Are you going in circles because you don't know what is a dissertation and dissertation methodology section?
Are you a bundle of nerves for thesis writing is a new monster for you?
If you are going through the above told symptoms than you are definitely at right place
Holistic approach to writing research methodology:
Writing a dissertation is not an overnight work, therefore, it needs a proper plan and structure to come up with a perfectly organized
Insider secrets for writing the dissertation methodology section
A. Know your research question:
If the topic is in your hands, you surely know what a problem the project is going to address is. To put it differently, what is the main research work you are going to conduct in your dissertation methodology section? When researched, you will come across many types of research questions; therefore, the research paradigms should be different for them as well. For instance:
Why people do not take prescribed drugs as intended by the doctor
Why do GPs not implement evidence-based guidelines?
That would include a brief theoretical analysis for sure but if talk about these ones:
Does variation in amount of homework assigned produce a change in student's test performance?
Does parental educational level predict students' propensity to drop out of high school?
Analyze a question before working on your research design. This is where your research begins
B. Choose any one of the research method
You know what the core nature of your research question is. Now you should think about an appropriate research methodology. Generally you will come across three types of research paradigms and that are:
1. Qualitative research method:
Qualitative research, a more suitable phenomenon for researches conducted in social sciences. It is, therefore, more inclined towards investigating theoretical phenomenon that are more inclined towards judging human behavior using different techniques which may include:
content analysis - written, visual
informal, structured or unstructured interviews
participant and nonparticipant observation
2. Quantitative research method:
Quantitative research more related to numbers, stats and logical explanations of things that lead to accurate results. To be precise, it is a systematic or taxonomic investigation of quantitative properties, their existence and relationships. General methods include:
Descriptive or observational:
cohort or prospective or longitudinal
case-control or retrospective
Experimental or longitudinal or repeated-measures:
without a control group, time series, crossover
with a control group
3. Mixed research methods:
Mixed method, as the name indicates is a comprehensive mixture of quantitative and qualitative research techniques and is implemented due to the complicacy of a research question that requires both research paradigms to be utilized to reach out to accurate results. Some mixed methods are:
C. Applying the research design:
Time to tell the readers how you are going to use the proposed research methods for analyzing and manipulation of data. Depending on the nature of your research work, you will be deciding which research method you will be using for your methodology in dissertation. This section is formulated after conducting experiments, analysis and observation of the data and on a guideline given to you by your professor, a whole procedure is put to the paper following a particular format.
Based on your judgment, you will provide a complete outlook of what you have find till now about the research problem and what do you think, how you came up with the results that is did you manage to reach out the perfect results or couldn't.
Therefore, read the preceding guideline and see if it helps you or not.