An Introduction to Writing the Methodology Chapter/Section

With the Walden Dissertation Editors

MethodologyMethodology

• For those writing a dissertation, this will be Chapter 3.

• For those writing a project study or doctoral study, this will be Section 2.

• Typical sequence for writing a doctoral capstone study proposal: – Conducting the literature review (not writing it).– Honing in on the problem statement (i.e., the gap in the

literature or local problem).– Brainstorming the methods section.

Methods 101Methods 101

The most important thing to remember:

The research or local problem and your research questions

dictate the method,

not the other way around.

Methods 101

• Broad Approaches:– Qualitative– Quantitative– Mixed Method

Qualitative

• Purpose: To explore a phenomenon in great detail. • Approach: Inductive. • Language: Question should always be open-ended (e.g.,

“how” or “what”). Qualitative dissertations should typically have 2 or 3 questions.

Qualitative• Components*:– Introduction– Justification of paradigm– Role of the researcher– Questions and subquestions– Researcher-participant relationship– Criteria for selecting participants

and participant numbers– Data collection– Data analysis– Data quality– Ethical considerations– Conclusion

*• See checklist for PhD qualitative studies at http://researchcenter.waldenu.edu/PhD-Dissertation-Process-and-Documents.htm• See rubrics for EdD qualitative studies athttp://researchcenter.waldenu.edu/EdD-Doctoral-Study-Procedures-and-Documents.htm• See rubric for DBA qualitative studies athttp://researchcenter.waldenu.edu/DBA-Doctoral-Study-Process-and-Documents.htm

Quantitative

• Purpose: To examine the relationship between two or more quantifiable variables.

• Approach: Deductive.• Language: Question should ideally be open-ended

(“what is the relationship between X and Y?”). Independent and dependent variables should be identified. The IV should be conceptualized as a variable that impacts the DV.

Quantitative• Components*:

– Introduction– Justification of paradigm– Research questions and hypotheses– Setting and sample– Treatment (if applicable)– Instrumentation and materials– Data collection– Data analysis– Ethical considerations– Conclusion

*• See checklist for PhD quantitative studies at http://researchcenter.waldenu.edu/PhD-Dissertation-Process-and-Documents.htm

• See rubrics for EdD quantitative studies athttp://researchcenter.waldenu.edu/EdD-Doctoral-Study-Procedures-and-Documents.htm

• See rubric for DBA quantitative studies athttp://researchcenter.waldenu.edu/DBA-Doctoral-Study-Process-and-Documents.htm

Mixed MethodMixed Method• Purpose: To explore a multifaceted phenomenon. The

phenomenon should have components that should be quantified and components that should be kept in narrative form.

• Approach: Both inductive and deductive. • Language: Includes both qualitative and quantitative research

questions.

Unquestionably Good Research Questions

• The research question(s) form the foundation of the dissertation

• Everything done in dissertation should relate to the research question(s)

• Research questions will generate hypotheses in quantitative studies, provide framework for methodology in qualitative studies

• Should not be– Too narrow (“What is the mean no. of …”)– Too broad (“What is the effect of discipline on children?”)– A question that is not researchable (“Is helping behavior selfishly or

unselfishly motivated?”)– A yes-no question (Does parental divorce cause depression in

children?)

Research Question Examples

•Qualitative: How do adults subjected to corporal punishment as children define this experience in adulthood?•Quantitative correlational: What is the effect of childhood corporal punishment on adult anxiety levels?•Quantitative Experimental: What is the effect of exposure to televised models of prosocial behavior on helping behavior of preschool children?

High-Quality Hypotheses• Unambiguous, testable predictions that specify

– An independent or predictor variable, and the means by which it is measured

– A dependent or criterion variable, and the means by which it is measured

– A predicted effect or relationship

Sexually active (those who self-report at least one act of sexual intercourse in the past year) teenagers will report higher levels of Chronic Self Destructiveness (CSD) as measured by the CSD Scale (Kelley, 1984) than will teenagers who are not sexually active.

Among college freshmen, levels of depression, as measured by Beck’s Depression Inventory (1996), will be negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction, as measured by the Norbeck Social Support Questionnaire (Norbeck, 1995).

Quantitative study

The following slides are excerpted from Chapter 3 of a study titled:

Graduation Rates at Ohio 2-Year Colleges:

A Comparison of Adult Students Taking and Not Taking Developmental Coursework

IntroductionIntroduction

The first section of this chapter includes a description of this quantitative research study. The design was quasi-experimental to test the primary question about the impact of developmental coursework on graduation rates. The next section, focusing on the setting and participants, includes a description of the population, reasons to use a purposive sample, and the criteria for selection of participants. The final portions of this chapter describe cross-tabulations of the nominal data and the analysis process utilizing the likelihood ratio chi-square technique.

