Consider how much information you need to give, and don’t go into unnecessary detail. If you are using methods that are standard for your discipline, you probably don’t need to give lots of background or justification. But if you take an approach that is less common in your field, you might need to explain and justify your methodological choices.
In qualitative research, your analysis will be based on language, images and observations (often involving some form of textual analysis). Specific methods might include:
Your methodology should make the case for why you chose these particular methods, especially if you did not take the most standard approach to your topic. Discuss why other methods were not suitable for your objectives, and show how this approach contributes new knowledge or understanding.
Methods are the specific tools and procedures you use to collect and analyze data (for example, experiments, surveys, and statistical tests).
Tips for writing a strong methodology
- Confirm that you followed established practices for this type of research
- Discuss how you evaluated different methodologies and decided on your approach
- Show that you took a novel methodological approach to address a gap in the literature
- The type of research you did
- How you collected your data
- How you analyzed your data
- Any tools or materials you used in the research
- Your rationale for choosing these methods
In a longer or more complex research project, such as a thesis or dissertation, you will probably include a methodology section, where you explain your approach to answering the research questions and cite relevant sources to support your choice of methods.
Methodology refers to the overarching strategy and rationale of your research project. It involves studying the methods used in your field and the theories or principles behind them, in order to develop an approach that matches your objectives.
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In this part of the method section, you should describe the participants in your experiment, including who they were (and any unique features that set them apart from the general population), how many there were, and how they were selected. If you utilized random selection to choose your participants, it should be noted here.
For standard equipment such as computers, televisions, and videos, you can simply name the device and not provide further explanation.
So what exactly do you need to include when writing your method section? You should provide detailed information on the research design, participants, equipment, materials, variables, and actions taken by the participants. The method section should provide enough information to allow other researchers to replicate your experiment or study.
At the very minimum, this part of your method section must convey basic demographic characteristics of your participants (such as sex, age, ethnicity, or religion), the population from which your participants were drawn, and any restrictions on your pool of participants.
Participants
This part of your method section should also explain how many participants were assigned to each condition and how they were assigned to each group. Were they randomly assigned to a condition, or was some other selection method used?
The method section of an APA format psychology paper provides the methods and procedures used in a research study or experiment. This part of an APA paper is critical because it allows other researchers to see exactly how you conducted your research, allowing for the reproduction of the experiment and assessment of alternative methods that might produce different results.
So if you used a computer to administer a psychological assessment, you would need to identify the specific psychological assessment used, but you could simply state that you used a computer to administer the test rather than listing the brand and technical specifications of the device.
For data that’s subjectively coded (for example, classifying open-ended responses), report interrater reliability scores. This tells the reader how similarly each response was rated by multiple raters.
Begin the methods section by reporting sample characteristics, sampling procedures, and the sample size.
The methods section is also where you describe your statistical analysis procedures, but not their outcomes. Their outcomes are reported in the results section.
The main heading of “Methods” should be centered, boldfaced, and capitalized. Subheadings within this section are left-aligned, boldfaced, and in title case. You can also add lower level headings within these subsections, as long as they follow APA heading styles.
Participant or subject characteristics
Participants were randomly assigned to a control or experimental condition. The survey was administered using Qualtrics (https://www.qualtrics.com). To begin, all participants were given the AAI and a demographics questionnaire to complete, followed by an unrelated filler task. In the control condition, participants completed a short general knowledge test immediately after the filler task. In the experimental condition, participants were asked to visualize themselves taking the test for 3 minutes before they actually did. For more details on the exact instructions and tasks given, see supplementary materials.
You should report methods using the past tense, even if you haven’t completed your study at the time of writing. That’s because the methods section is intended to describe completed actions or research.
Religiosity was measured using the Centrality of Religiosity scale (Huber, 2003). The Likert scale is made up of 15 questions with five subscales of ideology, experience, intellect, public practice, and private practice. An example item is “How often do you experience situations in which you have the feeling that God or something divine intervenes in your life?” Participants were asked to indicate frequency of occurrence by selecting a response ranging from 1 (very often) to 5 (never). The internal consistency of the instrument is .83 (Huber & Huber, 2012).
