How-to · Step-by-step
Dissertation methodology
The methodology chapter explains how you carried out your research and, just as importantly, justifies why those choices were the right ones for your question.
The step most authors miss
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Step by step
How to do it
1.State your overall approach
Begin by situating the study — for example as quantitative, qualitative or mixed-methods, and as experimental, survey, case-study or another design. Link this approach explicitly back to your research questions so the reader sees it follows from them.
2.Justify the design
Explain why this design answers your questions better than the alternatives you considered. Justification, not just description, is what distinguishes a strong methodology chapter from a mere procedure list.
3.Describe participants or data and sampling
Specify who or what you studied, the population and sample, and the sampling method you used to select them. State the sample size and how you justified it, and any inclusion or exclusion criteria.
4.Detail data collection
Describe the instruments and procedures you used to gather data — surveys, interviews, experiments, observation or existing datasets — with enough precision that the process could be repeated, including any piloting or validation.
5.Explain your analysis
Set out how you analysed the data: the statistical tests or the qualitative coding and thematic approach, the software used, and how the analysis maps onto each research question.
6.Address ethics and limitations
State how you handled consent, confidentiality and data protection and note your ethical approval. Acknowledge the methodological limitations honestly, so the reader can judge the strength of your conclusions.
Method versus methodology
It is worth being precise about the words. A method is a specific technique for gathering or analysing data — a survey, an interview, a regression. Methodology is the wider rationale: the framework of assumptions and reasons that explains why those methods are appropriate for your question. A strong chapter does both, but its real value lies in the methodology — the justification — rather than a bare recital of procedures. For the underlying techniques themselves, the CASRAI research-methods hub covers designs, sampling and data-collection methods in detail.
Common questions
FAQ
What tense should the methodology be written in?+
Usually the past tense, because you are reporting research you have already carried out: "participants were recruited", "interviews were transcribed". Some style guides allow the present tense for describing standard, ongoing procedures, but consistency matters most. Follow your discipline’s convention and keep the tense uniform throughout the chapter.
How much detail should the methodology include?+
Enough that a competent researcher could replicate your study from it. Describe instruments, samples, procedures and analysis precisely, and place lengthy materials — full questionnaires, interview schedules, coding frames — in the appendices, referring to them from the chapter. The body should justify and summarise; the appendices hold the reproducible detail.
Should the methodology justify choices or just describe them?+
Both, but justification is what marks out a strong chapter. Examiners want to see that you understood the alternatives and chose deliberately — why a survey rather than interviews, why this sampling method, why this analysis. Description without justification reads as a recipe; reasoned justification demonstrates methodological awareness.
Going deeper
