In this lesson, you’ll learn how to write the methodology chapter of a thesis, dissertation, or a research paper, step-by-step. So if you’ve reached this section in your assignment and you simply no idea how to proceed, this article will point you in the right direction.
You’ll learn what the methodology chapter is about and how you can go about writing one by following a systematic approach guaranteed to help you complete the project faster.
By definition, the methodology chapter of a thesis, dissertation, or research paper is the section where you explain about the specific research design options used in your research. It’s in the methodology chapter that you explain the process you used to design your research and give a justification for the research design.
In other words, the methodology section should clearly demonstrate:
- Whether you conducted quantitative or qualitative research
- The approach you used to collect the data
- What your approach to analyzing the data was and
- The kind of sampling that you did
With that said, let’s get into more details on dealing with the methodology chapter of your research work.
What is the Methodology Chapter for a Research Paper and Dissertation?
In your methodology chapter, you’ll explain the conceptual foundations of your study as well as the specific research design decisions you’ve made. The purpose of this chapter is to explain how you designed your research.
There are two reasons why your research paper, thesis, and dissertation should have a methodology section:
- It shows that you understand the concept of research design theory, that you understand what you’re doing in research, and that the results you’ll present have a high degree of credibility.
- Because it outlines the steps you took to do and analyze your research, the methodology chapter is what sets your study apart from the others. It also allows you to identify and describe any methodological concerns or problems that you ran into, as well as explain how you dealt with them.
How to Write The Methodology Chapter – Step-by-Step
It’s worth mentioning that the methodology chapter’s specific format and contents will differ based on the study topic and the university. We strongly recommend that you check with your professor to find out what structure they would like you to use.
More often than not, they will allow you to use the standard structure for your paper, which should make the writing process easier for you. Ideally, the methodology chapter of your research paper, thesis, or dissertation should have the following sections:
- Introduction
- Research design
- Methodological limitation
- A concluding summary
Let’s look at each section in more details below:
The Introduction
The methodology chapter should contain a brief introduction of your dissertation or thesis. You should remind your readers about the emphasis of your study, particularly the research objectives.
Your research design must correspond with your research aims, objectives, and research questions, so include this up front to remind the reader what you intend to accomplish with your research design.
We strongly recommend that you explain how you’ve organized the chapter. Doing so will make it easy for the reader to have a clear roadmap of what to expect from reading the rest of the section of your methodology chapter.
Research Design
We like to refer to research design as the heart of the methodology chapter because it presents your research design in great depth to the reader. The information you provide here should be good enough to justify the design choices you made for your paper.
Here’s how to approach it:
1. Describe Your Methodological Approach
Start by explaining the research subject or problem you looked into. It could be that you wanted to methodically define something’s qualities, investigate a little-studied issue, or prove a cause-and-effect relationship. Whatever it is, write it down because it will guide your reader throughout the other section of the research design.
Some questions to think about when working on your methodological approach include:
- Did you require quantitative or qualitative data?
- Was it necessary for you to obtain primary data personally, or did you rely on secondary data gathered by others?
- Did you collect descriptive data by gathering observations without intervening, or did you collect experimental data by altering variables?
- Were there any ethical factors involved in your decision-making?
2. Explain Your Methods of Data Collection
Next step in research design is to explain the data collection method you used to gather information for your research project.
The following table is a summary of the data collection methods as used in research writing:
| Method | When to Use | How to Collect Data |
| Experiment | Ideal for testing casual relationships | You can alter variables to understand effect |
| Survey | When you want to get opinion from groups of people | Use questionnaires to collect data |
| Interviews | If you want to get an opinion on a topic | Ask participants if they’d like to take part |
| Observations | If you wish to understand something in a natural setting | Measure samples without manipulation |
| Ethnography | When you want to directly study the culture of a community | Join and participate in community activities |
| Archival research | If you want to understand current and historical events | Access information from the internet or libraries |
| Secondary data collection | When you can’t get data from a primary source | Get information from already existing dataset |
3. Explain Your Data Analysis Methods
The next step is to describe how you processed and analyzed the data.
- Quantitative analysis: Your analysis in quantitative research will be on numbers. You may include how you prepared the data for analysis, the computer software you used, and the statistical you employed.
- Qualitative analysis: Your analysis in qualitative research will be based on language, visuals, and observations (often involving some form of textual analysis).
4. Methodological Limitations
You can admit to the approach’s limits or flaws, but explain why the advantages exceeded the disadvantages. Explain why prior strategies were ineffective in achieving your goals, and how this strategy adds new information or insight.
Conclusion
Your methodology should be a well-structured, unambiguous document that argues for your approach rather than a collection of technical information and processes.