think you have put forward a very compelling argument.

Example: “It is apparent that current migration patterns in the Americas are unsustainable and causing significant harm to the most vulnerable people in our society.”

26. Last but not least…

Overview: The phrase “last but not least” is a colloquial idiom that is best used in speech rather than formal academic writing. Furthermore, when you are saying ‘last’, you mean to say you’re making your last point rather than summing up all your points you already made. So, I’d avoid this one.

Example: “Last but not least, this essay has highlighted the importance of empowering patients to exercise choice over their own medical decisions.”

27. Overall…

My Rating: 7.5/10

Overview: This phrase means ‘taking everything into account’, which sounds a lot like what you would want to do in an essay. I don’t consider it to be a top-tier choice (which is why I rated it 7), but in my opinion it is perfectly acceptable to use in an undergraduate essay.

Example: “Overall, religious liberty continues to be threatened across the world, and faces significant threats in the 21 st Century.”

28. The above points illustrate…

Overview: This phrase is a good start to a conclusion paragraph that talks about the implications of the points you made in your essay. Follow it up with a statement that defends your thesis you are putting forward in the essay.

Example: “The above points illustrate that art has had an overwhelmingly positive impact on humanity since the renaissance.”

29. The evidence presented in this essay suggests that…

Overview: I like this phrase because it highlights that you are about to gather together the evidence from the body of the essay to put forward a final thesis statement .

Example: “The evidence presented in this essay suggests that the democratic system of government is the best for securing maximum individual liberty for citizens of a nation.”

30. This essay began by stating…

Overview: This phrase is one that I teach in my YouTube mini-course as an effective one to use in an essay conclusion. If you presented an interesting fact in your introduction , you can return to that point from the beginning of the essay to provide nice symmetry in your writing.

Example: “This essay began by stating that corruption has been growing in the Western world. However, the facts collected in the body of the essay show that institutional checks and balances can sufficiently minimize this corruption in the long-term.”

31. This essay has argued…

Overview: This term can be used effectively in an argumentative essay to provide a summary of your key points. Follow it up with an outline of all your key points, and then a sentence about the implications of the points you made. See the example below.

Example: “This essay has argued that standardized tests are damaging for students’ mental health. Tests like the SATs should therefore be replaced by project-based testing in schools.”

32. To close…

Overview: This is a very literal way of saying “In conclusion”. While it’s suitable and serves its purpose, it does come across as being a sophomoric term. Consider using one of the higher-rated phrases in this list.

Example: “To close, this essay has highlighted both the pros and cons of relational dialectics theory and argued that it is not the best communication theory for the 21 st Century.”

33. To Conclude…

Overview: Like ‘to close’ and ‘in summary’, the phrase ‘to conclude’ is very similar to ‘in conclusion’. It can therefore be used as a sufficient replacement for that term. However, as with the above terms, it’s just okay and you could probably find a better phrase to use.

Example: “To conclude, this essay has highlighted that there are multiple models of communication but there is no one perfect theory to explain each situation.”

34. To make a long story short…

My Rating: 1/10

Overview: This is not a good phrase to use in an academic essay. It is a colloquialism. It also implies that you have been rambling in your writing and you could have said everything more efficiently. I would personally not use this phrase.

Example: “To make a long story short, I don’t have very good command of academic language.”

35. To Sum up…

Overview: This phrase is the same as ‘In summary’. It shows that you have made all of your points and now you’re about to bring them all together in a ‘summary’. Just remember in your conclusion that you need to do more than summarize but also talk about the implications of your findings. So you’ll need to go beyond just a summary.

Example: “In summary, there is ample evidence that linear models of communication like Lasswell’s model are not as good at explaining 21 st Century communication as circular models like the Osgood-Schramm model .”

36. Ultimately…

Overview: While this phrase does say that you are coming to a final point – also known as a conclusion – it’s also a very strong statement that might not be best to use in all situations. I usually accept this phrase from my undergraduates, but for my postgraduates I’d probably suggest simply removing it.

Example: “Ultimately, new media has been bad for the world because it has led to the spread of mistruths around the internet.”

37. Undoubtedly…

Overview: If you are using it in a debate or argumentative essay, it can be helpful. However, in a regular academic essay, I would avoid it. We call this a ‘booster’, which is a term that emphasizes certainty. Unfortunately, certainty is a difficult thing to claim, so you’re better off ‘hedging’ with phrases like ‘It appears’ or ‘The best evidence suggests’.

Example: “Undoubtedly, I know everything about this topic and am one hundred percent certain even though I’m just an undergraduate student.”

38. Weighing up the facts, this essay finds…

Overview: This statement highlights that you are looking at all of the facts both for and against your points of view. It shows you’re not just blindly following one argument but being careful about seeing things from many perspectives.

Example: “Weighing up the facts, this essay finds that reading books is important for developing critical thinking skills in childhood.”

39. With that said…

Overview: This is another phrase that I would avoid. This is a colloquialism that’s best used in speech rather than writing. It is another term that feels sophomoric and is best to avoid. Instead, use a more formal term such as: ‘Weighing up the above points, this essay finds…’

Example: “With that said, this essay disagrees with the statement that you need to go to college to get a good job.”

Do you Need to Say Anything?

Something I often tell my students is: “Can you just remove that phrase?”

Consider this sentence:

• “In conclusion, the majority of scientists concur that climate change exists.”

Would it be possible to simply say:

• “ In conclusion, The majority of scientists concur that climate change exists.”

So, I’d recommend also just considering removing that phrase altogether! Sometimes the best writing is the shortest, simplest writing that gets to the point without any redundant language at all.

How to Write an Effective Conclusion

Before I go, I’d like to bring your attention to my video on ‘how to write an effective conclusion’. I think it would really help you out given that you’re looking for help on how to write a conclusion. It’s under 5 minutes long and has helped literally thousands of students write better conclusions for their essays:

You can also check out these conclusion examples for some copy-and-paste conclusions for your own essay.

In Conclusion…

Well, I had to begin this conclusion with ‘In conclusion…’ I liked the irony in it, and I couldn’t pass up that chance.

Overall, don’t forget that concluding an essay is a way to powerfully summarize what you’ve had to say and leave the reader with a strong impression that you’ve become an authority on the topic you’re researching. 

So, whether you write it as a conclusion, summary, or any other synonym for conclusion, those other ways to say in conclusion are less important than making sure that the message in your conclusion is incredibly strong.

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