Writing your dissertation methodology

What is a methodology?

Your methodology section appears immediately after the literature review in your
dissertation, and should flow organically from it. Up until the point of writing your
methodology, you will have defined your research question and conducted a detailed review
of what other scholars in the field have to say about your topic. You’ll have also reviewed
the ways in which these scholars have arrived at their conclusions – the assumptions on which
their work is based, the theoretical frameworks they've used, and the methods they've used to
gather, marshal and present their data. You will have used these observations, along with
discussions with your supervisor, to plan how you're going to tackle your research question.
This could be planning how you'll gather data, or what models you'll use to process it, or what
philosophical positions most inform your work. Following this, your dissertation
methodology provides a detailed account of both how you'll approach your dissertation
and why you've taken the decision to approach it in the way you have.

What should my methodology look like?

Your methodology needs to establish a clear relationship between your research

question, the existing scholarship in your field that you have surveyed as part of your
literature review, and the means by which you'll come to your conclusions. Therefore, no
matter what subject area you're working in, your methodology section will include the
following:

1) A recap of your research question(s)

Key to justifying your methodology is demonstrating that it is fit for the purpose of
answering the research problem or questions you posed at the start. You should recap the key
questions you want to answer when introducing your methodology, but this doesn't have to be
a word-for-word restatement; you might want to reword the problem in a way that bridges
your literature review and methodology.

2) A description of your design or method

This is the heart of the methodology but is not, by itself, a methodology. This is the
part of your methodology where you clearly explain your process for gathering and analysing
data, or for approaching your research question. This should be clear and detailed enough that
another scholar is able to read it and apply it in some way, outside of the immediate context of
your dissertation. If you're offering a new theoretical take on a literary work or a
philosophical problem, your reader should be able to understand your theory enough that they
can apply it to another text or problem. If you're describing a scientific experiment, your
reader should have all they need to recreate your experiment in a lab. If you're introducing a
new type of statistical model, your reader should be able to apply this model to their own data
set after reading your methodology section.

3) The background and rationale for your design choice

Your methodology doesn't just describe your method; it discusses the reasons why
you've chosen it, and why you believe it will yield the best results, the most insightful set of
analyses and conclusions, or the most innovative perspective. This will draw in part from
your literature review, presenting your choices as informed and rooted in sound scholarship,
while ideally also displaying innovation and creativity. You should also ensure that you relate
the rationale for your method explicitly to your research problem; it should be very clear to
your reader that the methodology you've chosen is a thoughtful and tailored response to the
questions you're trying to answer.

4) An evaluation of your choice of method, and a statement of its limitations

No research method is perfect, and it's likely that the one you've chosen comes with
certain trade-offs. You might, for instance, have chosen a small-scale set of interviews
because the individual perspectives of a set of interviewees on the problem you're exploring is
more valuable to you than a larger set of data about responses to the same question. However,
that means you've nevertheless sacrificed a quantitative approach to your problem that might
have yielded its own set of important insights. Be honest and upfront – but not apologetic –
about the limitations of your chosen method, and be ready to justify why it's the best approach
for your purposes.

While the outline of your methodology section will look much the same regardless of
your discipline, the details are liable to be quite different depending on the subject area in
which you're studying. Let's take a look at some of the most common types of dissertation,
and the information required in a methodology section for each of them.

Common types of dissertation methodology

A scientific study
The methodology section for a scientific study needs to emphasise rigour and
reproducibility above all else. Your methods must appear robust to the reader, with no
obvious flaws in the design or execution. You should not only include the necessary
information about your equipment, lab setup, and procedure to allow another researcher to
reproduce your method; you should also demonstrate that you've factored any variables that
are likely to distort your data (for example, by introducing false positives into your design),
and that you have a plan to handle these either in collecting, analysing, or drawing
conclusions from your data.

Your methodology should also include details of – and justifications for – the
statistical models you'll use to analyse your data. Remember that a scholar might use any
single part of your methodology as a departure point for their own work; they might follow
your experiment design but choose a different model for analysing the results, or vice versa.

A study in the social or behavioural sciences

As with a scientific study, a social or behavioural sciences methodology needs to
demonstrate both rigour and reproducibility, allowing another researcher to reproduce your
study in whole or in part for their own ends. However, the complexity of working with human
subjects means there are a number of additional questions to consider. First of all, you'll want
to answer certain broad questions about the kind of analysis you're undertaking: is it
qualitative or quantitative, or a mixed approach that uses qualitative data to provide context
and background to quantitative data (or vice versa)? Will you be conducting recorded
interviews with your subjects, asking them to complete a written questionnaire, or observing
them undertaking some activity or other? Or will you avoid doing your own research with
human subjects at all, and base your research on documentary evidence or a pre-existing data
set? What is the scope of your data and conclusions? Is there reason to believe it can be
generalised to other contexts, or is it highly specific to the particular location or cultural
context in which you conducted your research?

