1.

Difference Between Method and Methodology

The text emphasizes that these two terms are not interchangeable. While they are related, they
represent different levels of the research process:

 Methodology is the overarching system or "ideas-based system" . it refers to the entire

approach to the research process, including the theoretical frameworks, concepts, and the
intellectual rationale for why certain methods are chosen.

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 Methods are the specific means of actioning the research. They refer only to the various
techniques used to collect and analyze data, such as interviews, surveys, or focus groups.

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Feature Methodology Methods

Overall approach and theoretical
Scope Specific means of data collection/analysis.
underpinning.
Function Provides the rationale and justification. Puts the underpinning beliefs into practice.
The "parent" system from which The "action" step that emerges from
Relationship
methods grow. methodology.
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2. Influence of Ontological Foundation

Your ontology—your beliefs about existence and the nature of the world—serves as the starting
point for all research decisions. It influences methodology and methods in the following ways:

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The Deductive/Positivist Path

 Ontological Belief: If you believe the world is fact-based, "fixable," and contains a
discoverable "truth" or "fixed facts".

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 Methodological Influence: This leads to a positivist methodology. It focuses on testing

hypotheses and proving theories.

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  Method Influence: This usually results in quantitative methods, such as experiments
and large-scale surveys, to produce generalizable and replicable data.

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The Inductive/Interpretivist Path

 Ontological Belief: If you believe the world is relative, constructed by human meaning,
and not fixable.

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 Methodological Influence: This leads to an interpretivist, anti-positivist, or post-

positivist methodology. It focuses on exploring problems and constructing versions of
knowledge.

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 Method Influence: This results in qualitative methods, such as interviews, journals, or

focus groups, which yield "rich data" about human experiences.

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Mixed Foundation

The text notes that it is possible to hold "mixed beliefs"—believing both that facts exist and that
knowledge is constructed. This ontological stance allows for mixed methodologies, where a
researcher might move from a deductive stage (testing facts) to an inductive stage (exploring
feelings) within the same study

This chapter looks at:

 how to theorise and action methodology and methods for your research;
 methodology, research design, methods and research vehicles;
 methodology and methods popular
  in social sciences, including education, business and health;
 in the humanities, arts and English.
Your research methodology is based on the way you see the world, your beliefs about existence
and being in the world, and your relationship to that (ontology), and the way you believe
knowledge is produced and constructed or discovered and fixed (epistemology). Methodology is
the ideas-based system which can enable you to address your research
question/problem/hypothesis. It underpins the research design, i.e., the plan for the research
defining, among other things, the methods and the actual research tools or vehicles used to
collect the data. ‘Research methodologies, therefore, comprise the theoretical frameworks and
concepts in which approaches and methods are situated; they provide the rationale and
justification (intellectual, epistemological and ethical) for the methods that are selected and the
ways in which they are used’ (Stierer and Antoniou, 2004; quoted in Burgess, Sieminski and
Arthur, 2006).

View of the world and methodology come first. There is a great deal of confusion about the
terms ‘methodology’ and ‘methods’. Some people seem to use them interchangeably, which is
incorrect – they are not the same. One (method) grows or emerges from the other (the
overarching system, methodology) and it is probably better to think of them as related, where
methodology is a system, an overall approach based on a view of the world, and methods are the
ways of actioning, putting into practice, the underpinning beliefs, ideas and questions generated
by methodology in order to question or test the world and gather data. Jonathan Grix calls it ‘a
branch of science concerned with methods and the techniques of scientific enquiry; in particular,
with investigating the potential and limitations of particular techniques or procedures’ (2004, p.
169). He sees methodology as a logical system which in this quotation seems rather self
reflexive.

There are many debates and some contradictions about definitions and practice concerning both
methodology and methods. I have tried to be very clear about the worldview (ontology), belief
about the construction or discovery of knowledge (epistemology), the system (methodology),
and the research design which follows these using research methods to investigate your research
question or test your hypothesis. There is what is referred to as the quantitative/qualitative
divide, the deductive and inductive divide where views of the world and the methodology and
methods which derive from them are seen as utterly incompatible. While it is essential you get
your methodology and methods clear and defend them, you might well find that you are building
a research design which crosses these divides in order to ask your question.
As a rule of thumb:

If you believe the world can be investigated, reality discovered, fixed facts found, you are most likely
testing a hypothesis and using deductive methodology, quantitative research, and so experiments and
large-scale surveys might well be the research methods you use.
If you are identifying and exploring a problem or asking a research question and hoping to construct
versions of answers, versions of knowledge rather than produce final facts (because you believe
knowledge is not discovered and fixed but constructed), you are likely to be using inductive research
methodology and qualitative methods such as interviews and focus groups, journalling.

