The methodology: approaches and methods applied to develop findings.

Understanding methodology:

Research aims and objectives will form the basis for decisions on your approach to the methodology.

The first question you need to ask yourself is whether your research is exploratory or confirmatory in nature. 

investigative approach. get sources that already exists

first question: whether your research is exploratory or confirmatory

exploratory, qualitative: if your research aims and objectives are primarily exploratory in nature, your research will likely be qualitative and therefore you might consider qualitative data collection methods (e.g. interviews) and analysis methods (e.g. qualitative content analysis). 

confirmatory, quantitative: if your research aims and objective are looking to measure or test something (i.e. they’re confirmatory), then your research will quite likely be quantitative in nature, and you might consider quantitative data collection methods (e.g. surveys) and analyses (e.g. statistical analysis).

purpose:

to describe the processes and outcomes of their research. including a methodology helps summarise your studies for readers who review your work. Additionally, the methodology is important for providing insight into the validity and reliability of your research.

Is the section in which you describe the actions you took to investigate and research a problem and your rationale for the specific processes and techniques you use within your research to identify, collect and analyse information that helps you understand the problem. (For thesis what actions you took for the investigation -past tense; for proposal, propose the action you, process and techniques to analyse the informations, read the arguments for and against, analyse what you find -future tense as well as past)

It gives important insight into two key elements of your research: your data collection and analysis processes and your rationale for conducting your research. When writing a methodology for a research paper, it’s important to keep the discussion clear and succinct and write in the past tense.

how are you collecting and analysing your data

The methodology also includes an explanation of your data collection process. Several key details to include in this section of a methodology focus on how you design your experiment or survey, how you collect and organize data and what kind of data you measure. You may also include specific criteria for collecting qualitative and quantitative data.

Your data analysis approaches are also important in your methodology. Your data analysis describes the methods you use to organize, categorize and study the information you collect through your research processes. For instance, when explaining quantitative methods, you might include details about your data preparation and organization methods, along with a brief description of the statistical tests you use. When describing your data analysis processes in regard to qualitative methods, you may focus more on how you categorize, code and apply language, text and other observations during your analysis.

What to include? (two paragraphs) describe the research, data: film to analyse, articles, books

Data collection (also google scholar etc), data analysis, resources and materials, rationale behind the research (to show readers why your research is valid and relevant)

difference between methodology and methods

While the methodology is the entire section of your research paper that describes your processes, the methods refer to the actual steps you take throughout your research to collect and analyse data. The methodology serves as a summary that demonstrates the validity and reliability of your methods, while the methods you detail in this section of your paper are the scientific approaches to test and make conclusions about the data you study. 

format

avoid lists, summary or essay a paragraph: the methodology usually appears at the beginning of your paper and looks like a summary or essay in paragraph form detailing your research validity, process and rationale. 

content

The content within your entire methodology focuses on delivering a concise summary of your research, approaches and outcomes. The content in your research paper that details your collection and analysis methods differs because it’s often necessary to explain your scientific approaches and research processes with lists and visual aids to support the information.

(abstract only for thesis not proposal )