In addition to answering all these questions, you must satisfy your reader that you
have considered all the ethical questions associated with your research. Part of this, of course,
entails obtaining sign-off for your design from the appropriate ethics bodies, but even then
there might be aspects of your study – inviting subjects to relive episodes of grief and trauma,
for instance, or broaching culturally sensitive matters within a particular target group – that
some readers could consider contentious or problematic. Make sure you address such
concerns head-on, and if necessary justify your methods by emphasising the potential value of
your conclusions.

A critical dissertation in the arts or humanities

Methodological rigour is just as valuable in the arts and humanities as in the sciences
and social sciences. However, if you're writing an arts or humanities dissertation the way in
which you convey this rigour – and convince your audience of it - is a little different. The
methodology section in an arts or humanities dissertation is likely to be much more closely
linked to the literature review than a scientific or social sciences study; even the most
innovative dissertation in the arts or humanities typically involves applying X's theories in a
new context, or combining X and Y's insights to yield a new theoretical framework. For this
reason it can be tempting to gloss over the methodology section in an arts or humanities
dissertation, and move more or less seamlessly from literature review into analysis. But it's
crucial that you provide a detailed justification of your chosen frameworks and how they
relate to your research question here too; without this justification a critical reader may very
well take issue with your entire analysis because you've failed to convince them of the
appropriateness of your theoretical underpinnings to the material you're analysing.

In particular, it's vitally important that your dissertation methodology shows an

appreciation of the historical and cultural contexts of the theoretical frameworks you use,
especially where there's fundamental disagreement between theorists. If you use the work of
theorists from differing or even opposing schools of thought to support your readings, your
methodology section should show a clear understanding of how these schools of thought
disagree and a justification of why there are nevertheless aspects of each approach that you've
decided to use in your own work.

A creative arts dissertation

Many programmes in the arts offer the option of completing a creative rather than
critical dissertation; that is, of submitting a piece of creative writing or a portfolio of artworks,
rather than an extended critical project, for the dissertation component of the programme.
However, in virtually all cases, your creative project must be accompanied by a substantial
critical essay (or introduction, or commentary) that theorises your creative practice. Critically
engaging with one's own work is a notoriously difficult thing to do, which makes the
development and adherence to a rigorous methodology especially important in this context.
You need to not only show that you're capable of detaching yourself from your own creative
work and viewing it through an objective lens, but that you are able to see your own creative
practice as methodology – as a method of creating work that is grounded in theory and
research and that can be evaluated against clear target goals.

What should my methodology NOT contain?

No part of your dissertation should be hermetically sealed off from the others, and
there will undoubtedly be some overlap between your methodology and literature review
section, for example. You might even find yourself moving material back and forth between
sections during edits. However, you should resist the temptation to include the following in
your dissertation methodology, even if they seem to belong there quite naturally:

1) An extensive review of methodologies

 It's likely you'll want to refer to precedents for your dissertation methodology, and to
the theorists or practitioners upon whose work it is based, as you describe your own
methodology. However, this is not the place for an exhaustive review of methodologies you're
not using – that work belongs in your literature review chapter, and you should refer back to
that chapter for context on why you're taking (or not taking) a particular approach.

2) Very long, detailed lists of equipment or excessive procedural detail

Your methodology section should equip a reader to reproduce your research, but it
should also be a readable chapter of your dissertation and should retain the interest of
somebody who doesn't necessarily want to reproduce your experiment from start to finish. If
it's possible to convey all the information another scholar would need in order to recreate your
work in the body of your dissertation, do so; however if your methodology section starts to
look like a shopping list, you should move some very detailed content into an appendix and
refer to that.

3) Raw data
The methodology section is not the place to reproduce any data, even if you're
illustrating how a questionnaire or other data-gathering mechanic works. Again, you can
place such information in an appendix and refer to it.

