Today’s Plan:
- Writing a Methodology Section
Writing a Methodology Section
Think of writing a methodology section as if you were writing a recipe for baking a cake. I specifically say baking and not, say, grilling, because baking involves chemistry. You can grill steaks that have been “seasoned with salt and pepper.” You don’t necessarily need exact measurements. Try baking a cake without exact measurements and tell me how that goes. So the first and most important lesson when it comes to writing up a methodology section is to be detailed and precise. A researcher should be able to read this section and recreate your data pool and your analysis, and expect to get similar results.
Generally, any methodology section has three primary concerns:
- Collection: When you start a recipe, you have to collect your ingredients. That is what you are doing here. You explain to the reader how you gathered all the things you needed to do this project. What tools did you need? What objects did you need? What people did you need? How did you find them? How do you justify the decision to do it that way?
- Analysis: How did you analyze them? What did you look for? How did you know to look for that? Who else has looked for that? How does your methods compare?
- Reliability: What did you do to make sure your results were accurate? Did more than one person analyze each item? Did you hold norming sessions to ensure everyone is on the same page?
Note that sometimes you might say that you had based your project on a previous research project, and then describe that project and how you changed it. That might be a solid opening paragraph. But I even in that case, I expect a methodology section to have sub-headings like the one’s above.
Also note that I have excused y’all from having to write a reliability section. That doesn’t mean they aren’t appreciated–if your group did something to ensure reliability, then tell me about it. But they are not required.
Let’s look at a sample methodology for a project that, apparently, I will never finish writing.
Let’s look at some sample student methodologies from my video game research writing class.
Notice how I mention specific technologies and processes. I’m doing my best to walk my reader through what I did step-by-step.
