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Posted by: Florian Schneider | February 18, 2014 at 14:00 44 comments

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It’s the time of year when students are gearing up to write their thesis, and whether it’s at the undergraduate relations Internet internet cafe IR theory Japan
or graduate level, for many this means coming to grips with a tricky question: how do I best explain what it is
labour language legacy media legitimacy Mao
I’m doing in my paper, and how do I make sure my explanations are up to the standards of academic
Zedong mass events mass media media events
research? In other words: how do I put together and write up my methodology?
method methodology microblogs military
monetary policy musical Nanjing Massacre
Answering this question is by no means straight-forward. I’ve just recently had a discussion with a PhD
nationalism Network Analysis networks
student about the difference between a method and a methodology, and about how these two things relate
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to questions of theory. These are not problems that cause frustration only at the undergraduate level, but
that accompany many scholars their entire careers. In fact, at a meeting I attended a few weeks ago on how rumours Orientalism parade platforms political
to apply for research funding from the European Research Council, one of the concerns that the Council communication political thought politics
regularly had with applications was that scholars did not provided a good methodology section. So if you are pollution post-colonialism power PRC Anniversary
a student, and you are confused, remember that you share that confusion with many of the professionals. presenting Prezi procedural constructivism

propaganda public opinion reforms research Road to

What makes questions of method and methodology so thorny is that the answers depend on the respective Revival Russia Search Dog Search Engine search
discipline and on the particular research project. Someone in the arts and humanities may interpret the word engines security policy semiotics Senkaku Islands
methodology quite differently than someone in the social sciences or the life sciences, and different Shanghai Expo Sichuan Earthquake slides social
supervisors usually have diverging expectations about the “methodology chapters” in their students’ groups social media social movements social science
research papers. In this post, I will try to highlight different perspectives on this topic, as well as options for

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coming to grips with methods and methodologies. social security society South China Sea South Korea

state-owned enterprises Taiwan Takeshima

I’ll first give you an overview of what a “research method” is, and how a method differs from a technology television territorial dispute theme
“methodology”. I’ll then take a look at how methodology relates to theory, and will discuss where pavilions theory tianxia TV utopia video videogames
methodological concerns might best fit in a research paper or thesis. I’ll provide examples throughout, but video games visuality VLOG water quality welfare
I’ve also included two hypothetical research projects at the end of this post that each deal with world order
methodological issues in a different way: one project is at home in the humanities, and one takes a social
science approach. You’ll find suggestions for further reading in the reference section.

Method vs. methodology

Archive
A source of some confusion is that the words “method” December 2017
and “methodology” are often treated synonymously,
November 2017
even though they do not mean the same thing in
academia. In scholarly work, “methods” are practical September 2017
hands-on steps for doing research. This usually includes December 2016
defining the scope of the research project, coming up
November 2016
with a research question or hypothesis, selecting and
collecting data, processing that data with certain tools to October 2016
enable analysis, and then going through the data
June 2016
systematically to answer the central question. For
example: a method for doing quantitative research on February 2016
Japan’s economy might be to use the statistical software
August 2015
SPSS to check for correlations between different
variables in a data set; a method for doing qualitative March 2015
research on China might be to use differently coloured February 2015
highlighters to mark metaphors and similes in speeches
January 2015
by Mao Zedong and then discussing which ones draw
from different Chinese intellectual traditions. In other December 2014
words, methods are the tools you use to do your
November 2014
research.
May 2014
So what is a methodology? In essence, methodology is the discussion of methods. This includes the
April 2014
theoretical ideas and concerns that inform the use of different methods. A methodology section in a
research paper needs to achieve three things, though not necessarily in this order: Firstly, it should consider March 2014
what the nature of academic work is more generally, and what this might mean for anyone who explores the February 2014
topic at hand. Secondly, it needs to provide a literature review, discussing what methods researchers have
December 2013
traditionally used to study the kind of topic that the project focuses on. Thirdly, it should explain what
methods this particular project uses and why. November 2013

October 2013
The first issue is a question of epistemology, the philosophy of knowledge. Crucial epistemological
questions include: how can we know something? Is there such a thing as objective “truth”, or are we September 2013
subjectively creating “truths” ourselves? What have different intellectual schools said on these issues, and
August 2013
what do our own answers to these questions say about the value of our research project? What do they say
about the value of academic work in general? These are debates that have occupied thinkers for millennia, July 2013
and no-one would expect you to answer them in a term paper or thesis. Nevertheless, the practical methods June 2013
you use to study your subject come with certain assumptions, so it would be a good idea to demonstrate
May 2013
that you are aware of what these are.
April 2013
For instance, imagine you are planning to do research on how discussions on Facebook influences people’s
political views, and that you are planning to do a large-scale survey to get your data. As part of your
methodological considerations, you should spell out how we might know about someone’s “political views”, Facebook
and what you mean by “influence”. These are by no means trivial questions, and even though they are
Twitter
theoretical, they have very real implications for how you conduct your own research. Next, you might want to
review what experts in the field have said about the value and drawbacks of using surveys, about the LinkedIn

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relation between information and human behaviour, and about the problems of establishing causalities Youtube
between different variables. A note on positivism as a research tradition would also probably be wise.
Finally, you should explain where you got your data and what exactly it is you plan to do with it.

