Methodology
Your project methodology refers to a set of ideas that explain why you are conducting your research in a particular way. For example, if you were interested in understanding the 'lived experience of a person who has been in intensive care' then you would need to draw from a set of principles; or a research paradigm; or a methodology that can explain knowledge in terms of a person's experience. Phenomenology is a methodology for exploring a person's lived experience of a phenomenon. If you wanted to know how a person interprets their role as a professional or how they construct understanding in the workplace then you would draw from methodologies such as interpretivism and constructivism.
Methodologies provide a systematic set of principles about what counts as knowledge and they guide your selection of methods to obtain such knowledge. For example, Leonie was interested in understanding the 'lived experience' of veterinarians in their everyday practice and her methodology for the research enquiry was phenomenology. The method which enabled her to obtain this type of knowledge through data collection was semi-structured interviews with the resulting data being participants' audio-recorded discussion of their experiences.
Resources
- Carter, S., & Little, M. (2007). Justifying knowledge, justifying method, taking action: Epistemologies, methodologies, and methods in qualitative research. Qualitative Health Research, 17(10), 1316-1328.
- Cresswell, J. W., & Poth, C. N. (2018) Qualitative inquiry & research design: choosing among five approaches (4th ed.). Los Angeles, USA: SAGE.
- Qualitative Research Design. (2018, May 29). Retrieved from https://researchrundowns.com/qual/qualitative-research-design/