06 July 2021
Importance of Research Methodology in PhD
The importance of Research Methodology in PhD is an extensively severe matter. Since Research Methodology is meant to offer the right path for leading research and make it a valuable intellectual property, you must spend more time considering the right approach for your PhD. Moreover, the Research Methodology is also subject to offer relevant ways of adding sources and resources for meeting the identified research gaps. It is in this frontier that the importance of the Research Methodology gains great importance in a PhD research.
Some practical choices are to be made for the construction of an appropriately justified Research Methodology. These choices are categorically structured in the following manner:
Research Topic
Your foremost responsibility is to remain focused on the selected domain of research. Make sure that your inquisitive queries are in relation to your research topic and the domain that you are going to explore. The inclusion of multidimensional speculation can lead the research into ambiguous directions.
The next step to be followed is to indulge yourself in a voracious reading of the philosophical aspects related to your research questions. The way you want to interpret ‘why’ & ‘how’ must get well justified for the selection of the correct research methodology.
Research Philosophy
The importance of Research Methodology in a PhD gets appropriate relevance when the research philosophy is detected correctly. You need to identify your research philosophy based on the characteristic features of your research among –
Based on the philosophical approaches the process of sampling can be distributed under - Pragmatism, Realism, Interpretivism, and Positivism.
Research Approach
Following the aforementioned philosophical advent, you can select the kind of research approach that can serve your research purpose. This selection is the core stage for adding greater importance to research methodology in PhD. The Deduction approach derives the necessary conclusion or model through the application of reasoning. The Abduction approach emphasizes ‘making logical inferences and offers greater potential reasoning for qualitative research. The Induction approach remains focused on implicating generalised conclusions from various instances.
Selection of Methodology
The selection of the ultimate research methodology can be very selective it can be picked from either of the following provisions:
Research Strategy/ies
The selected strategies can be based on any one of its kind. You can choose to consider more than one strategy to meet the purpose and objectives of the research. The strategies can be either experimenting or can be based on survey results, or can be both. There are also the scopes of considering archival research works, case study or studies, and ethnographic provisions. You can also choose the strategic implementation of action research, provisions of grounded theory, or the approach based on narrative inquiry. The selection of the strategy or strategies for your research should be specifically identified and declared. A clear declaration is going to add great importance to the research methodology of your PhD.
Estimated Timescale
The importance of Research Methodology in a PhD thesis is significant for its tentative declarations about the timeline for the research tenure and the possible dates for submissions. The estimated timescale can be either Cross-sectional or Longitudinal:
Through a Gantt chart, you are subject to offer various dates when you can proceed with different levels of the research process. Find below the format of a Gantt chart:
Table 1 Gantt chart Sample
Research Technique/s
The research technique/s can be either qualitative, quantitative or mixed in nature. As you identify the gaps between the former research and the aims & objectives of your research, you are in a state to proceed with the data collection from the primary sources. For this purpose, the importance of Research Methodology in a PhD brings in the need for adding the questions that the researcher aims to consider while collecting the data from the primary sources. However, the collection remains under the provisions of being from either primary or secondary sources.
The relevant tools needed for the collection of data are:
Based on the data collected from Interviews, Questionnaire Surveys, Observation, Recorded Documents, Focus groups, or Oral histories, as per your preferences; you need to analyse the attained data. Critical evaluative analyses of the data lay great importance on Research Methodology in PhD research. The data analyses can be initiated in either of the following manners:
- Descriptive Analysis
- Text Analysis
- Diagnostic Analysis
- Prescriptive Analysis
- Statistical Analysis
- Predictive Analysis
Identify Methodology
For the right selection of the research methodology, you must identify the sources through which your research will collect the data. The data needs to collect from either of the following provisions:
Following the need for any of the aforementioned provisions to collect data, you need to decide about the kind of research methodology that will suit your research at its best. You need to understand that the type to research data that you collect for the research, will determine the kind of procedure you need to adopt for managing the collected data and further leading the research methodology.
Philosophy of 'How' & 'Why'
The importance of Research Methodology in PhD relies on having an appropriately justified methodology. Seek to understand the research philosophy that you aim to undertake through your research. The research philosophy gets determined as per the answers collected from ‘why’ & ‘how’ in your research domain. Based on the answers received by questioning the research queries through ‘why’ & ‘how’ you need to generate the kind of research process that will lead your PhD thesis.
Decide The Research Design
The construction of the Research design depends on the choices that you make. The kind of information that you need must be accumulated in a very precise manner. There is no room for an unnecessary, vague, and ambiguous approach. The importance of Research Methodology in PhD does not demand any elaborative explanation about the background of the terms that are used while making the choices for the research process. However, there is the need for justifications about the selections that you make. For instance, you should be able to state why you selected the qualitative approach against quantitative research methodology, or why grounded theory is more appropriate than other theories. The three keys to being considered while constructing Research Methodology in PhD are:
Ethical Declarations
The importance of Research Methodology in PhD gets justified as it makes a clear personal declaration about the maintenance of the Code of Ethics in the process of research. Though every University holds a different Code of Ethics for the researchers, yet some of the core Codes of Ethics can be enlisted as follows:
- Honesty in Research Approach
- Declare Intellectual Property
- Protect Confidentiality
- Responsible Publication
- Social Responsibility
- Non-Discriminatory Approach
- Meet Legalities
- Maintenance of Animal Care
- Protection Human Subjects
Conclusively, it is the way of adding transparency to the research process, which adds great importance to Research Methodology in PhD.