Similarly, if you are studying policy documents to find out what the agenda of a specific government is, you
would be well advised to think about epistemological questions like the value that such documents might
have as an indication of political preferences, about the nature of political decision-making, or about the
various philosophical traditions that have debated whether the language in such sources reflects certain
beliefs or conjures them into being (or maybe both?). How you then go on to select and study the actual
documents will likely follow from your answers to these questions.

How methodology connects to theory

As these examples already show, methodological discussions are both theoretical and practical in nature.
This is also what makes writing a methodology section for an article or a thesis so hard. It can be difficult to
draw a line between a typical theory chapter and the epistemological discussion of the methods you used.
Let’s say you are studying international relations. You’ll likely want to include a theory chapter that discusses
what different schools of thought have to say about theoretical concepts like states, power, anarchy,
international society, norms, preferences, and so on. Do you now need to include a second theoretical
chapter that discusses how we can know about the system of states? The answer is not straight forward,
and will strongly depend on what you are trying to achieve.

Overall, it can help to see this overlap between theory and methodology not as a problem but as an
opportunity. In the example above, a good methodology discussion could pick up on earlier theory-driven
considerations of what a state is and could then seamlessly connect these to the question of what different
schools of thought count as “data” on state behaviour. From there, it is only a small step to outlining what
data your research project uses, and what work-steps you took. In this case, the methodology is the puzzle
piece that sits between broader theoretical debates and actual hands-on research work.

Nevertheless, it is quite common to get the balance wrong between the theoretical and the practical aspects
of a methodology. Imagine a term paper that sets out to study a particular case of how people use digital
media in everyday life. The case study will consist of observing and interviewing teenagers in a particular
high school in Seoul to see how they use mobile phones during school hours. Here’s two ways this paper
could go wrong. The paper could discuss at great length the nature of human knowledge without ever
mentioning why this particular high school was chosen, how the researcher conducted the interviews, how
the participants were observed, or how the interviews and research notes were later analysed to arrive at a
conclusion. This would be a paper that got its emphasis wrong, remaining almost entirely in the
philosophical realm of epistemology. Alternatively, imagine the same paper launching into the minutia of
every single work-step, but never justifying why it might be useful to conduct a case study in the first place,
why observations allow us to say something about people’s behaviour, how much credence we should give
to the statements of interview subjects, or whether results from the project are representative of human
beings in general or only of kids living in this neighbourhood of South Korea’s capital at this particular point
in time.

How you get this balance between theory and practice right will have to be a question you answer on a
case-to-case basis. There are certainly projects that do not require a lot of practical work-steps but instead
focus more on epistemology. For instance, if you plan to write a paper about a famous philosopher, you
might only need one footnote to explain what texts you used and how you went about interpreting them. The
question of what an interpretation is or why these philosophical texts matter will be much more central to
your study, so that your methodology section will likely focus primarily on these issues. As another example,
imagine you are running statistical tests on the relation between different demographic and economic
variables in Taiwan, using a dataset published by the United Nations and studied widely by economists. It
may not be necessary to go into long discussions about how something like the Gross Domestic Product
gets calculated, and what these numbers tell us about incomes in an economy – a few footnotes to other
scholars who have discussed these matters will be enough to show that you are aware of such debates.

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The more interesting questions for your case might be how you set up your statistical calculations and how
you went about visualizing the results for your readers. The methodology section of such a study might
therefore be rather light on epistemology but heavy on the nitty-gritty practical issues of using this particular
data set.

Where in a thesis does the methodology section go?

As you’ve seen, methodological concerns differ widely, depending on the project and the discipline. The
same is true for conventions on how to write up a methodology section. In some disciplines, notably the life
sciences and certain social sciences, it is customary to write within a standard framework: introduction,
literature review (often including theoretical concerns), research design (methodology), research results,
discussion, and conclusion. What needs to go where can be very specific, and concepts like theory,
methodology, method, and strategy are kept strictly apart (for an example, see Rudestam & Newton 2007).
In other areas, particularly in the arts and humanities or in branches of the social sciences that are less
positivistic, the setup can be much looser. Questions of methodology might make up a paragraph in the
introduction, or the last section of the theory chapter, or the first section of the case study, or even a number
of footnotes throughout the study.

The scope of the methodological section will also depend on the level you are working at: most
undergraduate degrees don’t normally require hands-on research with primary sources, and it is quite
possible that a term paper or even a BA thesis is essentially a literature review. In such a case, it would be
wise to include at least a note on what a literature review is, what it can achieve, and what considerations
went into picking this set of secondary sources rather than another (for inspiration, see Hart 1998).
However, this probably won’t require more than a short paragraph. At the level of a doctoral thesis, the
situation is quite different. Such projects usually have fully-fledged methodology chapters, often with sub-
sections to discuss epistemological questions, the selection of research materials, and the exact steps
taken to conduct the study. You will have to decide where you belong on this scale.

