Academic Research Skills (042024-IMD) Async

Welcome to Topic 1 which is on Methods vs Methodology. In this topic, we will study the differences in using the various types of methodology best suited for your research. There are 2 main learning outcomes you will achieve through this topic, as shown below. It is estimated that you will spend approximately an hour on this topic.

By the end of this section, students should be able to: 

• distinguish the difference between method and methodology
• differentiate various types of researches

 

METHOD AND METHODOLOGY

In your research journey, you would ask yourself one of many questions. One of which is probably ‘how do I do this research?’. To be precise, you are probably asking yourself on the best way or method to gather data and the kind of structure for your thesis. In this topic, you will explore the different types of research methods and methodologies.

To begin with, a method is simply the tool used to answer your research questions — how, in short, you will go about collecting your data. Examples of UX research methods include:

• Contextual inquiry
• Interview
• Usability study
• Survey
• Diary study
• Card sort

If you are choosing among these, you might say “what method should I use?” and settle on one or more methods to answer your research question.

On the other hand, a methodology is the rationale for the research approach, and the lens through which the analysis occurs. Said another way, a methodology describes the “general research strategy that outlines the way in which research is to be undertaken” (An Introduction to the Philosophy of Methodology, Howell 2013). The methodology should impact which method(s) for a research endeavor are selected in order to generate the compelling data.

Examples of methodologies, courtesy of Elin Bjorling, include:

• Phenomenology: describes the “lived experience” of a particular phenomenon
• Ethnography: explores the social world or culture, shared beliefs and behaviors
• Participatory: views the participants as active researchers
• Ethnomethodology: examines how people use dialogue and body language to construct a world view
• Grounding theory*: assumes a blank slate and uses an inductive approach to develop a new theory

*Despite the fact that grounding theory has theory in its name, don’t let that fool you — it is actually a methodology because it aims to generate theory from systematic application of research.

Are you still confused? Then read the example below:

If you wanted to know about the lived experiences purchasing food in the United States, for instance, you would be using the phenomenology methodology— and from there you could choose from different methods to collect that data. For instance, you might perform a contextual inquiry and shop alongside participants; you might also interview a handful of participants and ask them to recount their most recent grocery shopping experience; you might equally choose to do a survey and ask the same questions to hundreds of participants. Because the contextual inquiry gets the researcher much closer to the actual setting, the results may be considered stronger and more transferable in the future.

 

More examples of when to use method and methodology:

If you work in industry, it’s likely that you will mostly be talking about methods. Here are some ways you can use “methods” in context:

• I’m trying to decide between doing a contextual inquiry, or bringing in participants for interviews. Which method would you choose while balancing cost, research time, and usefulness of the data?
• We want to have hard data with a large number of participants to answer this question, so we should choose a quantitative method, such as a survey that collects data with Likert scales.

 

If you are working in academia and writing research papers, you want to consider including a description of your methodology. However, framing your approach in industry can have many benefits as well. Here are several examples for using “methodology”:

• The phenomenological methodology was chosen for this study on the experience of people residing in low income housing in California because the holistic lived experience uncovered areas of opportunity for the state to implement for their next low income housing project.
• In order to create brand new party board game, we used the participatory methodological approach in our design research process. This allowed us to consider the social atmosphere and take input from our participants when developing game play and rules.

 

In short:

Ask yourself whether you are describing how you will collect your data (method), or if it’s the broader strategy for your research approach (methodology). With one methodology, you can apply several different methods to support or reject the research hypothesis. For the industry practitioner, you typically will be talking about methods. For the academic, you may be talking both about the framing methodology and methods used to accomplish your research goals.

(Extracted from TheUX Researcher, 2018)