Recent discussion board posts about the methodology
I just made this post on the forum about the methodology, but I reproduce part of it here as I know some people don’t read the posts.
This week we looked into the methodology, what it is for, and how you will be going about it in this course. The methodology is for proving (or disproving) the group’s claim/postulate. Your methodology outlines exactly how you will go about this proof. One important aspect of it is the reproducability of the proof – someone who reads your research paper should be able to assess the validity of your postulate or claim and reach the same conclusions as you do using the same methodology. If you were doing some form of experimental assessment, this would involve describing the experimental steps and what each should achieve, and what parameters there are for the experiment. Then another person can come along and do the same experiment with the same parameters, maybe even the same input data, and would achieve the same results. The importance of this reproducability can be seen in the 1989 claim that cold fusion was a possible source of abundant, cheap energy, but their experiments could not be reproduced by many other scientists. This led to the eventual conclusion that cold fusion was not a workable idea, at least in the form that the original claimant had proposed.
Here is another question and answer about the methodology:
If the answer is the sub question, do we still have to explicitly say that it is answered by the sub questions?
Yes please do. In fact, don’t just say that the subquestions will answer the question, but give a sentence or two to explain how you arrived at those subquestions for the purpose of answering the question. Then go on to the subquestions.
The methodology is essentially a formal specification (although written in natural language), so there should be no room for ambiguity or misinterpretation.
Mark and I have been asked how many research questions and sub-questions you should be aiming for in the methodology.
You need to consider the amount of work required to answer each question or subquestion. I recommend that if there are five people in the group, choose four questions or subquestions, allocating one to one person. The fifth person can take the role of editor and writer, collating the materials, ensuring the Research paper meets the criteria and submitting it. The fifth person can also act as a stand-in should there be some illness or other problem with one of the other members. This means that the question or subquestion each person addresses must be achievable in the timescale of the Research paper assignment.
The topic or question mine was “HOW DO POLITICAL RUMOURS EFFECT UNDECIDED VOTERS DURING ELECTIONS”.
You have to create methodology for this question with many sub questions under it.
This leads to another point, and that is that if the submitted methodology indicates additional areas that your group will not have time to work on, it is reasonable to move the un-addressed questions to a ‘future work’ part of the Conclusions. If this is the case, the methodology that is put into the paper should be modified to either leave out the missing parts, or an explanation can be written that the questions are included for completeness but are out of scope of this particular Research paper.
Thanks to those who raise these questions.
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