Two examples of how to deal with methodology

To show you how methodological concerns play out in practice, let me walk you through two hypothetical
research projects at the graduate level that each deal with an aspect of politics in East Asia. These are the
two projects: Alice studies Chinese at a humanities faculty, and she is writing her MA thesis about the role
that pre-modern Confucian sources play in the political programme of China’s former president Hu Jintao.
Becky studies East Asian Studies at a social science faculty, and she is writing her MA thesis on the way
that Japan’s public broadcaster NHK covered the 2011 melt-down at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power
plant in its flagship news broadcast News Watch 9. Here are the choices that Alice and Becky are making
as they are working on their projects.

Case A – Confucian thought in contemporary Chinese politics: Alice’s project starts with a thorough
literature review on Chinese politics, the Hu-Wen administration, and the so-called “Confucian Revival” in
contemporary China. This literature will later go into a first chapter, in which Alice plans to outline the main
issues and debates, along with a few theoretical ideas about how appeals to tradition are said to legitimate
political decisions. After reading the literature, Alice decides that her study will focus on how Hu Jintao has
used the word “harmonious society” – a term that loosely draws from the Confucian concept of harmony.
Since this word was introduced at the National People’s Congress of 2005, she will look at speeches and
news announcements that followed that congress, and she will cover six months. She will also look at
Confucian classics to see how the word “harmony” is used there, and will then compare these sources.

As Alice works on her project, she decides that the methodological discussions should go at the start of the
thesis, in the introduction. She will write a paragraph about her choice of sources, including a footnote on
how she will reference these sources throughout the text. Since much of Alice’s work consists of
demonstrating her command of the Chinese language, and of convincing her readers of her arguments
using translated quotes from the original sources, she decides to also write a paragraph on what it means to
translate political texts from such different time periods into contemporary English, and what considerations

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went into her own translation work. This means that she’ll explain why she is providing both the Chinese
original and her own English translation in the main text of her thesis as she examines different sources,
and how her translations will be “annotated”, which means she will comment on her translation choices and
will provide important cultural or historical information in footnotes along the way.

She will then include an additional methodological section at the start of her analysis chapter, right after the
theoretical discussion of how and why political agents appeal to tradition to justify their policies. This short
section will discuss the nature of historical source materials, with a particular focus on the Confucian
classics and what is currently known about their origin, their authenticity, and their use in later periods of
Chinese history (…the highly epistemic question of how we assess something’s “authenticity” will be part of
this section). Following her analysis, Alice will draw all these elements together in her conclusion to discuss
how Confucian traditions are creatively reworked in contemporary Chinese politics, and to elaborate what
this says about the ruling party’s attempts to justify its work.

Case B – NHK news coverage of the 311 disaster: Since Becky wants her study of Japanese media to
include quite a few technical elements, like the way that camera angles and studio design contribute to
news reporting, she decides to discuss her methodology in a special chapter. Just like Alice, Becky starts
her work with a literature review, and she decides that discussions about Japan’s media, Japan’s nuclear
industry (the “nuclear village”), and about the Fukushima disaster will all be part of her introduction to the
topic. Her research focus will be on how a national broadcaster contributes to knowledge about nuclear
energy. To this end, she plans to include a theory chapter that examines how academics usually make
sense of mass media and its role in political processes. This is also where she will discuss the works of
Japanese media theorists who have written on politics and culture in Japan.

Following this discussion, she will write a methodology chapter, which she calls “Researching Japan’s
national news broadcasts”. This chapter is going to have three sub-sections. The first part will follow up on
the issues she raised in her theory chapter (like: what is visual communication? What are TV news?) and
will discuss epistemology: Does an image on TV represent the actual situation on the ground, or are such
images selected and edited in ways that introduce visual rhetoric and specific tropes, biasing the news
reports in the process? What does this mean for a person who now analyses these news materials? To
explore this issue, Becky will discuss approaches to visual communication analysis, such as semiotics. In
the second section of her methodology chapter, she will explain why she picked NHK as a source of
material, and which news broadcasts she picked (for instance: all news broadcasts that dealt with nuclear
energy in the three months before and the three months after the disaster). The third part of the chapter will
discuss the exact work-steps that Becky followed to prepare the material for analysis and interpret her data.
She decides that this will include creating sequence protocols of the news broadcasts, and then providing
shot protocols for particularly important segments.

Since her actual analysis will consist of a mixed quantitative and qualitative approach, she will explain what
this means in this third section of her methodology chapter: she will look at the amount of time that news
broadcasts on different days report on nuclear issues, at shot frequencies in the segments that cover
Fukushima, and at the meanings that certain camera angles and visual tropes introduce to the overall news
narrative. In this section, she will also explain that she is compiling all of her data in an appendix, and that
she will include graphics and statistics in tables throughout the actual analysis chapter. Since Becky’s
analysis does not focus on the use of language, she will need to explain why she is bracketing this issue
(and where readers might find out more about linguistic analyses of the news). Contrary to Alice, Becky
decides to not discuss at great length how she is translating the news, and only includes a footnote that
states something like “if not noted otherwise, all translations in this thesis are my own”.

