The methodology allows you to elaborate on why you preferred one research approach over another and to account for any adjustments you made in your study. Unfortunately, the methodology is often the most challenging part for students.

Read on for tips on writing a methodology in a dissertation and a breakdown of the structure and process for writing a dissertation methodology.

What is the methodology in dissertation?

A dissertation methodology is a chapter that defines the methods of research, data sources, research techniques, and sampling criteria. This chapter justifies your research techniques and explains why your approach was best suited to investigate your research objectives.

The information in this section allows fellow scholars to replicate your research and verify your claims. The section also offers the background study linking the gaps highlighted in your literature review to potential solutions. 

How to write a dissertation methodology

Writing a research methodology dissertation may seem a daunting task for a first-timer. These steps should come in handy to help you cover all essential details and achieve the expectations for a good methodology. 

1. Review your approach

When writing your methodology, expound on the type of data you intended to collect. Data may either be experimental or descriptive. Regardless of your approach, you should provide a rationale as to why you settled for the approach used in your study.

2. Justify your methods

How did you approach your research? Were there other options at your disposal? How were your methods best suited to analyse your research objectives? How did you recruit your participants? In what manner did you manipulate your variables? What gadgets were used?

Your methodology should address these questions and refer to the gaps identified in the literature review. Here, show how your methods can examine various hypotheses and why they are more accurate than other approaches that were at your disposal. 

3. Research techniques

This section should refer to existing studies to justify why your approach is the best way to analyse your thesis. Here, offer a research philosophy on how your research methods were reached based on the nature of the field. 

4. Look at existing dissertations

We recommend that you check out dissertation methodology examples to familiarize yourself with the recommended format and style. 

Methodology dissertation structure

Some of the key elements of a methodology dissertation include:

• The research overview: this section highlights the gaps you identified during your research and the aims of your paper. When presenting the overview, indicate the problem(s) you ought to address and how your paper will seal the research gaps in your field. 
• Research design: the design outlines the methods selected for your study and evidence that the methods used are acceptable in your field. You may also provide arguments as to why the methods you selected were better than other options and offer a rationale for your sampling strategy. 
• Methods of data collection: list your approaches for collecting data and offer an account as to why you selected data for your research. 
• Research limitations: discuss the results your research was not able to unveil and reasons as to why you were limited in this sense. 
• Ethical considerations: were there ethical issues to be observed in your study? If so, explain how you met these considerations in your study. 
• Data analysis: the analysis should outline the variables, missing data, and outliers yielded by your research. Also, highlight any equipment that was used to analyse your data and analysis on the validity of your results. 

Final take

We hope that this guide on how to write a research methodology in a dissertation has helped you to overcome the challenges that were stalling your progress. Feel free to consult our team for a methodology for dissertation example to better your grasp on writing an outstanding methodology chapter.

Fortunately, your faculty committee puts various measures in place to protect you against this. The dissertation prospectus is a key document that helps you bring your dissertation into perspective. After gauging your argument, you can overcome overambitious claims and settle for arguments you can sufficiently investigate and provide findings of great scientific value. 

Read on to discover the importance of the prospectus in a dissertation and various steps to help you in writing your dissertation prospectus.

What is a dissertation prospectus?

A dissertation prospectus is a document that analyses the feasibility of research based on your objectives, existing research, and your intended methodologies. The prospectus is thus a blueprint of your dissertation, highlighting when, how, and why your research should be conducted.

This document gives your faculty committee the justification for your research and shows that your work is grounded on factual claims and will yield findings of some scientific value. The prospectus highlights the themes and topics to feature in your dissertation and also lists the sources related to your dissertation objectives.

It also highlights the methodologies you intend to implement in investigating your problem and a justification for the methodologies. After investigating these parameters, you can easily establish whether your approach is workable and postulate hypothetical answers to your research questions.

Why use a dissertation prospectus?

A dissertation prospectus serves a more important task than helping the faculty committee to gauge the relevance of your dissertation research. The prospectus helps align your efforts reducing confusion along the way. 

Like the blueprint, the prospectus helps you gain a clear understanding of the end goal, directing your efforts towards investigating your objectives. Also, the prospectus allows you to make various considerations prior to writing your paper, thus streamlining your writing process.

The prospectus may highlight the glaring issues in your research, helping you to rethink various angles before you set out on the dissertation. This improvement is made possible by the feedback from your committee who offer a green light after establishing that your research is practicable.

Dissertation prospectus guide: how to write a dissertation prospectus

Creating a dissertation prospectus may seem like a hard task at first. With multiple pieces of information to gather, you may be confused about where to start. These steps should guide you in writing your prospectus and overcoming confusion along the way.

1. Conduct research

What gap have you identified in a topic? Has it been studied before? If so, what were the weaknesses in prior studies on your subject? Are there studies that can support your argument? 

The research phase of your writing should expose you to various primary and secondary sources, giving you a broad and specific understanding of the topic. As a result, you can weigh your hypothesis and identify methods to fill gaps on the topic.

Also, existing research helps you to consult studies that took similar approaches to your intended methodologies, helping you gauge how practical your approach is to the research. 

2. Organize your ideas

There are many smaller objectives to address when going about the larger objective of your dissertation. After gaining the background information on your topic, organize various ideas to see the flow of your arguments.

Through this, you can identify the gaps in your research and consult materials that help you to bring your argument into perspective.

3. Focus on the outcome

When writing your prospectus, remain objective on what you intend to unveil in your research. Analyse each angle on how the material may support your claims and identify experiments that can test your suppositions. 

These considerations will guide your research, helping you prepare a quality prospectus that tackles essential questions and covers relevant research for your claims. 

Dissertation prospectus outline

Now that you know what your dissertation prospectus ought to entail, here’s a structure you could follow.

• Title: the heading of your dissertation. Should tackle the thesis for your paper.
• Body: a justification for your research and an analysis of the sources that validate your claims and hypothesis. Also, the body should highlight the gaps that warrant your study and the hypothesis you hope to achieve.
• Chapter breakdown: what topics will your tackle in your paper? Here, outline the chapters in your work and highlight the idea to be investigated/ discussed in each chapter.
• Research plan: outline your intended methodologies and highlight reasons you believe the methods of data collection and analysis are applicable to the topic.
• Timeline: here, outline the process of writing your dissertation, giving estimates for each stage of your dissertation development.
• Special needs: this part states any special tools/ benefits you may require to better investigate your ideas. 
• Working bibliography: a list of all sources you have encountered and potential sources that could be formative for ideas in your dissertation.

Final take

A dissertation prospectus is quite different from your abstract. This document is more of a plan detailing how you intend to approach your research. We hope that this guide helps you to overcome various challenges you encounter along the way. Also, ensure to consult a sample dissertation prospectus to have a better grasp of how the prospectus ought to look.