IntroductionQuantitative research is used when a hypothesis or theory proposes that a relationship exists between variables (Creswell, 2003). The purpose of this study was to examine whether taking developmental coursework had an impact on the graduation rates for adult students. Although demographic information was included to describe the participants, much like qualitative research data, the frequencies of graduates in a particular year represent data that are quantitative and are appropriate for this type of analysis. This study was also designed to test a hypothesis, not develop one.Rather than true experimental, a quasi-experimental research design was viewed as the most appropriate for this research, because the participants were not randomly distributed within treatment conditions…

Research Questions and Hypotheses

Research Questions and HypothesesThe primary research question for this

study was: Are there significant differences in the rate of graduation for adult learners who take developmental coursework compared to adults who do not? Additional questions included: Are there significant differences based on gender or race for graduates who took developmental coursework?

Research Questions and Hypotheses1. Developmental vs. No Developmental Coursework

a) H0 - There is no significant difference in the graduation rates of adults taking and not taking developmental coursework.

b) Ha - There is a significant difference in the graduation rates of adults taking and not taking developmental coursework.

2. Gender

a) H0 - There is no significant difference in the graduation rates of adults taking developmental coursework, based on gender.

b) Ha - There is a significant difference in the graduation rates of adults taking developmental coursework, based on gender.

3. Race

a) H0 - There is no significant difference in the graduation rates of adults taking developmental coursework, based on race (non-White or White).

b) Ha - There is a significant difference in the graduation rates of adults taking developmental coursework based on race (non-White or White).

Setting, Population, and Sample

Setting of Study

College students in the state of Ohio have the option of attending private or public institutions that provide certifications required for employment, applied degrees in various technologies, associate of arts and sciences degrees, and bachelor, master, or doctoral degrees. According to the Ohio Board of Regents (2006a), there were 638,146 students enrolled in these institutions, with 172,118 of them at community

and technical…

Setting, Population, and Sample

Population of StudyA study population can be defined in two ways (Trochim, 2001). The theoretical population is the one to which the researcher wants to generalize. The accessible population is composed of the individuals to whom the researcher has access. For this study, the theoretical population was adult students, defined as age 26 and over at entry and enrolled full-time in public 2-year colleges in the United States. The accessible population was the group of adult students from the state of Ohio who were enrolled full-time and for the first time in 1999 (n = 840), 2000 (n = 884), or 2001 (n = 894) which produced a total N = 2,618.

Setting, Population, and Sample

Sample for Study

According to Champion (2002), purposive sampling is used when there are “clear criteria for selecting the participants for the sample group to be studied” (p. 62). Rather than gathering a random sample of the accessible population from all of the 2-year institutions in Ohio, a purposive sampling of students from the 16 schools that used the COMPASS test for placement was employed...

TreatmentTreatment

The primary focus in this study was graduation rates for adults who take or do not take developmental coursework. Developmental coursework is curriculum that has been designed to prepare students for subsequent college-level courses. The independent variable for this study was whether students took developmental coursework prior to attempting college-level coursework. Hence, for purposes of this research, students who took developmental coursework defined the treatment group. Students not enrolled in developmental coursework constituted the control group. … I will apply for IRB approval for this study before….

Instrumentation and Materials

InstrumentsA college placement test is used to

identify the need for developmental coursework for students attending community colleges with an open access mission. To eliminate the extraneous effect of the variance among placement tests, students completing the COMPASS placement test were targeted for this sample. The COMPASS is a computerized assessment tool distributed by ACT….

Data Collection and Analysis

Data Collection and Analysis

This study utilized data compiled by the Ohio Board of Regents (OBOR). To obtain this information, a request was made to the OBOR. The de-identified data, as delivered to the researcher, contained information compiled by OBOR and recorded on a CD-ROM in comma-delimited format.

Data Collection and AnalysisDescriptive and Inferential Analyses

Individual student information of age, gender, and race…was totaled and cross-tabulated across the control and treatment conditions of the independent variable.

Subsequent to these tabulations, an inferential analysis was conducted to test the research questions. For the primary question, the independent variable was having taken or not taken developmental coursework, and the dependent variable was the frequency of student graduation in a year across 5 years. Because both variables are nominal level, a test of independence required a chi-square analysis of the 2 x 5 contingency table.

ConclusionThis chapter contained an explanation of

the research study, research questions and hypotheses, and additional factors relating to the project. After the discussion of the pilot study, including the implications found, the next logical step was to conduct the research study. The next chapters will describe what process was followed for conducting the study and analyzing the results. Then the findings are presented and discussed. Finally, a presentation of the conclusions drawn and recommendations made are included.