Becky’s analysis will now include a chapter with different visualization strategies that NHK used to report on
nuclear energy in Japan. She will compare the reporting before and after the disaster, and discuss the
implications in her conclusion – where she will tie her own work back to the theoretical concerns she raised
in her theory chapter. She will also have a paragraph in her conclusion that outlines what her approach left
out and why. To show that she understands the limitations of her research, she will also suggest what kinds
of follow-up studies could now shed light on any remaining questions. Her last paragraph will be a forceful

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argument about how national news play a powerful role in not simply reporting but actually constructing
political crises.

Conclusion
As you can see, there is no single answer to how you should build theory, methodology, and method into
your research project. The best advice I can give, is: check what your supervisor or your publisher has in
mind. They know your field, and they will be the ones judging your work, so you should always see what
their specific requirements are. As with all good writing, keep your audience in mind.

I’ve provided sources for further reading below, in case you want to learn more about this fundamental part
of academic work. You may want to also take a look at my own discussions of methodology, for instance my
blog post on how to do a discourse analysis (which is about methods) or how to set up such an analysis
(which includes epistemological questions).

If you are currently working on your methodology, or you are instructing others on how to do so, feel free to
leave a comment below. Conventions differ widely, and I’ve for instance just learned that certain life
sciences make a distinction between “methodology” (the discussion of methods), “method” (a general
technique in research), and “strategy” (the practical work-steps of how to apply a method to a specific case).
As always, I’d love to hear how you are dealing with such distinctions, and where you place the emphasis in
your own work.

References
Goodin, Robert E., & Lingemann, Hans-Dieter (Eds.) (1996), ‘Part IX: Political Methodology’. In: A New
Handbook of Political Science. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press (pp.717-799).

Hart, Chris (1998), Doing a Literature Review – Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination. Los
Angeles et al.: Sage.

Hine, Christine (Ed.) (2005), Virtual Methods – Issues in Social Research on the Internet. Oxford & New
York: Berg.

Marsh, David, & Stoker, Gerry (2010), Theory and Methods in Political Science (3rd ed.). Basingstoke &
New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Rogers, Richard (2013), Digital Methods. Cambridge, MA & London: MIT Press.

Rudestam, Kjell Erik, & Newton, Rae R. (2007): ‘The Method Chapter: Describing Your Research Plan’. In:
Surviving Your Dissertation – A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks,
CA et al.: Sage (pp.87-115).

Trachtenberg, Marc (2006), The Craft of International History – A Guide to Method. Princeton: Princeton
University Press.

Tags: East Asia method methodology theory

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Platform Power and the It’s Gone Viral! Digital Nationalism, Studying Digital China’s
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44 Comments

This is a great introduction and overview. I am in a doctoral program and the terms continue
to be conflated, misinterpreted and synonymized. Useful distinctions are made here to enable
thoughtful construction of one’s research design and process. Many thanks.

Mich
February 24, 2014 REPLY

Thanks Mich,
If you don’t mind my asking: what field are you working in? I’d love to know where you
and your fellow researchers normally draw the line between these different concepts.
At any rate, I’m glad if you found this useful.
Florian
Schneider February 24, 2014 REPLY

Hello Mr Florian Schneider

Thank you for this usful explanation. I am doing a critical discourse analysis of presedetial
speech of ex Egyptian president Morssi. I explained my research methodology in a short
paragraph. I said that I rely on interenet as the basis source of data collection. for text
Abderraouf
analysis I rely on software for text analysis in addition to the tools provided in Fairclough
approach for text analysis and description.

Is this appropriate ? please tell me about the best software you know for text analysis I am
wondering what to choose since I never held such an analysis. I look forward to you answer.
Best regards!

March 11, 2014 REPLY

What a great topic! What you describe could indeed work, but I would check with your
examiner to be sure. Depending on the kind of paper you are writing (e.g. the length and
level of study), I would for instance include a bit more information on your selection
process and on the way you analyzed the texts. It might also be good to add somewhere
(in a footnote, maybe?) how Fairclough’s approach compares to other approaches (e.g.
Florian
Paul Chilton’s), and why you ended up choosing Fairclough’s CDA. But again, this
Schneider
depends on your focus, and on how much “discourse theory” you feel you need to
include.

As for analytical software, I have mentioned in another post (http://bit.ly/1iwhH1R) that

NVivo works very well (if your university allows you free access – otherwise it can be a bit
pricey). You can also re-appropriate other tools, like Tagxedo, OneNote, or even Word to
do your analysis. If you need to explore a large corpus of text, you might also find this tool
useful: http://www.lexically.net/wordsmith/

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Page 7 of 18
 I hope this helps! Good luck with this fascinating research project.

Best – Florian

March 11, 2014 REPLY

Hello Mr Florian
I have finished my analysis of the ex-Egyptian president Morsi in UN Assembly. I have
followed your remarks concerning the research methods. Now I would like you to read my
speech analysis totest it against mine. I used Fairclough’s approach as the framework of the
Abderraouf
speech analysis. It is not long one as I focused mainly on the experiential valus of the lexical
items. Please if you can read it and give me your precious remarks I will be greatful to you.
Thank you inadvance
Best of regards!
Abderraouf

May 24, 2014 REPLY

Thank you so much!

I now have insight to what methodology is really about… I was snooping around the internet;
and I must say, your analysis resonates well with me. Thanks for the great job well done.