Methodology
↓
Research Design
The overall plan of action which will enable you to ask your research questions or test hypotheses, etc.
Methods, time, plans, samples, etc.
↓
Methods
Ways of going about asking the research questions or testing the hypotheses, gathering the research data,
e.g., quantitative data gathering methods, such as survey methods, or qualitative data gathering methods,
such as interviews.
↓
Research Vehicles or tools
These are the actual things used to gather the data, such as the experimental apparatus and the large-scale
surveys or questionnaires themselves (the tools or vehicles for quantitative methods), or interview
schedules, focus group interview schedules, narratives, journals (the tools or vehicles for qualitative
methods).
Methodology and Methods
Methodology refers to the overall approach to the research process, from the theoretical underpinning to
 the collection and analysis of the data.
Methods refer only to the various means by which data can be collected and/or analysed.

Methodology-
Will inform and lead to:
 Why you collected certain data.
 What kind of data you have collected, and how you collected it.
 Where, and when, you collected the data.
 How you analysed it.
It also leads to the kind of conclusions you can draw from analysing and interpreting your
findings (either: this proves that . . . based on a version of the world as discoverable, using
research designs and deductive methods which lead to reliable and generalisable research and
findings; or this suggests that . . ./it could be argued that . . . based on a version of the world as
relative to position, questions asked, context, ways of interpreting which lead to valid research
designs, inductive methods and valid findings).

Methodology-
Is an underpinning approach which is based on your view of the world. For example:
(A)
Is it fact-based; can we understand it through collecting facts? Can questions be answered
through experimentation and systematic practices that are repeated? Is it essentially knowable,
i.e., if you keep looking long enough in enough ways thoroughly enough, you will eventually
find the truth? Such beliefs and the methodology arising from them can usually be found in
science research, some social science research, or health and business research where it
resembles social science, because they are using facts and figures, providing some information
about large numbers or large samples, fixing the world, and knowing it.
Or
(B)
Do we actually construct meaning, interpret any evidence we come across – through discovery,
exploration, asking questions, using a variety of means. This is a constructivist and interpretive
worldview, philosophy and methodology.
 (A) The methodology that is based on a fact-based, fact-discovering, fixing, measuring view
of the world is often termed a positivist methodology. It tends to lead to deductive
research methods, i.e., that test theories and hypotheses, and prove that this way or that
way is the case. It uses largely quantitative methods to do so, so it is likely to use
experiments, surveys or tests, and in science it produces experimental data from carrying
out a number of repeated experiments in order to fix the truth, finalise the results, know
about the situation, the experience, the existence, through proving the same result time
and time again. It often generates statistical data in the social sciences because the
questioning or gathering of data has been carried out many times or because the surveys
are large and rigorously tested, and reliable results have been achieved. This research is
said to be reliable and generalisable, i.e., you can depend on it to happen that way again,
to have the same results under the same conditions. These results are replicable in the
same way under the same circumstances.
(B) (This methodology is often termed either anti-positivist or post-positivist or
interpretivist. It tends to lead to inductive research methods that use research vehicles
which allow you to build theory.
It’s based on a view of the world as not fixable but interpreted by human beings, in context, and
the inductive research methods and vehicles that are the tools by which the methods operate such
as the actual questionnaires to small numbers, and /or using open ended or semi-structured
questions, the list of questions asked in an interview, i.e., the interview schedule, the observation
checklist for a set of observations that are not based on repeating identical processes. These
gather data that cannot be identically reproduced even in similar situations. This is because they
are based on human situations and interactions, which are always a bit different, non-replicable,
and non identical. This is not sloppy subjective research, it is research which recognises that
human experiences and interactions change, and so do interpretations, in context. The methods
can be rigorous and should be, so if they have been carefully developed and the questions are
appropriate and well worded, the results are valid and the processes said to be internally valid,
i.e., they are appropriate for the questions being asked, in context.

It is very important when deciding on what methodology you are using, what research design and
methods can actually enable you to address your question, test your hypothesis, or open up, solve
or go some way to solve your research problem, that you state the methodology, the methods,
research design, and that you indicate why you have chosen them to help you action your
research. You also need to indicate what the limitations of this methodology and chosen
methods are. Identifying the limitations means you make it clear that nothing can be absolutely
stated for certain to be true in every case, and there are necessarily some issues as part of the
research which will affect its being utterly dependable and replicable in other circumstances
(however many precautions you have taken to ensure the research is well designed and carried
out and the data handled well). For example, limitations might refer to the sample – you cannot
ask everyone the questions, or the context might hamper people’s responses. There are a range of
factors affecting the absolute certainty you have about saying that results indicate that something
is the case or is always going to be true. In developing your research design, be very clear and
define your choices. Other people might well choose to ask questions in a different way. Most
research will be either positivistic and quantitative or post- or anti-positivistic, or interpretivist
and qualitative. There are many fine distinctions that other writers and researchers will enter into
argument about here, but this is a rough guide.

