Research Methodology

Chapter 3 – Methodology

[Approximately 2,500 words]

Introduction: Introduce what you will present in this chapter

Main Body:

This section discusses and defends how you are going to methodologically approach your study.

You need to include subheadings in order to organise your work. Please see below…

Research strategy/design (Present very briefly your overall methodological approach. You may want to use a figure in order to show the reader from the beginning what you did – explanations and details will follow in the following sub-headings

Research philosophy (Interpretivism or Positivism)

Research approach (Inductive or Deductive)

Research methods (Qualitative or Quantitative)

Sample size and characteristics (How have you selected your sample? Provide all the info that describes your final sample whether this refers to companies, individuals or both, report the actual response rate e.g. you have distributed 200 questionnaires or asked 50 individuals to participate in your interviews but how many of them did actually participate in the study?)

Data collection (Questionnaires with pilot study or Interviews/Focus groups, What type and which specific questions have been used in the questionnaire in order to 0the study variables? What type and which specific questions have been used in the interview?). The research tool should be included in the appendices

Data analysis – techniques to move from data to findings

Ethical Considerations (Anonymity and confidentiality and security of information).

You may consider validity, reliability and transferability.

Summary: Summarise what have been stated in this chapter and Link it to the next chapter

In the methodology chapter your competence as a researcher will be examined. This is the tipping point chapter between the literature review and reporting the results. You should be prepared in this chapter to be reflective, to critique (but not to destroy) what you have done ... to show that you are a competent and thinking researcher. Therefore, make sure that your research questions can be answered by the research methodology that you have chosen.

For example, if your research questions are related to whether a relationship between two research variables exists (e.g. Do intentions relate to behaviours?) then you can not answer this question by implementing a qualitative research design. Instead, you need a quantitative research approach in order to check for the existence of the relationship by using the SPSS software.

However, if your research questions focus on aspects of relationships or how people experience concepts, then you will need to use a qualitative research approach.

The Methodology chapter needs precision…

For example the statement:

“This study has administered 50 questionnaires.” is too vague.

Enrich it with more details…For example,

The questionnaire was mailed in January 2016 to a convenience sample of customer service managers in three water utility companies in the UK.

Every time that you make a statement regarding the chosen methodological approach you need to justify it.

For example:

Considering that this research concerns the relationship between the variables under investigation, namely intentions and behaviours, and that the aim of the study is to test the applicability of the Theory of Planned Behaviour while generalising the findings, quantitative research methods have been implemented (Saunders et. all, 2012).