Catherine
I’m currently an undergraduate writing a project on ‘Influence of broken home on the
academic performance of secondary school students’.
Please I would like you to suggest for me a suitable research design that doesn’t need
complex mathematical computation…

Thanks as I await enerstly await your quick response.

September 5, 2014 REPLY

Hello Catherine,
How are you doing? Give me a better picture of waht you are writing on.

Jojo
May 17, 2015 REPLY

Hi. Thankyou for your info. This has helped me make some distinctions between the terms. I
am a doctoral candidate working in History and education and the concept of interculturality.I
am working with textual analysis and focus groups as my methods and think I am clear that
my methodology is the discussion of these methods. I am still a little unsure about the
Kerri
epistemological questions I should be concerned with.

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 Garrard November 10, 2014 REPLY

Hi Kerri. Glad to hear this has been helpful. As for the epistemological questions, in your
case they could include a discussion of what an interview allows you to know (i.e. can
your interviewees ever provide you with ‘facts’ on a topic, or is everything they tell you
part of their worldview? Does a distinction like this matter?). The same might apply to
texts as well: to what extent are they able to provide you a window into your subject?
Florian
More broadly speaking, an interesting epistemological question would concern the nature
Schneider
of history as a subject. Are historians able to reconstruct actual historical processes, or is
their contribution that they provide a particular interpretation of historical sources in light of
contemporary concerns? A nice book on these questions is Michael Trachtenberg’s book,
which is in the list of references above. In either case, I’d check with your supervisor to
what extent these questions need to be part of your doctoral thesis. It’s nice, of course, to
show that as a PhD student you have a sense of how important these issues are, but if
such questions aren’t central to your work, then a short paragraph or a footnote might
already suffice to clarify what your position is.

November 10, 2014 REPLY

thanks for guidance that was quite helpful

Syedahsannaveed
November 18, 2014 REPLY

Just wanted to chime in here to thank you for this thread. I was literally looking for something
that clearly defines between the terms ‘method’ and ‘methodology’ for my paper on “Would
more use of motivational techniques within the workplace inspire better individual
performance from employees?” before I begin writing that section. This more than
Patrick
accomplished that, a fascinating read. Much appreciated.

March 7, 2015 REPLY

Thanks for the kind words Patrick. And good luck with the paper!

Florian
Schneider March 7, 2015 REPLY

it was informative . i wanted the sample analysis of dramatic text through critical discourse
analysis using van dijk’s sociocognitive approach

Aafia
Khizar May 2, 2015 REPLY

Hi Aafia,
Do you mean you’re looking for an analysis of dramatic texts that deploys specifically van

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Page 9 of 18
 Dijk’s CDA approach? That’s a pretty specific question. I’m sure there must be something
of that sort, but I’m afraid I don’t know of any particular article. Have you looked at some
of the back issues of journals that feature CDA analyses? Your best bets are likely going
to be “Discourse & Society” (http://das.sagepub.com/) and “Discourse & Communication”
Florian (http://dcm.sagepub.com/), both of which are edited by Teun van Dijk. Maybe you’ll find
Schneider what you’re looking for there. Most university libraries should provide access to both
publications.
Sorry to not be of more help.

May 7, 2015 REPLY

Dear Florian,
Thanks for your efforts. Your site is very helpful. I am a PhD candidate researching in the
area of Political Communication. My topic is on Election Campaign Communication and
Policy Issues in Nigerian Politics. I am hoping to use Content Analysis of speeches and press
Desmond
ads published during presidential campaigns of dominant candidates from 1999 – 2015 to
Ekeh
find out the extent they focused on policy issues, acclaim, attack and defense following
Willian Benoit functional theory of political campaign discourse. Do you think that is enough.
Should I add another theory. Is content analysis enough?

May 26, 2015 REPLY

This is so helpful. I am an undergraduate student and am writing my senior thesis on political

and social trust within Latin America and Mexico and whether or not this mistrust allows for
narcotrafficking networks to thrive ultimately causing the state to fail in regards to human
rights violations. I’ve been having a tough time of how to approach the methodology section.
Maria
Does anyone have any tips? I would really appreciate it!!

October 18, 2015 REPLY

Hi Maria,
It’ll probably be a good idea to check with your thesis supervisor to see what he or she
expects of a methodology section, but I would normally want to know 1) what materials
you selected to answer your research question, 2) how and why you selected those
materials, and 3) what you then did with those materials (e.g. work steps that you applied
Florian
in order to process and analyze them). In all of this, it would be wise to explain what other
Schneider
researchers have done in similar situations, and to discuss what strengths and
weaknesses their approaches might have. In other words, your methodology section
should include a short literature review of relevant methods. That way you can then justify
your own approach, in an informed and knowledgeable way.
Hope this helps.
Best
Florian

October 19, 2015 REPLY

l have a clear idea of the methodology l want to research on which is the effectiveness of
rhymes in language development preschool children , but what l am not getting are the
authors who supports the term methodology

Moreblessings
November 2, 2015 REPLY

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 Are there any authorities to support the word methodology that are current which are not from
the dictionary, because l am failing to get one except for the explanation of the word

Moreblessings
November 2, 2015 REPLY

I’m not sure how to help – I would recommend taking a look at some of the compendiums
on research methods and research design. In some of our programmes, we use Marsh &
Stoker’s ‘Theory and Methods in Political Science’, but as the name says, that’s very
much about the field of polisci. You could check out John Creswell’s ‘Research Design’. I
might contain what you’re looking for, especially since he comes at the subject from an
Florian
educational psychology angle.
Schneider

November 4, 2015 REPLY

I have a question i hope somebody can help me answer this:

Ipe
If a method is, in one sense, a “theory in practice”, does that mean that theories have to be
formulated or considered first before applying a method in language teaching?