Qualitative studyThe following slides are excerpted from ch. 3 of a study titled:

Exploring the Intrinsic Role of Agency

and the Extrinsic Role of Social Expectations

for Adults Who Learn to Read:

A Life History

Introduction

Introduction

The primary purpose of this qualitative life history study was to explore the roles of agency and social expectations for adults who have learned to read. The secondary purpose of this study was to describe the lived experience of adults who did not learn to read in school. This study also explored the potential applications of adult agency behaviors in reading intervention curriculum for adolescents who struggle to read.

Introduction This chapter describes the qualitative

research paradigm and life history design for this study of adult non- and limited readers and will discuss the rationale for choosing each in this context. In addition, this chapter describes the methodology for this study, including a description of the participants, how participants were selected, the researcher’s role, and ethical issues. An explanation is included of the data collection tools, how data was collected and analyzed, and threats to data quality.

Research Design

Paradigm and Tradition

According to Creswell (1998) the qualitative research paradigm should be undertaken based on the following rationales: (a) research questions begin with how and what, (b) the topic requires exploration because of multiple variables and/or a lack of theory, (c) a natural setting is required…Thus, the paradigm of qualitative research was chosen because words are more indicative of the experience of learning in reference to the cultural invention of reading than the numerical data of quantitative research…

Research DesignResearch Questions

1. What is the lived experience of an adult who does not read proficiently or who has learned to read proficiently as an adult?

2. What is the role of agency in learning to read as an adult?

3. What is the role of social expectations in learning to read as an adult?

4. How are agency and social expectations connected or revealed in the pivotal moments in the narratives of adult non- or limited readers?

MethodologyParticipants/Population

Participants were chosen for this qualitative life history because they had the shared experience of struggling to learn to read… The participants for this qualitative life story were selected by the researcher from a rural central Florida community. A convenience sample of 18 men and women who self-identified as having learned to read as adults was located through (a) referrals from teachers in public school adult education programs, (b) notices sent to community volunteer adult tutoring programs, (c) referrals from the researcher’s professional contacts…

MethodologyResearcher’s Role

According to Creswell (1998), the researcher is an “instrument of data collection who gathers words or pictures, analyzes them inductively, focuses on the meaning of participants, and describes a process that is expressive and persuasive in language” (p. 14)…As the instrument of investigation, the researcher must recognize and acknowledge the bias that cannot be left outside the research space shared by the story teller.

MethodologyData Collection Plan

Data collection occurred in three distinct phases: prescreening with initial brief interviews, screening with

written questionnaire instruments, and inclusion in the study with extended interviews…

Data Analysis PlanData analysis included construction of a visual display of information (see Figure 1) based on the three-level ladder of analytical abstraction developed by Carney in 1990 and presented by Miles and Huberman (1994). This data analysis plan was chosen because it allows for the correlation and corroboration of the written instruments with the interview text in a systematic and visual format.

Threats to Data QualityValidity and Reliability

Unlike quantitative research, which is based on calculation and comparison of numbers and generalizations, qualitative life history research requires a check and balance system because it is based upon interpretation of words and pictures...

To ensure validity, this research study of adults who learn to read will adhere to the three ideas presented by Merriam (2002)…

Ethical ConsiderationsMeasures for Ethical Protection of Participants

It is the researcher’s ethical responsibility to safeguard the story teller by maintaining the understood purpose of the research…

The researcher is also ethically bound to the institution which supports or sanctions the study. No participants were contacted, and no data was collected until the researcher received approval of the dissertation proposal from the researcher’s faculty advisor and dissertation committee members. The researcher will submit an application to the Walden University Institutional Review Board (IRB) to receive permission to begin research before soliciting for participants, arranging interviews, or collecting data.

Summary

Chapter 3 has described the methodology used to design this qualitative life history research, including a discussion of the qualitative paradigm and the rationale for the researcher’s choices. A description of the population and participants, the researcher’s role, the data collection tools, data collection plan, and data analysis plans was also incorporated. The researcher discussed threats to data quality, validity and reliability, and ethical considerations in reference to the current research study.

Tips on WritingTips on Writing

• For the proposal, write in the future tense.– “I will run a regression analysis . . . ” or “the data will be analyzed

using regression analysis . . . ”

• Once the proposal has been approved, and data have been collected and analyzed, write in the past tense.– “I ran a regression analysis . . . ” or “the data were analyzed

using regression analysis . . . ”

• Be specific. – Recipe card analogy.

Take-home pointsTake-home points• Writing is a process: Allow yourself multiple revisions of

each section and take advantage of the Writing Center’s services for a review of the methods chapter/section.

• The research problem and research question dictate the method; avoid imposing a “pet” method on an ill-fitting research problem.

• The description of the method should be detailed enough so that others could replicate the study.

• Use the checklist (PhD students) or consensus rubric (EdD and DBA students) to guide you.

• Seek feedback and guidance from the methodologist on your committee.

Questions?