Tags Introduction Methodology is perhaps the most challenging and laborious part of research work. This means that your methodology chapter should clearly state whether you chose to use quantitative or qualitative data collection techniques or a mixture of both. You will be required to provide justifications as to why you preferred a certain method over the others. If you are trying to figure out exactly how to write methodology or how to structure methodology of research or dissertation then this article will point you in the right direction.
Answering this question is by no means straight-forward. These are not problems that cause frustration only at the undergraduate level, but that accompany many scholars their entire careers. In fact, at a meeting I attended a few weeks ago on how to apply for research funding from the European Research Councilone of the Introduction methodology chapter dissertation that the Council regularly had with applications was that scholars did not provided a good methodology section.
So if you are a student, and you are confused, remember that you share that confusion with many of the professionals.
What makes questions of method and methodology so thorny is that the answers depend on the respective discipline and on the particular research project. In this post, I will try to highlight different perspectives on this topic, as well as options for coming to grips with methods and methodologies.
This usually includes defining the scope of the research project, coming up with a research question or hypothesis, selecting and collecting data, processing that data with certain tools to enable analysis, and then going through the data systematically to answer the central question.
In other words, methods are the tools you use to do your research. So what is a methodology? In essence, methodology is the discussion of methods.
A methodology section in a research paper needs to achieve three things, though not necessarily in this order: Firstly, it should consider what the nature of academic work is more generally, and what this might mean for anyone who explores the topic at hand. Secondly, it needs to provide a literature review, discussing what methods researchers have traditionally used to study the kind of topic that the project focuses on.
Thirdly, it should explain what methods this particular project uses and why. The first issue is a question of epistemologythe philosophy of knowledge.
Crucial epistemological questions include: What have different intellectual schools said on these issues, and what do our own answers to these questions say about the value of our research project?
What do they say about the value of academic work in general? These are debates that have occupied thinkers for millennia, and no-one would expect you to answer them in a term paper or thesis.
Nevertheless, the practical methods you use to study your subject come with certain assumptions, so it would be a good idea to demonstrate that you are aware of what these are. These are by no means trivial questions, and even though they are theoretical, they have very real implications for how you conduct your own research.
Next, you might want to review what experts in the field have said about the value and drawbacks of using surveys, about the relation between information and human behaviour, and about the problems of establishing causalities between different variables.
A note on positivism as a research tradition would also probably be wise. Finally, you should explain where you got your data and what exactly it is you plan to do with it. Similarly, if you are studying policy documents to find out what the agenda of a specific government is, you would be well advised to think about epistemological questions like the value that such documents might have as an indication of political preferences, about the nature of political decision-making, or about the various philosophical traditions that have debated whether the language in such sources reflects certain beliefs or conjures them into being or maybe both?
How you then go on to select and study the actual documents will likely follow from your answers to these questions. How methodology connects to theory As these examples already show, methodological discussions are both theoretical and practical in nature.
This is also what makes writing a methodology section for an article or a thesis so hard. It can be difficult to draw a line between a typical theory chapter and the epistemological discussion of the methods you used. Do you now need to include a second theoretical chapter that discusses how we can know about the system of states?Chapter Three Research Methodology Introduction.
This chapter clearly defines the research methods used to conduct the study. The researcher explains how the necessary data and information to address the research objectives and questions was collected, presented and analyzed/5(83).
ACM India Research Board (AIRB) What is AIRB? ACM India Research Board (AIRB) is a community of academics, researchers, and others who care deeply about enhancing the quality and the quantity of computing research done in India, particularly in the academic institutions.
Situating Constructionism. By Seymour Papert and Idit Harel. The following essay is the first chapter in Seymour Papert and Idit Harel's book Constructionism (Ablex Publishing Corporation, ).
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Thesis or Dissertation.
S. Joseph Levine, Ph.D. Michigan State University East Lansing, Michigan USA ([email protected])) Become a Fan. Introduction. This guide has been created to assist my graduate students in thinking through the many aspects of crafting, implementing and defending a thesis or dissertation.
Chapter I - Introduction Introductory paragraphs.
Chapter I begins with a few short introductory paragraphs (a couple of pages at most). The primary goal of the introductory paragraphs is to catch the attention of the readers and to get them "turned on" about the subject.