I hope you can help me

February 17, 2016 REPLY

I can’t comment on language teaching, but generally there are two ways into any subject:
a theory-driven (deductive) approach and a method-driven (inductive) approach. The
deductive approach starts with the theories and then picks methods that are appropriate
to checking those theories. The inductive approach starts from empirical observations and
then builds theoretical models from those. In the latter case, you’d start with the methods,
Florian
followed by the analysis, and you’d conclude with theoretical implications. That approach
Schneider
is very popular for instance in anthropology, where participant observation, interviews, and
other qualitative methods are meant to shed light on the complexities of individual cases.
Not sure how this relates to your work in language teaching, but maybe it’s a useful
reminder that the degree to which theory and method connect, and the moments during a
project when they connect, can differ substantially depending on the topic.

February 20, 2016 REPLY

I am writing my BA research on the representation of refugees in the media. I am an English

major in a non-English speaking country, so we didn’t focus on our curriculum on discourse
analysis or any other method. We’ve only had a very basic introduction to semiotics. In my
research, I’m analyzing pieces of news, articles, and editorials. What is the best way to do
Nuseiba
that? Can I develop my own analysis based on what I read on your previous articles about
discourse analysis (since the supervisor doesn’t require any specific method?). I understood

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 very well the discourse analysis from your article and many other articles I have read, but
when I read researches that are based on discourse analysis I see a lot of jargon and
terminology that apparently belong to discourse analysis that I know nothing of. I am sure I
can efficiently apply the methods of discourse analysis you’ve explained, but I can’t use the
terminology that I see being used in the researches based on discourse analysis since I knew
nothing about it. Please help! Thank you a lot beforehand for taking the time to answering my
questions!

February 25, 2016 REPLY

I can understand your frustration with the jargon. A lot of what gets produced in
communication study is ironically communicated very poorly. I would not let that stop me
from trying to do a discourse analysis. You do not need the jargon to do so, most certainly
not at the BA level. If you have sources that you can use to explain what ‘discourse’ is,
what a ‘discourse analysis’ does, and what you then plan to do, you should be fine. Make
Florian
sure, however, to discuss this with your supervisor. They need to read and grade the
Schneider
thesis in the end, so if they feel differently about your choice to develop your own
empirical analysis for a BA thesis, you should listen to them. Personally, I would find that
very impressive. I encourage BA students to try their hand at an empirical study, but
technically such work is not required until the MA level. At any rate, if you need more input
for your approach, I can recommend the edited books that Ruth Wodak has published.
There are loads of interesting articles in there (also on different media types, to answer
the question you left in the other section), and those could be helpful. A final piece of
advice: make sure not to do too much. Try to limit your question and your materials,
otherwise doing an actual discourse analysis can become a lot of work very quickly. If you
manage the scope of your project, though, it can also be very rewarding. Hope this helps!

February 26, 2016 REPLY

Thank you for this article -it helped clear up some confusion that I had. I am writing my
undergraduate dissertation for my social work degree on student disclosure of mental
illness….which very little has been written on – especially in Australia…I am writing it as an
autoethnography as I want to use my own disclosure experience as the foundation for what I
Melissa
want to talk about…not sure yet about how one incorporates theory into an
autoethnography…I was told to have a seprate chapter which outlines what I am using…do
you have any suggestions of where I might look to find out how I go about using theory in an
autoethnography….thanks.

February 27, 2016 REPLY

Hi Melissa, I’m not an authority on autoethnography, I’m afraid, but there’s a book from
OUP that looks like it might be up your alley: Tony Adams’ ‘Autoethnography –
Understanding Qualitative Research‘. I would start there, then check journals on the topic,
and then work my way through the referenced literature. Hope this helps.
Florian
Schneider March 2, 2016 REPLY

Dear Florian,
Thanks a lot for this incredibly helpful website! Very informative and gründlich ;). I came
across it browsing for some clues about a methodology chapter in my phd dissertation.
Btw I really enjoyed your BA course in Leiden in 2010. I ended up doing fieldwork in China
Bram
and now a phd in amsterdam. All the best for now!

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 Bram

April 1, 2016 REPLY

Hi Bram,
Thanks for the kind words. Great to hear you’re pursuing a PhD, and at the UvA, no less.
You’re working on religion, right? Very exciting. Make sure to let me know how that turns
out. And if you happen to come across interesting practices that connect to digital media
use (…I hear that’s increasingly an important dimension of religious practice, particularly
Florian
in East Asia), do think about taking some additional field notes. I have it on good authority
Schneider
that our journal ‘Asiascape: Digital Asia‘ would be very interested in that sort of thing…
just saying.
All the best for your research!
F

April 2, 2016 REPLY

It is wonderful but still I am not clear. I am a undergraduate student of English language, I

want you to give a simple way.

