Research methodology · Lesson 1 of 3

Methodology, method, technique, tool

Methodology is the argument for your evidence. The tool is the least interesting part and gets named first.

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Four words, routinely used as synonyms, describing four different levels.

Methodology is the reasoning: why this kind of evidence can answer this kind of question. It is an argument, and it is what a methodology chapter is supposed to contain.

Method is the strategy: a survey, an experiment, a case study, an ethnography. It is the shape of the investigation.

Technique is the specific procedure: stratified random sampling, semi-structured interviewing, thematic coding, difference-in-differences.

Tool is the instrument: a questionnaire, a recorder, R, NVivo, a spreadsheet.

When someone answers "what is your methodology?" with a tool, three levels of reasoning are missing — and those three levels are where the work is either sound or not. A tool cannot make a poorly reasoned design work, and a well-reasoned design can often be executed with almost nothing.

Reading upwards is also a useful check on other people's work: given the tool and the technique they used, what method does that imply, and does that method suit the question they claimed to answer?

See it happen

A colleague describes their study as "we did a survey in Google Forms and analysed it in Excel".

The read that arrives on its own

Clear enough — it is a survey study, and you move on.

The same situation, with this idea

You notice you have the method and two tools, and none of the methodology. Why is a survey the right kind of evidence for their question? Who was sampled, and how were they reached? What does the questionnaire actually measure? Those answers decide whether the study means anything, and none of them are in what you were told.

After this, you can

hear what level of the answer you have been given, and ask for the missing ones.

The takeaway

Methodology is the argument for your evidence. The tool is the least interesting part and gets named first.

Easy to take the wrong way

That this is pedantry about words. The distinction is diagnostic: the missing level is usually exactly where a study is weakest.

Try this

Write your own project at all four levels. Whichever level you cannot fill in is what to work on next.