Deciding on your methodology

When you start your dissertation project, you may already have some broad ideas
about the methodology you want to use. You'll refine these ideas in conversation with your
supervisor and develop them further as you read about the previous work that has been done
in your field, and other scholars' approach to your subject area. If you're completing
a postgraduate dissertation, the chances are you already have a broad awareness of the
different theoretical positions and schools of thought in your field, and you may well have a
good idea of the schools of thought with which you most closely identify (and, just as
importantly, those you don't identify with). If you're writing an undergraduate dissertation,
this may very well be the first time you've been asked to engage with such a broad field of
literature, and categorising this into distinct approaches and schools of thought may seem like
an overwhelming task at first.
Regardless of your level, your dissertation methodology will develop as you review
the literature in your field and refine your initial research questions. Your literature review
and methodology will therefore develop in tandem with each other. Your response to the
literature will help you decide on the approach you want to take to your research question, but
your methodology will probably already be decided by the time you actually write up your
literature review, meaning that you can frame it so as to position the methodology as a clear,
organic and natural progression from your survey of the field. It should be noted, of course,
that your methodology won't only be determined by the modes of inquiry or schools of
thought that appeal to you most; there are likely to be practical considerations that determine
how you approach your problem. Unless you happen to have access to a particle accelerator at
your university, the chances are your quantum physics project will be based on theoretical
projections rather than physical experimental data.

What makes a great methodology?

The answer to this question depends in part upon whether you're writing an
undergraduate or postgraduate dissertation. For most students, an undergraduate
dissertation is their first opportunity to engage in detail with scholarship in their fields and to
design and conduct a rigorous research project. In an undergraduate dissertation, you
therefore need to show a capacity to engage with a broad field of research, to synthesise
diverse and even opposing approaches to a problem, and to distil this down into a design for a
research project that will address your research questions with the appropriate level of
scholarly level. The ability to synthesise what you've learned from scholars in your discipline,
and to shape that into a methodology that you can use to shed light on your research question,
is, therefore, key to a successful undergraduate dissertation. The best undergraduate
dissertations will of course show originality of thought and may even be able to make an
original contribution to their field – but the focus will generally be on demonstrating that you
have the fundamental research skills to undertake investigative work in your field.

"The ability to synthesise what you've learned from scholars in your discipline, and to shape
that into a methodology that sheds light on your research question, is key to a successful
undergraduate dissertation."

A postgraduate dissertation, by contrast, can be expected to make a substantial

contribution of high-quality, original research to its field. The best postgraduate dissertations
will be publishable by leading journals, or even as scholarly monographs. As you build your
career as an early career researcher, the impact of your dissertation on its field – as measured
by citations in the work of other scholars – will be crucial to enhancing your academic
reputation. It's important to remember that the dissertation's value to other scholars won't just
be its findings or conclusions, and that your research's emerging importance to the field will
be measured by the number of scholars who engage with it, not those who agree with it.
Although some scholars may well cite your conclusions as a basis for their own work, a far
greater number of citations is likely to result (regardless of discipline) from your development
of a framework that other scholars can use as a point of departure for their own work. If
you've come up with a methodology that is both original and grounded in the research, this
will probably be the aspect of your work that other scholars value the most. Their own work
might build upon, develop or modify your methodology in some way; they might apply your
methodology to a different data set in order to contest your findings, or they might even take
it and apply it in a new context that hadn't even occurred to you!
The best postgraduate dissertations are those that convince at every level – that are
based on a rigorous engagement with the field, that develop reproducible frameworks for
engaging with that field, and that supply high-quality and convincing results and conclusions.
But the methodology is the central point around which the dissertation – and its potential
impact to the field – pivots. When developing and presenting your dissertation methodology,
you should therefore think not just about how well it can answer your particular question, but
also about how transferable it is – whether it can be used by other scholars to answer related
questions, or whether it can be made more adaptable with just a few tweaks (without
compromising your own use of it, of course). And when presenting your dissertation, don't
forget to emphasise the value of the methodological framework you develop, if it is indeed
adaptable to other related contexts. You're underselling your research if you suggest its only
value lies in its conclusions, when the approach it takes to your data or source material in
arriving at those conclusions is potentially of equal if not greater value.

