The Methodology section is where you describe exactly how you anticipate carrying out your research. This section will include detailed explanations of your research methods, data collection, and data analysis (Pickard, 2013, 53).
You should be answering the following questions:
What research method(s) are you applying to the study?
Why have you made this choice?
How do you intend to structure the method(s) for your investigation?
You will first need to determine who will constitute your research population, i.e. who are you studying? Are you planning on studying a large group of people, or a small group?. This decision will be in part be determined by your research design and methods.
"Your research population is the entire set of individuals about which inference will be made." (Pickard, 2013, 60).
Sampling methods are used when you cannot include everyone in your research population, and therefore there is a need to create a pre-defined 'sample' of your population. Within this section, you will need to explain how you plan on obtaining your sample and why this sampling method is the most appropriate
"Sampling is the process of selecting a few from many in order to carry out empirical research." (Pickard, 2013, 59).
The type of sampling method selected will depend on your research design and methods. The sample and sampling method selected that help gives weight to research findings, you need to ensure that your sample is generalizable.
Types of sampling techniques:
Within this section, you will need to explain who you plan to obtain your research data and what type of data you plan on collecting. Will you be performing an experiment with data points, an interview with questions, or will you be utilizing a research instrument? The research design and type of data will determine your data collection procedures. Remember that data collection techniques are tied with data analysis, the type of procedure for data collection must match how your data will be analyzed.
Examples of data collection techniques:
In this section, you will need to explain how you plan to analyze the data you collected. The type of data analysis is based upon the type of data collected and your research design.
You will need to determine if your research is quantitative or qualitative, this will impact how you will analyze your data. Quantitative data analysis involves statistical calculations and procedures, while qualitative does not.
Quantitative Analysis
Qualitative Analysis