RESEARCH METHODOLOGY DEFINITIONS

Research Methodology Definitions

Research Methodology Definitions

Methodology can properly refer to the theoretical analysis of the methods appropriate to a field of study or to the body of methods and principles particular to a branch of knowledge. In this sense, one may speak of objections to the methodology of a geographic survey (that is, objections dealing with the appropriateness of the methods used) or of the methodology of modern cognitive psychology (that is, the principles and practices that underlie research in the field). In recent years, however, methodology has been increasingly used as a pretentious substitute for method in scientific and technical contexts, as in The oil company has not yet decided on a methodology for restoring the beaches. People may have taken to this practice by influence of the adjective methodological to mean "pertaining to methods." Methodological may have acquired this meaning because people had already been using the more ordinary adjective methodical to mean "orderly, systematic." But the misuse of methodology obscures an important conceptual distinction between the tools of scientific investigation (properly methods) and the principles that determine how such tools are deployed and interpreted.

The study of the methods to be used in any form of inquiry. The methods used in the study of politics include archival research; the study of previously printed materials; interview-based research; textual and contextual analysis of the arguments of past political thinkers; comparative government based on case studies, and quantitative research, often based on conducting one's own surveys or analysing other people's. All of these methods give rise to questions of methodology, although it is sometimes exclusively (but wrongly) associated with quantitative analysis.

The general study of method in particular fields of enquiry: science, history, mathematics, psychology, philosophy, ethics. Obviously any field can be approached more or less successfully and more or less intelligently. ...