The actual exam in a life of a student comes when he comes across the “DISSERTATION”. The word must have sounded you difficult in the first place because there is already the development of fear inside you made by your seniors or those who have already done it.
The term dissertation isn’t only that sounds horrifying but the execution phase of it is even harder. Let us discuss one of the important parts of a dissertation, that is, a research methodology.
What Should You Know About A Research Methodology?
A research methodology part appears as soon as you are done with your literature review. It is important to follow the flow of the dissertation while you are writing. The part of the research methodology is generally written in the past tense.
It provides a comprehensive description of how you will approach your dissertation and why have you chosen the approach that you have already used.
What Should A Methodology Consist Of?
The main question arises that how to write a dissertation methodology that is asked by the majority. Before proceeding to it, let’s put in your mind that your methodology must be able to demonstrate a coherent relationship between the research question that is already present in your dissertation and you have already surveyed it as a part of your literature review, and the conclusions that you will develop later.
A research methodology stays the same in whatever the subject it is, and would consist of the following parts:
A key to do justice with your methodology is responding to your research problem that you have developed at the beginning. The question that you have developed must be given a recap. However, you should avoid restating the exact statement.
This part is the center or you can say the heart of a methodology. In this part, you are supposed to explain the entire process that you have chosen for the collection and analysis of data.
This should be very clear, and lengthy so that a reader can read it well and can use it in the future if he finds it useful. If there’s a new handout of the abstract, then consider it as a philosophical problem so that your reader finds it easy to understand your theory and that your problem can be used by him in his theory.
If there’s a description of a scientific experiment, then also your reader should find a way of recreating it in a lab for his experiment. And if, there is an establishment of a new statistical model, at that time also the reader should find your model useful and may consider using and applying in his own data set after he’s done reading your methodology part.
The purpose of your methodology isn’t only to describe your method, but it’s also present to discuss the causes of why you have selected it, and what made you think that it would be the best in giving you results. This includes an appreciative set of analysis and closures, or maybe the most inventive frame of mind. This part will make a connection with your literature review and will present the solutions that are already informed by you and developed in the mind of your readers. This will generate a set of uniqueness and creativity.
Again, it is very important that you associate the reason for your method in a clear way to your research problem. It should depict your readers the methodology that you have gone for is philosophical reshaping itself well to the questions that you are giving response to.
If you are disheartened and feel like your method hasn’t come the way you were thinking, so remember, no research method is an ideal one. It will most likely come up with certain problems. There can be numerous possibilities for you to opt for a small-scale interview rather than a large set of data because your might consider the smaller set more valuable and perfect for your interviews. Choosing your set of interviewees doesn’t mean that there is a compromise made by you in the quantitative approach of your problem.
The key to giving your best methodology is to be straightforward and direct about the limitations that you have chosen for the method. Be up for giving an exemplary justification proving why the chosen approach is the best for your objective.
The Methods Of Data Collection That You Can't Skip!
After the explanation of your method approach, the next step that comes in is the methods of data collection, and this part requires a detailed explanation. If you have been wondering how to write a dissertation methodology and want to know the processes involved in the data collection, then here is the answer to it.
Quantitative methods
Your quantitative research should be an example and a source of help for the readers. Your description of methods should be developed well-founded. Here you will explain how you initiated concepts and studied the numbers that include the sampling method, or any process that is used to combine data.
Starting with, how, when, and where your survey took place.
It might be possible that you will be required to add all the questions in the appendix for your readers to show how all this data was collected.
It will include all the details of the methods, techniques, and procedures used for experimenting.
A successful experiment is that gives enough explanation for the reader and a researcher to reuse the results of yours.
The explanation of how you combined and selected material (i.e publications or actual data for incorporating it in your analysis).
Qualitative Methods
Qualitative research is more personalized and open-ended. Here it is important to consider the approach and the options that you have taken.
Talk about the measures that were used for the selection of participants or the sources, the state of affairs in which your research was conducted, and how were you able to collect the data (this means, were you an active contributor or just a submissive spectator?). All this has to be discussed here.
Explain when, where, and how your interviews were conducted.
Tell how, when, and where you conducted the observation.
You need to describe here, how did you select the case study materials (texts, images) for the focus of your analysis.
What Should You Avoid In Your Methodology?
Now when you are introduced and have found an idea of how to write a dissertation so it is also important to learn some steps that you have to avoid in your methodology.
Unlike literature review, methodologies isn’t a place where you have to involve extensive reviews on which you aren’t working.
A reader would skip if you have produced a long shopping list instead of keeping it short and concise. Remember, you want the reader to reproduce your data, and not to skip your material.
Again, this methodology isn’t the part where you are involving things such as portraying how a questionnaire works, etc. These all are supposed to be in an appendix.
Summarizing by,
Your methodology is a crucial part of your dissertation that depicts your capability of unifying the information that you have read and managed to apply by conducting original research. If your methodology stands perfect for the other readers to adopt, then you have fulfilled your requirement.
