. It’s best to do this at an early stage, rather than look at the data you collected and find it doesn’t throw any light on the topics you wanted to ask about. It depends on the discipline, but most fields nowadays tend to accept the use of first-person pronouns, especially in the methodology section. In qualitative research, your analysis will be based on language, images and observations. Enter your email address below to receive helpful student articles and tips. In your dissertation or thesis, you will have to discuss the methods you used to undertake your research. Unstructured interviews usually produce results that cannot be generalised beyond the sample group, but they provide a more in-depth understanding of participants’ perceptions, motivations and emotions. The following table sums up key details about each philosophy, and should help you decide which is most useful for your area of study. Section III: Strategy and Research Design, Section IV: Data Collection and Analysis Methods, Section V: Ethics, Reliability, Validity, Generalizability and Limitations. It should include: The methodology section should generally be written in the past tense. On one hand, the researcher may focus on product quality pr… Participants were given 5 minutes to fill in the survey anonymously, and 408 customers responded. Thanks Shona! Give full details of the tools, techniques and procedures you used to conduct the experiment. What questions did you ask and how have these contributed towards answering your research question or how did these test your hypothesis which formed the basis of your research? All values outside the calculated range were considered outliers (Hoaglin & Iglewicz, 1987). Throughout the section, relate your choices back to the central purpose of your dissertation. Describe where, when and how the interviews were conducted. When writing or planning this section, it’s good practice to refer back to your research questions, aims and objectives, and ask yourself whether what you are planning to do is the best way to answer the questions and achieve the objectives. How to Structure a Dissertation: Chapters & Subchapters, 4. The Steps involved in writing a Dissertation. What criteria did you use to select material (e.g. Very useful... i was struggling but with your help i think i can write my methodlogy now. This was so good! In the methods section you might include: Before analysis the gathered data was prepared. 1. For example, if you are researching the opinions of students in your university, you could survey a sample of 100 students. The choices you made at the beginning of your research study should have been aided by contributions from your supervisor. As this methodology is less controlled and more interpretive, you will need to reflect on your position as researcher, taking into account how your participation and perception might have influenced the results. What’s the difference between quantitative and qualitative methods? But if you take an approach that is less common in your field, you might need to explain and justify your methodological choices. Conclusion – Used to confirm the answer to your main research question, reflect on the research process and offer recommendations on future research. For instance, the world perspective and practical consideration of a researcher are different. Revised on Shares the main assumptions of positivism, but takes a more relativistic perspective, There is an objective world, but knowledge of it is filtered through the subjective experience of individuals. In other words, say why you chose the ones you did and don’t say why you didn’t choose the others that were at your … Results – Used to report on your main findings and how these relate to your research question. multiple choice, rating scale)?