When you’re designing an experiment, the methodologies you choose to follow are crucial to the outcome. They also play a significant role in the research’s replicability, which then determines the relevance and legitimacy of the results.

That said, it’s nearly impossible to conduct successful research without planning it out ahead. But until you’re in the action steps of your work, how can you tell what type of methodology will be the best? You’re not the first researcher to question this, and you won’t be the last. The good news is that there are ways to figure out the best research methodology to support your study and collect the right data, and we have them here.

Method Versus Methodology

Wait, methodology? What about methods?

These two words are often used interchangeably, although they are distinctly different. Parts of the definition overlap. Make sure you’re working on the right aspect of your research experiment by learning the nuances.

Methods are the tools you use to collect the data that will help you answer your research questions. These tools might be things like interviews, usability studies, surveys, contextual inquiries, or diary studies.

Methodologies, on the other hand, are the “why” behind your approach. These are the strategies you’ll use to point your research in a certain direction, along with the rationale of why you chose that particular methodology. Depending on the strategy you choose, you’ll narrow down the methods you’ll use to generate your data.

Types of Research Methodology

You’ve determined that you’re in the correct category, and you need to choose a strategy rather than a data collection tool right now. So, which methodologies are available, and how can you pick one?

Here are some of the most common strategies used by researchers to point their studies in the most accurate direction.

●      Phenomenology is the methodology used to describe how a phenomenon, or a lived thing, existed

●      Participatory is a strategy in which the participants of your study are also actively behaving as researchers, uncovering answers and posing more questions

●      Ethnography takes social norms, customs, behaviors, and other aspects of the world and explores them based on cultures, behaviors, and common beliefs

●      Ethnomethodology focuses on the way people interact using dialogue and body language to provide an overall view of humans and their behaviors, thought patterns, and actions

●      Grounding theory starts everything from square one, using new approaches through inductive questioning and reasoning to develop a theory that hasn’t previously existed

Now, you can take the methodology that sounds like where you’re trying to go with your research and break it into the methods you’ll need to get you there.

If you want to test a hypothesis, you’ll want quantitative data to provide factual numbers and statistics. If the methodology involves thoughts and meanings, you’re better off with qualitative methods that let you explore what goes on beneath the surface of those black and white numbers and stats.

Sometimes, it makes sense to use primary data because that is typically the most accurate. Obviously, primary data is best used when there’s a small, easily accessible pool of information to choose from. But if you’re trying to analyze a large data set, and there is already data readily available, it’s better to use secondary data from a legitimate database.

Finally, you’ll decide what kind of methods to use: experimental versus descriptive. When variables are in question and you must correlate the cause and effect of their relationships, experimental methods are the way to go. But if your methodology points to character traits, non-numerical factors, thought patterns, and other non-tangible aspects of the research subject, descriptive methods are the preferred route.

Don’t assume that you can only use one or the other, though. If your experiment falls into a blurry realm where numbers and thoughts overlap, that’s fine. Switch your approach to the mixed methods-based research, where your methodology can include qualitative and quantitative methods. This type of research explores a situation so you can develop a potential conceptual framework (qualitative), then use quantitative data to test it through empirical standards.

Share Your Findings With Your Impactio Community

Your methodology was on point, and it led you to new findings through explorations of qualitative and quantitative methods. What’s next?

If you’re like many scholars, you’ll want to see how impactful your work’s influence was on your field. An easy way to do that is to sign up for Impactio, America’s largest scientific networking platform. Here, you’ll have all the tools you need to analyze your work’s qualitative and quantitative influence at your fingertips. Get started today.