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Tony Lynch English Language Teaching Centre
3 Methodology
(In this unit I use the word Methodology as a general term to cover whatever you decide to
include in the chapter where you discuss alternative methodological approaches, justify
your chosen research method, and describe the process and participants in your study).
The Methodology chapter is perhaps the part of a qualitative thesis that is most unlike its
equivalent in a quantitative study. Students doing quantitative research have an established
conventional ‘model’ to work to, which comprises these possible elements:
Overview of the Experiment/Design
Population/Sample
Location
Restrictions/Limiting Conditions
Sampling Technique
Procedures
Materials
Variables
Statistical Treatment
(If your research adopts a mixed-methods approach, then you will also find that model
useful for the quantitative chapters).
However, for students writing up an exclusively qualitative thesis, the shape of the
methodology chapter is less clear-cut:
“the straightforward character of a quantitative methods chapter unfortunately does not spill over into qualitative research reports. At first sight, this simply is a matter of different language. So, in reporting qualitative studies, we do not talk about ‘statistical analysis’ or ‘research instruments’. But these linguistic differences also reflect broader practical and theoretical differences between qualitative and qualitative research. More particularly, in writing up qualitative research, we need to recognise: the (contested) theoretical underpinnings of methodologies the (often) contingent nature of the data chosen the (likely) non-random character of cases studied (Silverman 2000: 234)
Task 3.
Can you explain what Silverman means by ‘contested underpinnings’, ‘contingent data’ and ‘non-random cases’?
Do those terms apply to the methodological approach you have adopted in your research?
Tony Lynch English Language Teaching Centre
Silverman’s advice on the best way to deal with these three potentially problematic aspects
of writing up qualitative research is to:
Make explicit what your theoretical assumptions are
Spell out the factors that made you choose to work with your particular data
Explain how you can extrapolate from your study site to other contexts
Murcott (1997) argues that the key questions for the qualitative methodology chapter are:
How did you go about your research?
What overall strategy did you adopt and why?
What design and techniques did you use?
Why those and not others?
In his map Written study, structure and functions , which we looked at (page 3) in Unit 1,
Adrian Holliday says qualitative writing requires coverage of the following issues:
In the ‘Research Methodology’ section: How you position yourself in relation to current and past discussion within which your research methodology is located In the section on ‘Description of Research Procedure’: How you chose your core setting and relevant peripheral data sources What the readers need to know about the research setting How you developed a research strategy that is appropriate for the setting How you proceeded in gaining access and collecting data What you did as research activities and what data you collected How you have structured your analysis and arrived at your choice of themes and headings What your system is for representing the data, e.g. coding, referencing, anonymising
Task 3. Study Murcott’s and Holliday’s questions. Do you think all of Murcott’s questions are covered in Holliday’s list?
Task 3. On the next two pages are the headings used by two PhD students in their qualitative Methodology chapters. (The ‘practices’ mentioned in the second thesis refer to medical practices, or health centres, where she carried out her study)
Decide whether you think the students have addressed Holliday’s questions.
Has either of them coveredother issues that were not included in Holliday’s list?
Tony Lynch English Language Teaching Centre
3.4.3 Patient confidentiality 3.4.4 Research assistants 3.4.5 Audio-recording 3.5 Ethnography 3.5.1 Practices 3.5.2 Receptionists 3.5.3 Patients 3.6 Organisation of data 3.6.1 Transcription 3.6.2 Categories of interaction
Task 3.
The first student’s Research Methods chapter was 34 pages long; the second student’s Research Methodology and Method chapter was 47 pages.
Compare their coverage with what you have drafted, or plan to include, in your Methodology chapter. Do you think they wrote too much?
Have you discussed chapter lengths with your supervisors?
On this issue of length and detail, Holliday (2007: 53, underlining added) has written:
Qualitative researchers… can easily underestimate the need for detail in their description of procedure, thus overlooking an important aspect of the demonstration of rigour. One area that requires such detail is the degree of engagement with the setting… Honarbin-Holliday, in her study of two Iranian art departments, demonstrates the rigour of her engagement in the section of her thesis entitled ‘Deconstructing the researcher’s methodological behaviours’ as follows: “The process of collecting data depends on meticulous timekeeping and constant planning and re- planning, always looking ahead in order to be ready for diversions. It is my experience that diversions do emerge and no matter how well prepared, events do not necessarily develop according to plan… The fact was that I felt privileged to be a researching artist, and since I had been given the permission to be at these institutions I wished to adopt strategies that would enable me to use my time in the best possible way. Making sure that I would arrive a few minutes earlier, and leave when the staff and students did, helped my status as a colleague, and a co-worker. I kept to a schedule of two full days per week at Tehran University and two mornings, or one morning and one afternoon, at Al-Zahra University. These could not always be the same days, since different tutors came on different days. I did try to keep at least one day per week at Tehran University, and one afternoon at Al-Zahra University, as a constant. These became my days when the students or the tutors could locate me on the campuses, should they wish to discuss particular issues”. (Honarbin-Holliday 2005: 47-48)
Task 3.
