When a committee member questions your methodology, defend it by citing literature that supports the method for your specific research question and data. Speaker B shares how citations and education converted a skeptical committee member who initially rejected the approach.
How can I best defend a methodology that a committee member might dislike?
Not everybody knows every methodology. It is just not possible. So, there can be methodologies that committee members are unfamiliar with or methodologies that they have not used or have not used successfully or whatever reason. Your methodology is the methodology that answers your questions, and that is what you bank on. If in this situation with this type of data, here is the most appropriate methodology, and you provide citations. And when you have external support through citations, it's much easier to bring committee members on board. I was the chair, and the committee member says, no, we can't do this methodology, it's not right. And it was right, the committee member didn't understand the methodology. So we had to spend some time educating this person with citations as to why it was right, and then they were on board and happy.