Presenting your methodology

Your dissertation methodology, as we've now discussed in some detail, is the engine
that drives your dissertation, and as such it needs to be grounded, theoretically rigorous, and,
where possible, sufficiently adaptable to be used in other contexts to answer different research
questions within your field. However, in focusing on all this it's easy to forget that all
dissertations – even the seemingly driest, most scientific of them – are fundamentally pieces
of persuasive writing: their primary purpose is to convince readers of the quality of your
research, the validity of your methods, and the merit of your conclusions. A crucial but often
neglected component of this persuasive function is the role of rhetoric in persuading your
audience of the merits of your work. Rhetoric has acquired something of a bad name in
mainstream discourse (phrases like "pure rhetoric" or "empty rhetoric" tend to signify
superficiality and/or dishonesty – and certainly nothing positive!) but it's an important
component of all types of academic writing, and it's particularly valuable when you're
attempting to convince your reader of the validity of a particular choice – like your choice of
methodology.
In their seminal book on scholarly writing, "They Say / I Say": The Moves That
Matter in Academic Writing, Gerald Graff and Cathy Birkenstein discuss what they call the
art of metacommentary, "a way of commenting on your claims and telling others how – and
how not – to think about them". This kind of commentary allows you to control the agenda
for discussion of your work, and to head off potential objections to your arguments and
methods at the pass. Sound rhetorical presentation of your methodology is not just
"decoration" – it forms an integral part of its overall rigour and structural soundness, and can
make the difference between a 2:1 and a First, or between a merit and a Distinction. Here are
some of the ways in which you can use metacommentary to shape your audience's response to
your methodology.

The roads not taken

It's very likely that the approach you've taken to your research question is one of
many approaches you could have taken – and in your literature review you probably engaged
with or read about lots of approaches that, for one reason or another, you decided not to take.
Your methodology chapter is not the place to go into detail about these methodologies
(hopefully your literature review does this), but you should remind your reader that you
actively considered these other methodologies before deciding on your own. Even if you
decided on your methodology early on in your research process, it should appear rhetorically
as the result of a careful weighing of competing factors, before you decided on the most
logical choice.

A little reassurance goes a long way

Judicious use of metacommentary can also help to make up for any shortcomings in
your methodology section, or simply create a sense of balance between scholarly
groundedness and innovation if your methodology might seem to veer a little too much in one
direction or another. If your methodology takes a bold new step that some may find off-
putting, you can acknowledge this whilst taking extra care to emphasise its grounded
relationship to established work in the field. You might, for instance, ensure that you refer
back to your literature review frequently and use phrases like, "This approach may seem like
a significant departure from established approaches to this field, but it combines the proven
data-gathering techniques of X with the statistical analysis model of Y, along with the
following innovations". Conversely, if your methodology is mostly derivative or a synthesis
of what has come before, use the opportunity to spell out why this synthesis is in itself
innovative, for example, "This project's key innovation does not lie in its approach to human
subjects or in the statistical models it employs, but rather in the combination of approach of
theory X and approach Y to problem Z”.

Signposting
Flagging what each section of an argument is doing is vital throughout the
dissertation, but nowhere more so than in the methodology section. You can significantly
strengthen the justification you provide for your dissertation methodology by referring back
to your literature review and reminding your reader of conclusions you've drawn – and if
you're feeling really confident you can gently hint to your readers that they agreed with you,
using a formulation like, "As we have seen, method X is extremely useful for approaching
questions related to Y, but less applicable to problem Z". You should be careful with this
approach, of course – claiming you've proved something when this transparently isn't the case
isn't going to bring your readers onside – but if your argumentation is already strong,
rhetorical techniques like this can help underline the structural coherence of your work.
Defining your own terms
If you don't define your own measures for success and failure, readers can infer from
the overall structure of your argument the terms on which it was trying to succeed, and judge
it accordingly. On the other hand, defining your own set of success criteria and help (within
reason) helps to ensure that your readers evaluate your work on these terms. Again, your
dissertation methodology is a critical space in which to establish these criteria: "This research
does not make any claims about human social behaviour while consuming alcohol beyond the
current context of X. It may, however, be possible to adapt the methodology to examine
similar phenomena in contexts Y and Z”. By the same token, you can also prevent your
readers from drawing unintended inferences from your work by anticipating them: "By
adopting this methodology I am not suggesting that the statistical analysis of responses will
be a reliable predictor of X; I do, however, believe that the strong correlation between Y and
Z is in and of itself a valuable insight”.

In summary…

Your methodology is a vital section of your dissertation, which both demonstrates

your ability to synthesise the range of information you've read in your field, and your capacity
to design original research that draws from the traditions and precedents of your discipline to
answer your research question(s).
It's not only your results and conclusions that may prove valuable to other scholars in
your field; they may decide to use or adapt your methodology in a different context that hasn't
even occurred to you. Your dissertation methodology should therefore offer value in and of
itself, and be both rigorous and reproducible.
Your methodology section allows you to rationalise and justify the approach you've
taken to your research question(s), and to define your own criteria for the project's success.
You should take care with the rhetorical presentation of your dissertation methodology to
ensure its merits – and those of your results and conclusions – are presented in the best
possible light. Many students consider applying an academic edit to their completed
methodology section to ensure that it contains each vital step for a high quality submission.