Using mixed methodology

Despite some popular beliefs and very firm arguments to the contrary, it is possible to use mixed
methodologies at different stages of your research, although you do need to be extremely careful.
You can believe both that we can find out facts, and that we can develop and construct
knowledge. This mixed methodology uses mixed methods.
Your work could be:
1. Deductive (theory testing – believes in facts – using, e.g., mass observation according to
certain categories).
2. Inductive (developing a theory from the next stage of questioning by, for example, using
the interview method and an interview schedule of questions with 20 people or so and
growing your theories from the interview results).
3. Deductive again (testing the theory you developed from the interviewing method by
turning the key questions into the form of a large-scale survey that gives you further
statistics)
Using mixed methodologies, and using mixed methods
From your mixed beliefs about the way in which knowledge is produced in the world and your
position in the world, you might develop a research design which uses mixed methods, growing
from your belief in mixed methodology (see Entwistle and Ramsden, 1983).
This could take several journeys.
Deductive then inductive
Figure 8.1 shows three possible stages your research might involve.
You might start out by testing a theory with a large survey (this is the method, the actual physical
survey itself, the research vehicle). This would be quantitative data gathering, deductive
methodology in a positivistic paradigm, i.e., positivist testing of the world based on your belief
that if you ask questions which have been rigorously pretested, of large numbers, the statistical
data produced can be interpreted according to certain theories, to produce underlying themes and
ways of measuring the responses, and the patterns of people’s responses show trends. The large
number of responses produces statistically viable results which you feel, in the same
circumstances, could be replicated, but should the circumstances change, or those whom you ask,
or where you ask and why, these variables (population, context, location) might well alter the
results, and so you would be able to argue that the change of population, context or location
causes such a change in response. This establishes a basis of statistical ‘fact’.

Next you might move into an inductive stage, where you generate interview questions from your
own ideas and experience and the responses from the survey – those questions which seemed to
generate interesting statistics – and ask a few people about the issues that are the focus of the
interview. Here you are believing first that some of the world is factual, fixable and calculable,
and this stage of the research comes up with reliable and generalisable data, while you know that
the second stage of the research is not reliable or generalisable but internally valid in itself and
yields rich data about feelings and people’s views.
Fig 8.1
Finally you might build on this inductive stage by narrowing down your focus, and developing
deep and rich data by identifying a few case studies from your data.
Or
Inductive then deductive
You might start, for instance, with an exploration – ask questions, carry out semi structured
open-ended interviews around a range of questions, see what your results indicate as important
patterns or variations, then start to identify patterns, develop some fixed questions and deliver a
large-scale survey with these questions at the heart of it. In the inductive part of this research you
would be developing theory based on initial enquiries, and in the deductive part you would be
testing those theories using large scale survey methods and statistics.

One such example is the development and use of the Reflections on Learning Inventory (RoLI),
which Professors J. H. F (Erik) Meyer and Gillian Boulton-Lewis developed (1997). They began
by asking questions about how students went about their learning, what motivated them, what
they thought learning was, what they knew they had learned and the kind of learning outcomes
they sought (using interviews, qualitative research on an inductive design). Erik carried out his
interviewing and questioning in multicultural South Africa and Gillian among white and
Aboriginal students in Australia.
They then built the survey, and it has been tested and used with students from international
contexts for over ten years (quantitative and deductive). It keeps being refined as the different
survey items are more and more rigorously tested with large scale usage so that they are arguably
really dependable.

Whatever is appropriate for asking your research question, be clear about the different stages and
defend your work.

Subjectivity exists in both kinds of research methodologies, although we always try to

acknowledge and reduce it. It is clearly present in research methodology that relies on the
construction of knowledge, where it is acknowledged that the sample, methods, and design are
all in variation and affected by time, place, the researcher, the sample, research practices and
interpretative processes, among other things, but that attempts at the removal of bias and opinion
are enabled by a robust research design, and triangulation of methods. Subjectivity also exists in
what could be termed ‘pure’ scientific research, where scientists carry out well managed and
well documented experiments. Their choice of experiments and, to some extent, the questions
they ask of the data produced in order to interpret it are based on essentially subjective research
questions and a need to know some things rather than others. This can be determined by different
times and places, different needs and abilities, the opportunities for different kinds of study, and
different subjects.