Do you plan to describe your research setting in such detail? Which part of your Methodology chapter will be the most detailed – and why?
Tony Lynch English Language Teaching Centre
Language in the qualitative methodology chapter
Different use of language in the Methodology chapters of qualitative and quantitative
theses reflects the different assumptions of the two broad approaches to academic
research. In their book on writing up experimental research, Weissberg & Buker (1990) were
able to state that “several grammatical conventions govern the method section… These
concern choosing the correct verb tense and verb voice” (1990: 97, underlining added).
Notice that the word govern implies a fixed and strict set of rules. They went on to say:
The procedures you use in carrying out your study should be described in the Simple Past tense. Sentences included under Method that are not written in the Past tense usually do not refer to the procedures used in the study being reported. Instead, they may describe standard procedures that are commonly used by others… You can use either the Active or the Passive voice when you describe the procedure: We applied stress to the rubber segments in gradually increasing increments Stress was applied to the rubber segments in gradually increasing increments The Passive voice is used to describe procedure in order to depersonalise the information. The Passive construction allows you to omit the agent (usually “I” or “we”), placing the emphasis on the procedure and how it was done. (Weissberg & Buker 1990: 101)
Since qualitative research recognises, and even foregrounds, the role played by individuals –
the researcher, the informants and other participants – we might expect that the verb voice
used in the methodology chapter will be Active rather than Passive, in order to make the
description less personal.
A second important function of the Passive in English is to do with information sequence. In
written English it is the norm for old (or known ) information to come towards the beginning
of the sentence and for new information to come later. The Passive voice provides a
mechanism for doing that. Compare these two versions of the same text – which seems to
flow better?
Version A:
There are 188,000 lakes in Finland. Many people are now very concerned about them. Chemicals have polluted most of the larger lakes. A Finnish government report recently confirmed this.
Version B:
There are 188,000 lakes in Finland. They are now a cause of concern to many people. Most of the larger lakes have been polluted by chemicals. This was recently confirmed by a Finnish government report.
The reason why Version B sounds more natural is that all four sentences have the old
information before new; in the case of the third and fourth sentences that is achieved by
making the old information the Subject of a Passive verb.
Tony Lynch English Language Teaching Centre
Writing up your thesis
You have now reached the end of the Tasks for this unit on the Methodology chapter. You
can now apply the ideas and language from this unit to drafting or revising that chapter for
your thesis.
You may also find it helpful to visit this website for further examples of written academic
English relevant for describing and discussing your methodological approach:
http://www.phrasebank.manchester.ac.uk/methods.htm
Tony Lynch English Language Teaching Centre
Appendix to Unit 3
Methodology chapter sample
The extract below illustrates a PhD candidate’s use of a mixture of ‘personal’/Active and ‘impersonal’/Passive in theProcedure section of her methodology chapter. I have highlighted the Active expressions and put the Passives in bold.
In each case, decide whether you think it would be possible to replace the expression with a first-person Active verb (with “I”).
Then decide whether you think it would be necessary or more appropriate to do so.
4.3.3 Procedure My research adopted a case study approach. The 12 voluntary participants were divided into three groups (Group 1, 2, 3). Four of them were paired with a partner they were not familiar with before the study. At the beginning of week 4, all the participants were required to do the first task with their assigned partner through instant exchanging in an online text-based CMC environment. Then, they saved their MSN ‘written’ exchanges by copying and pasting them to a word processing program and sent me the file at the end of the week 4. I corrected and marked their written exchanges and sent them back individually by email. I also provided the learners with explicit feedback with explanations of the errors they made in written records in a later face-to-face session. After receiving feedback, students in Group 1 and 2 carried out the first task orally with their partner in voice-based CMC environments (Group 1 with the use of microphones and webcams; Group 2 with the use of microphones only); students in Group 3 carried out the same oral activities in a face-to-face environment in week 6. All the participants had to record their spoken performances. Participants in the two synchronous groups recorded their online spoken practice using Audacity software, which was free for downloading and was provided on the class website. They were required to familiarize themselves before the study with the software by following the user instructions given on the website. Participants in Group 3 were asked to record their face-to-face spoken practice by using an MP3 player. All the participants needed to submit their sound files to me by email. And then they were invited to repeat their spoken activities publicly in the subsequent face-to-face sessions.
