Figuring out the Methodology of your Research Project

In the past few blog posts, I have been writing about the first steps in starting up a research project. I wrote about choosing and refining a research topic, as well as how to conduct a literature review. In this post, I will discuss things to think about as one decides on what methodology to pursue in their research project. This post will be helpful to anyone but of greater relevance to those who are conducting research in the social sciences.

What is the methodology of a research project? The methodology basically outlines what techniques a researcher plans to use to find answers to their research questions. In social science research, methods can broadly be divided into qualitative and quantitative methods. Qualitative methods are focused on uncovering the experiences and perspectives of research participants through interviews, participant observation, focus group discussions, media analysis etc. Quantitative methods use statistical methods to provide quantitative descriptions of social science phenomena using data obtained from surveys, polls, web mining etc.

How did I choose the methodology for my research project? Because my project focused on an area that had been relatively unexplored, the social networks of self-employed young people in Ghana and Nigeria, I decided that I needed to do some exploratory qualitative research to develop a ground-up understanding of the topic. However, I also wanted to have more generalizable findings from my project, so I decided to supplement the qualitative research that I was doing with quantitative research. The first stage of my methodology was to conduct semi-structured interviews with self-employed young people to find out about how their social networks shape their working life while the second stage of my methodology entailed administering a cross-sectional survey to self-employed young people in Ghana and Nigeria.

Here are some useful tips for deciding on the methodology of your research project:

• Your questions should determine your methodology: Don’t just pick a methodology for your research project because you like it or are comfortable with it. Let’s say for example, you love to do interviews and your research project question is “What is the relationship between the income of parents and the weight of their children?”. It probably would not be appropriate to use qualitative research to answer this question.

• Review Samples of Other Dissertations: Look at the methodology sections of the dissertations of PhD students that have graduated in recent years from your department preferably those who examined a topic similar to yours. It will give you insight into how to craft a methodology section, and also give you ideas about possible methods that you could use in your project.

• Think carefully about the ‘why’: Before incorporating any method into your methodology, think carefully about why you want to use the particular method and what it will help you find out.

• You have much less time than you think: When I was writing up my methodology for my research project in the first year of my PhD, the entire second year that I was going to dedicate to my fieldwork seemed like such a long time for what I wanted to accomplish. However, trying to fit in both semi-structured interviews and a survey into one year ended up being a lot more challenging that I thought it would be. Basically, PhD students tend to overestimate how much they can achieve within the time they have set aside for their fieldwork so it may be a good idea to consider ways to scale down your project when designing your methodology.

• Brush up on any skills in which you are deficient before going into the field: While developing your methodology, it is always a good idea to brush up on any skills in which you might be deficient to ensure that you are capable of applying the methods that you want to your research project. In the first year of my PhD while I was deciding on my methodology, I decided to take courses on conducting a survey and in quantitative analysis to ensure that I was capable of applying these methods in my project as I had never used them before.