Master's Dissertation Methodology Section Structure
Your method or research process section encompasses one
or more chapters that deal with the various steps you took to conduct your
study. You should explain each step in detail. For most master’s dissertations,
one chapter should be sufficient for your methodology. A doctoral dissertation
will probably involve at least two chapters, since the research design section
might make up a chapter on its own if it is very involved.
You should cover aspects listed below in this chapter, and
you can explain each aspect under a different subheading. Be aware that
different fields will require different aspects to be covered in the
methodology chapter, and certain fields will require a lot less detail from
you. For example, if you are doing a master’s dissertation in English
literature, you probably won’t have to explain your research instruments. These
basic subheadings should cover all of the important aspects.
Try and aim for about five to twelve pages in your
methodology section. It doesn’t have to be very long. If you use multiple
questionnaires or surveys, you might consider not including the full text of
these in your methodology chapter, and instead adding them as addenda at the
end of your thesis to avoid making the body of your work too long.
The following sections should make up your methodology
chapter:
Research design
Give a clear description of the type of research you are
doing. Is it quantitative or qualitative research? Is it a participant study, a
clinical trial, a comparative trial, or literary analysis? There are many
different kinds of research designs, and you can find out more about each of
these types of research at the Academic Coaching website. You need to know the
technical terms to use in describing your research design, so be sure to
consult your supervisor or to look up a good research design for your field at
the resources page of
our website.
It’s important to get your research design right. You need
to be doing the right kind of research in order to test your hypotheses
thoroughly. Clarify as much as you can in this section: will you be using any
types of research instruments? Will you be employing samples, and how will you
collect those samples? Do you use questionnaires or surveys?
You can also give a timeline of your study in this section.
You can also include another subheading for setting and participants to describe
the type of setting you will use in order to conduct interviews, and how
participants will be treated during these interviews. These are all important
parts of your research design if you have participant studies, and might impact
on the next subheading, namely ethical concerns.
Ethical considerations
What were the ethical considerations involved in your study?
What did you have to do to get ethical clearance? What were the possible
ethical pitfalls, and how did your study ensure that you avoided these?
Research Instruments
If you use instruments like questionnaires, it’s useful to
have a section where you give the full text of these questionnaires and explain
why those questions were chosen.
If you sourced your instruments from somewhere, explain why
you thought that this instrument was the best one to use for the aims of your
research.
Research aims
Here you can list your research questions and hypotheses. Do
your best to link the literature which you’ve reviewed to the type of study you
conducted. How did the study meet the aims and address the gaps in literature?
Limitations
List a set of limitations to your study. Did you have a
small sample size? Could your research design have missed out on certain types
of data? Were your aims too broad? Any types of limitations to your study that
you can think of should be explained here so that readers know how much thought
and consideration you put into your work.
Review Your Learning:
·
Your methodology needs to clarify every aspect
of your research design and why it is appropriate for your study. Show why this
design will yield the best data to test your hypotheses or offer the richest exploratory
data
·
Clarify your type of study using the correct
technical terms to describe it
·
The aims of your study need to be clear in your
methodology section, and you need to show that you are working towards
answering certain research questions