Writing Your Research Methodology Chapter
The methodology chapter explains how you carried out your research and why you made the choices you did. Examiners read it closely, because it tells them whether your findings can be trusted. In this blog, we'll outline a typical structure and share tips for writing each part clearly.
Purpose of the Chapter:
- Describe what you did in enough detail that another researcher could understand, and ideally repeat, your study.
- Justify each major decision by linking it to your research questions, the literature and practical considerations.
A Typical Structure:
- Introduction: restate your aim and research questions and outline the chapter.
- Research philosophy and approach: your paradigm and whether your study is deductive, inductive or both.
- Research design: for example exploratory, descriptive or causal, and cross-sectional or longitudinal.
- Population and sampling: who you studied, how you selected them, and your sample size and its justification.
- Data collection: your instruments, how they were developed or adapted, any pilot study, and the procedure you followed.
- Data analysis: the techniques and software you used, and how you prepared your data.
- Reliability and validity, or trustworthiness for qualitative studies.
- Ethical considerations: approvals, informed consent, confidentiality and data storage.
- Summary: a short recap that leads into your findings.
- Check your university's guidelines, as the expected structure can vary.
Justify, Do Not Just Describe:
- For each choice, explain why it suits your study, not just what it is.
- Refer to methodological literature to support your choices.
- Briefly mention alternatives you considered and why you did not use them.
Be Specific and Consistent:
- Give exact details: dates of data collection, number of participants approached and who took part, response rate and software versions.
- Make sure the methods you describe match what you actually did, and what appears in your results chapter.
- Use the past tense for what you did.
Common Mistakes:
- Long textbook explanations of every method, with little link to your own study.
- Missing justification for sample size or instrument choice.
- Leaving out the pilot study, data cleaning steps or ethical approval details.
A strong methodology chapter is clear, specific and well justified. Follow a logical structure, explain the reasons behind your choices, and make sure every detail matches what you actually did. This chapter is where you earn your reader's confidence in your findings.