Ahmad
May 24, 2016 REPLY

I’d love to help, but this is a bit vague. Did you have something specific in mind that was
unclear?

Florian
Schneider May 28, 2016 REPLY

Thanks, I found your explanation on methods and methodology very useful. I am writing my
dissertation on Nigeria’s foreign policy please, advise me on how to go about the
methodology thanks.

Abdul
June 14, 2016 REPLY

Hi Abdul,
Glad you found the website useful so far. You’ve posed a very broad question, so I’m not
sure how much help I can provide. It really depends on what your research question is.
Depending on how you’ve narrowed your question down, you can then decide what
materials are most suitable to answer it. For example, if you are trying to find out what the
Florian
policy position on a specific foreign relation issue is, then it might be good to study official
Schneider
policy documents by the ministry of foreign affairs; if you are interested in exploring how
the decision-making process of foreign-policy making works in Nigeria, then you could
interview policy-makers, or compile information from secondary literature, or see what the
websites of important Nigerian institutions have to say on the subject; if you are hoping to
examine how foreign policy gets framed (and used) by politicians, then you could look at
speeches of important policy-makers; and so on. In each case, the methods you use
should then be appropriate for your materials. Again, it very much depends on what you
are trying to achieve and what question is driving your study.
Best – FS

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 June 29, 2016 REPLY

Hi,
I’m writing my B.A paper on literature, analyzing female characters from Dubliners and I was
wondering how should my methodology look? I already have the research methods so should
I just refer to previous works on this topic and their approach? Any pointers would be greatly
Larissa
appreciated.

June 25, 2016 REPLY

Hi Larissa,
A BA thesis tends to not leave a lot of room for methodology, so you’ll have to pick your
battles carefully, as it were (and of course: in consultation with your supervisor). I usually
ask students to briefly discuss the literature on their chosen method, to highlight any
important controversies, and to then spell out which materials they themselves chose
Florian
(and why) and what worksteps they applied to those materials. So, for instance, if the
Schneider
method is discourse analysis, I would probably use about 1,000 words to mention people
from critical discourse analysis, historical discourse analysis, etc., discuss how they
approach discourse and language (e.g. by looking at linguistic features, or by looking at
narratives, etc.), and mention any major issues in the debates that apply to my own study
(e.g. whether or not the context of the work matters, whether or not the author matters,
etc.). I would then reserve ca. 300-500 words to explain why I chose the main source I am
analyzing and what I did with it (e.g. code the chapters according to their role in the
narrative, code all instances of specific characters making an appearance, isolating
crucial sections that deal with a specific theme or subject like gender, etc.). What exactly
this section discusses will of course have to depend on the research question you’re
posing. As I said, you only have very limited space, and you want to reserve most of it for
your own original research. Nevertheless, I hope this gives you a bit of an impression of
what this could look like. Best – FS

June 29, 2016 REPLY

Dear Sir,

Saif
At first I would like to thank you for a good writing on the respective issue. I read the full page
and got much more distinct knowledge.

Therefore, I am a Bangladeshi national and currently studying MA, International Relations at

the South Asian University, New Delhi, India. I am preparing to start writing my MA
dissertation which to be submitted at the end of this year. I have decided to work on the issue
of “Terrorism and the National Security Paradox in Bangladesh” my general view of the topic
is: Terrorism is a daunting problem in the today’s world. The risks and vulnerabilities created
by terrorism have become a serious threat to the national security of Bangladesh. Terrorism
has become a threat to life, economy, political culture, society and religious pluralism in the
country. Among the several non-traditional security threats, terrorism has become the highest
issue of tension for Bangladesh in the recent decade. The national security discourse of the
country has been more concern about the issue of terrorism than the other issues in the
recent time.
It is been argued that terrorism has become the core threat for the national security of
Bangladesh. To secure the country from the threat the state mechanism has been highly

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 securitize and combating the issue of terrorism trough the multiple channel. The government
and the security forces of the country have been taking multiple initiatives to securitize the
issue.
But the argument is that, there is a paradox in the national security web regarding the issue
of terrorism. The process of securitization, combating the issue and the national security has
been in a dilemma. On the one hand the state mechanism has been securitizing the issue of
terrorism and combating it in a multiple way, and on the other hand under the same state
mechanism the issue of terrorism has been nursing and paving the way of longer lasting
threat for the state of Bangladesh. There has been a dichotomy of national security policy
and implication particularly regarding the issue of terrorism.
The primary objectives of the research are to analysis the answer of the questions that how
the issue of terrorism and the national security is related and how the paradox in the national
security has been taking place in Bangladesh.
The inspiration to choose the research questions is that, there are extensive scholarly work
separately done on the issue of terrorism and national security of Bangladesh. But there is
the lacking of research on the issue of terrorism, its relational aspect as well as the
placement of paradox regarding the issue.
The research would try to find out the cause, spread and its nature of terrorism and its
relational aspect to the national security of Bangladesh. It would find out how the paradox of
national security regarding the issue of terrorism has been taking place. By arguing the facts
and theoretical discussion the research would be recommended the required stapes of the
national security realm to combat the identified paradox.