Research designs – samples, variables

Once you have defined your methodology you can start to build your research design, which,
like a pattern for sewing clothes or an architect’s plan for a house, will enable you to plan out
how you can ask your research question or test your hypothesis. From your methodology grow
the research design and the methods. You will need to develop a time plan, decide on sampling,
and the methods in action to make that design real, using tools or vehicles – interviews, surveys,
observations, journalling, experiments and so on, much as a craftsman would in making a coat or
a house.
Your design will contain methodology and methods, time and plans of action. If it is for a
scientific piece of research or a social science (or related subject) piece of research, it will use the
term ‘sample’, which means the items, people, dogs, houses, whatever you are looking at, which
have been selected from the whole population of houses, dogs, people, etc. available. The sample
is those of which/whom you ask your research questions/test your hypotheses/work out your
problem.
Why sample?
Because we cannot test every instance, or ask every person, or try out a procedure on every dog,
or observe and define every house, or whatever your population is. Our sample must be defined,
chosen for a reason, and will affect the results and the applicability of those results and findings
to other instances that you and others might research.
You might choose:
A representative sample This is a sample taken from a whole population because the sample
are typical of the population’s characteristics, and so can be said to be representative. The whole
population of a specific field, such as those who fly regularly (at least once a month) on Ryanair
to Dublin, cannot be asked about their experience of the new Dublin airport, because this group
would be too large to ask. However, once the characteristics of such a group have been defined,
for instance business travellers, flying at least once a month, staying no more than one night and
more usually flying in and out in a day, then a representative sample can be discovered. It needs
to be noted whether the sample is a specific proportion of the total number (e.g., total number
20,000, 10% sample taken).

A stratified sample If the whole population of those you are studying can be subdivided in
categories, according to different strata like rocks, then you might decide it is important to take a
sample which represents these strata or categories in relation to their appearance in the total
population, for instance, of types of universities. In the UK there are several types of university:

1. Old ones of medieval foundation – Oxford and Cambridge.

2. The Russell group – old, well established, high status, some nearly as old as Oxbridge,
some built early in the twentieth century or late nineteenth century, e.g., Durham, Leeds.
3. Red-brick – mostly established before and expanded just after the Second World War,
often in the cities. Leeds would fit this category again and so would Nottingham.
4. Greenfield – those established in the 1960s, usually set outside the cities.
5. The ex-polytechnics – those founded as universities in 1994 or close to that date.
You can stratify them differently but this will do for our purposes. They are so stratified because
of their age, status, location, date of foundation, where all these elements affect the funding, the
range of subjects, and the student experience, so these differences would give us some way of
dividing up the range of universities according to their differences.

Opportunistic sample This is a sample taken from those which are available to you, e.g., all the
people who happen to be on the number 19 bus, where you are looking at the experience of bus
travellers or commuters, or the number of single mothers who are studying for research degrees
in your university, where you are looking at the experiences of single mothers undertaking
research degrees.

Random sample This is not as random as it sounds. It is not just looking, for example, at any
dog which turns up, or any headmaster who answers your online questions. You need to set up a
mechanism to choose the sample randomly according to a selection of categories of difference,
where the individuals of the population have been seen to fit the set categories. Individuals for
your research sample can be chosen in relation to these categories, each one of these selected at
random.
Your kind of sample affects the results you can produce and how other people can use your
results in their own work.

Variation and variables

Variables are categories of difference that can be applied to your sample, the design aspects,
such as time, context, researcher, and to the analyses. Grix defines them thus: ‘Variables are
concepts which vary in amount or kind’ (2004, p. 177).
For example, if we return to our travellers to Dublin on Ryanair, we might want to know if there
are differences in the responses to the new airport from men or women, younger travellers and
older travellers, those in groups or those who travel individually; these differences in the types of
traveller are variables in our research sample because the differences might well affect the
responses to our questions. Independent variables are causal and explanatory, i.e., they cause and
explain the differences in your design, and so your results. Dependent variables are caused or
affected by the independent variables (see Grix, 2002, pp. 164 and 168).
We might like to look at those who travel at 6 a.m. and return the same day, as compared with
those who travel during the day and stay over. This kind of variable is related to the time of
travel and length of stay.
We might look at those who use the online check-in or priority services as opposed to those who
don’t. The use of check-in is the independent variable while the dependent variables, congestion
and travel time, are caused by the independent variable.

When we come to analyse the statistical data resulting from this survey, we might be able to
cross-tabulate or compare across different variables and so discover for instance that:
1. 10% of women travelling stay overnight and 60% of men stay overnight;
2. 30% of all business travellers who stay overnight use the online and priority check in. Of
those who use this form of check-in, 50% are women, and 80% of those women say that
this eases congestion and provides a more pleasant business airport experience.
While the first analysis of results just looks at two variables – gender in relation to overnight stay
in terms of the whole population of business travellers on Ryanair to Dublin, the second analysis
is more complex and relates more variables – (a) gender, (b) stay, (c) form of check-in, and (d)
satisfaction with the airport experience.
In any research proposal you will be expected to discuss and defend:
 Your choices of methodology/ies
 Your choices of methods
to indicate which theorists lie behind these and why. And explain why you did not choose other
methodologies and methods.