Writing the Chapter of Methodology in Thesis

Subject: Advance Clinical Research

Submitted to: Dr. Umbreen Khizar

Dated: 15th May, 2020

Submitted by: Akhwand Abdur Raffi Saulat

Roll no: ADCP-021R20-6

Session: 2020-2021

Department of Psychology
 Writing the Chapter of Methodology in Thesis

Chapter no. 3 (Methodology) is considered to be the most fundamental part of the thesis as
the research scholar elaborate the methodology of his study reporting every single detail e.g. which
variable he choose and which research design he followed etc. A good methodology will help the
reader to understand the core ideas and ways research scholar follows during research. Following
components of methodology are usually followed:
1) Research Design
2) Population and Sample
3) Research Instruments
4) Conceptual and Operational Definitions
5) Research Procedure
6) Data Analysis
7) Pilot Study (if any)
Research Design
Defining a research design is one of the first thing a research scholar does before
conducting the research and he is obliged to mention the research design he had used for his
research. Research design is an overall strategy or total pattern of conducting the research. There
are numerous types of research design available from which research scholar picks the best suited
design for the study. It defines the future course of action for that particular study. Survey method
is one of the example of research design which is widely used in social sciences especially in
academics.
Population and Sampling
After choosing the research topic and research design the research scholar defines his
population, giving the general outline of population from where the sample will be taken i.e.
describing their characteristics regarding locality, ethnicity, profession, education, familial
background or economic class depended upon the topic of the research e.g. if the topic is “effects
of drugs on aggression among college students” then only college students will be considered as
population and research scholar will only describe the characteristics of college students.
After defining the population the second step is to state the attributes of research sample,
it will narrow down the population to a workable number. Research scholar would define the
sampling frame (from where he is going to get his sample), size of the sample (how many units
will there be in a sample) and sampling strategy (technique which is used to get the sample).
Research Instruments
The research scholar had to have an optimum knowledge about the instruments he is using
in his research. In this section he is required to state all the research instruments he is using in
detail along with their references, information regarding items, subscales, scoring and validity &
reliability.
Conceptual and Operational Definition
Often the terms used in the study are confusing and cause a problem in understanding the
proper essence of the study, for dealing with this issue the research scholar provides a conceptual
and operational definitions of the variables. The former one helps us understand that what the
concept of that particular variable is whereas the latter one aids in understanding that how it is
measured. A statement “depression is a mood or emotional state marked by feelings of low self-
worth or guilt and a reduced ability to enjoy life for more than 6 month” is conceptual definition
of depression whereas operational definition of depression could be “when a person scores 17 or
above on BDI-II it is called depression”.
Research Procedure
In the section of research procedure research scholar will give detail account on how he
had done the research from the very beginning up till the very end. The points usually prompt are
the permission taking process, sampling, data collection (what and how the data is collected).
Data Analysis
There are variety of different techniques and softwares for analyzing the collected data.
The research scholar had to define that which statistical software and which statistical technique
he is using for the analysis of the data.
Pilot Study
Sometimes a pilot study is done before the main study to check the validity and reliability
of the instruments under use. In that case detail account of the pilot study should also be given
regarding the data and stats.