I would like to request you to suggest me that how I can frame the issue for an academic
writing. What would be the tentative way of theoretical, method and methodical inside for the
respective research topic.

I would be very grateful if you suggest me to write my dissertation in a good academic way. .

August 7, 2016 REPLY

Dear Saif,
National security and anti-terror policy in Bangladesh is certainly an exciting MA topic. I’ll
try to keep my response to your question brief, but do make sure you talk the subject
through with your supervisor. It’s always important to let the person who will be grading
you know where your work is headed.
Florian
Personally, I would focus on the second part of your research question, which I find the
Schneider
most interesting: how are terrorism and national security locked into a paradox in the case
of Bangladesh? I would turn any overarching questions about terrorism into a general
literature review (I’m sure you’ll find loads in the relevant IR journals), and I would provide
a first-hand analysis of documents where you believe the actors are either a) constructing
a paradox or b) aware of a paradox and trying to overcome it.
For this you could indeed use some form of discourse analysis, which traditionally works
well with the kind of ‘securitization’ theories that the Copenhagen School has developed.
You could, for instance, explore the rhetoric of the relevant government agencies or policy
documents to see if the normative statements that get made there reflect the kind of
paradox you have in mind. The trick here will be to explore what exactly is portrayed as
an existential threat, and how such threat depictions then frame policy responses that
may end up being paradoxical.
If you do a bit of preliminary research to see what could work as primary materials, and if
you start reading more on terror in IR and the issue of securitization, then you should be
able to put together a sound and manageable study. I’m not sure which readings to
recommend, other than seminal books like Michael Cambell’s “Writing Security” and
maybe work that deals specifically with Asian contexts (like the writings of Karl
Gustafsson on securitization in Sino-Japanese relations). You’ll have to do a bit more
bibliographic work to figure out what works for your study.

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 I certainly wish you all the best of luck with this exciting topic!

August 8, 2016 REPLY

Thank you sir. I will follow your suggestion. If required I will write you again. All the
best.

Saif
August 8, 2016 REPLY

Excellent article! Thank you so much!

Nadia
November 20, 2016 REPLY

Thank You for this topic

Khaleel
Nasser January 23, 2017 REPLY

My pleasure!

Florian
Schneider January 25, 2017 REPLY

Your information has been quite helpful. I am in the initial stage of gathering and writing a
thesis for my MA in Criminal Justice. This is still kind of new to me and I am having difficulty
narrowing my research question. I am interested in knowing to what extent do drug courts
affect post program recidivism rates of adult nonviolent offenders? Not sure if that is still too
Anjie
broad. I am going to focus on the program’s treatment, such as the intensive supervision,
Loveless-
graduated sanctions etc as the independent variables with recidivism as the dependent
Smith
variable, Through my research, I have now found that recidivism can represent several
things, such as criminal behavior, substance abuse, unemployment. Do I need to specify
which? Ultimately, I want to know if drug courts are more effective than incarceration.
Numerous research has been conducted regarding this subject matter. So I need to find what
is missing.
Thanks for any insight of how to approach.

August 26, 2017 REPLY

Dear Anjie,

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 I’m responding somewhat late, my apologies. I have to admit your topic is rather outside
of my comfort zone, so I’m not sure I can be of much help. What you describe sounds
entirely reasonable to me. You have your independent and dependent variables defined,
and you’re clearly informing your question with information from the relevant debates. All
Florian of this sounds promising. The main issue you might still need to address is how you will
Schneider study the mechanism between the program’s treatment and its effects. What will count as
your data? Will you relate statistic elements to one another, or are you basing your study
on qualitative information? Depending on what data you have available, you may need to
indeed refine your definition of ‘treatment’ and of ‘recidivism’, to make these concepts
operational. That said, you could use your literature review to outline the many options
that your source materials identify and discuss, and then follow this up with a justification
of your choice of data and the most useful methodology that will allow you to explore this
issue (or at least: a particular ‘slice’ of the issue).
I’m not sure whether these comments help. Again, this is not the kind of study I am
particularly knowledgeable about. Let me know what you decide. And good luck with the
project!
Best – Florian

September 21, 2017 REPLY

Dear Dr. Schneider,

Elnara
I am going to write my Master’s thesis on Human Rights of Labor Migrants. Ideally, I would go
and do field research however due to funding and time limits I am not able to that. Therefore I
am planning to analyze legal documents regulating this issue. (however, it is not finalized)
In this regard what would be your overall suggestion for a thesis without data from field
research but at the same time of high quality.
Thank you.

September 22, 2017 REPLY

Dear Elnara,
Sorry for only seeing your comment now. The semester here has been crazy. If you are
still interested in discussing this, can you send me an email to my institutional email
account at f.a.schneider@hum.leidenuniv.nl? I’ll then respond from there, if that’s alright.
Best wishes,
Florian
Florian
Schneider

November 5, 2017 REPLY

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