What do loud music and preparing a research paper outline have in common? Both are a source of headache, as is the popular opinion of college students.
Justify: Always justify the methods that you pick. Give strong reasons for going with the chosen method and not with other counterparts. Your justification should be convincing enough for the reader to agree with your decision. A proper justification will get you even more readers and marks.
Cite: This point supports the previous pointer – the justification. You should mention the sources where from you came to know about that particular method. Doing this will help the reader know the reference to the methodology and thus, your method becomes justified.
Now that you know how to approach for a research methodology, let’s talk about its structure and how to pen it down. The core purpose of writing a methodology is to make the readers aware of how the research work has been conducted, thereby providing a clear idea of its validity and reliability.
What is Research Methodology?
How will you write a methodology good enough to be regarded as interesting? The following tips will illustrate:
Data Collection: This section highlights the underlying process employed by the researcher to gather the necessary data for conducting the research. As a researcher you must mention the tools that you have used and methods that you have followed while collecting the required data. You must add elements like sampling process, type of questionnaires, etc. You’ll have to make sure that the gathered data are ready to be analyzed. The way you frame your methodology determines the quality of your entire research work.
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The methods section is perhaps the most important in the development and providing details on the validity of a research paper. Therefore, it requires you to be as clear as possible in describing what you did to answer your research questions. However, writing methods in research paper is considered by most students to be one of the most difficult items to work on. So how do you go about writing it?
In this part of the methodology, you list the apparatus and equipment that were used during the study. Note that this should include even the technical advice that you used when doing the study. If you are writing a scientific research paper, materials might include things such as retorts, microscopes, and flasks, among others. Make sure also to mention the following:
“Eighty middle school students were enrolled in the study. Their age ranged from 12 (45 students) to 13 (35 students) years old. There were 50 boys and 30 girls. During the study, the participants were divided into four groups of 20 students each. The study was conducted in the Emily Middle School of Manhattan, New York.”
NOTE: It is prudent to ensure that the methodology section is as precise as possible. For example, the number of participants, weights, questions, and responses should be captured well. If some materials such as questionnaires were used, ensure to capture the details articulately.
A Closer Look at the Methods Section of a Research Paper
When writing the methods section, it is prudent to be as logical as possible. This helps the reader to retrace the development and nuances of the research easily. One of the best ways of achieving it is describing those who participated in your study and then demonstrating what was used to carry the experiment. Finally, explain how you went about it. So let us look at each of these components closely:
One notable thing about writing methods section of research papers is that it can be tricky even for top students. Well, we will tell you the truth here
In this part, you demonstrate how the data for the study was collected. The aim is to ensure that if another person repeated the same study, the results would be similar. Include details such as rations, conditions for the experiment, and instructions that you provided to participants.
Note: Charlene D'Avanzo is the editor of Ecology 101. Anyone wishing to contribute articles or reviews to this section should contact her at the School of Natural Sciences, Hampshire College, 893 West Street, Amherst, MA 01002. E‐mail: cdavanzo@hampshire.edu
Clear scientific writing generally follows a specific format with key sections: an introduction to a particular topic, hypotheses to be tested, a description of methods, key results, and finally, a discussion that ties these results to our broader knowledge of the topic (Day and Gastel 2012 ). This general format is inherent in most scientific writing and facilitates the transfer of information from author to reader if a few guidelines are followed.
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, UCB 334, Ramaley Hall, Boulder, Colorado, 80309 USA
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, UCB 334, Boulder, Colorado, 80309 USA
The before steps
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, UCB 334, Ramaley Hall, Boulder, Colorado, 80309 USA
The Introduction sets the tone of the paper by providing relevant background information and clearly identifying the problem you plan to address. Think of your Introduction as the beginning of a funnel: Start wide to put your research into a broad context that someone outside of the field would understand, and then narrow the scope until you reach the specific question that you are trying to answer (Fig. 1
Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences, University of Colorado, UCB 334, Boulder, Colorado, 80309 USA
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, UCB 334, Ramaley Hall, Boulder, Colorado, 80309 USA