Writing Chapter 3
Steve Tippins walks graduate students through writing a dissertation methodology chapter, framing it as a detailed recipe for data collection and analysis that others can replicate. He covers aligning your research questions with your methods, choosing between quantitative and qualitative approaches, matching statistical tests to your data, and using triangulation to strengthen findings. He also warns about committee conflicts and explains IRB requirements for human subjects research.
Chapters
Live event today where today's goal is to discuss the traditional or typical chapter three or methodology. So if it's not in chapter three, it's still methodology. Okay. And again, this is going to be based on questions we've received over time and we'll talk a little bit about chapter three as well, and then I'll answer some of those questions. So I want to start by talking about methodology and specifically chapter three with methodology. When I think of my methodology or explaining the methodology, I like to think of chapter three as a recipe. And by that I mean, you know, look, if you've ever had a recipe to make beef bourguignon or bread or whatever it is, you are given every single step that you need and all of the ingredients that you need and what you do at every step, do this for 10 minutes and bake for 42 minutes and set the oven at a certain temperature. Okay? And if you've ever done or used a recipe that you've gotten to the end and said, well, I, I have lemons here, but there was no way to put lemons in it, didn't say where or if it does say, add lemons, but it wasn't in the ingredients list, it's pretty frustrating. That's what we want to avoid in chapter three. You want to think of chapter three as a recipe where you have included every single step of what you're going to do to collect the data you need for, for your dissertation. The other way to think of it is, look, somebody might want to replicate your study, so you have to tell them every single step so that they can replicate the study. And just as an aside here, if you do have questions, if you're, you know, jumping in from anywhere in the world, just, you know, ask the question and you know, we'll go from there and you know, answer your question as well as continue covering what we want to cover today. One of the things that comes up relatively frequently is, okay, I've got research questions. What methodology do I use to get to those research questions? Well, let's step back a little bit. When you do your alignment of your research project, there's typically a problem statement, a purpose statement, and then research questions that all have to be in alignment. And most schools now when you're doing your purpose, you need to include things like the purpose of this qualitative case study or the purpose of this correlational study or the purpose of this study is regression based study. So you're telling what methodology you're going to use to answer your questions. In your purpose. That said, when I have my research questions, if I really want to think about what methodology to use, I want to start with what type of data am I going to get back? Because particularly if I'm in a quantitative study, I, I might say I want to do a regression analysis, for example. However, the data I'm getting may not fit the underlying assumptions of the regression analysis. So you want to think about that early because you don't want to have collected data and then go and say, oh, I can't do that. I can't do what I said I was going to do. Now I've got to go find another methodology that will meet my data. So start with the data you're going to get that will help you understand the statistical approach you're going to be able to take. You know, when I think about broadly about methods, I think quantitative and qualitative. Well, if I'm saying I want to get perceptions or lived experience, it's going to be a qualitative study. If I'm saying I'm going to use things like numbers to do correlational, causational type things, it's going to be a quantitative study. So hopefully that is helpful. If you're thinking about methodology and research questions, alignment is a big topic. And, you know, your theoretical framework might say something about that, about what you're doing. And you want to make sure your methodology lines up with what you're using. And your theoretical or conceptual framework is basically the foundational research that leads us to get to where we're going with the gap in the research. And then I want to make sure my methodology will allow me to answer the question, which will then allow me to relate back to my theoretical framework or conceptual framework. Now, one of the big questions we get, gosh, my chair says to use this methodology, but my methodologist says, oh no, you should be using this other methodology. And that's, you know, a conundrum at times, but it's something first, as I said about quantitative studies, go back to the data. What type of data will you get in your study and what type of tests are going to be best used for that data? Sometimes you're going to run into people who know certain tests, but they may not be the right test for your data. So you want to be able to explain, yeah, that's a great test. I understand. However, this data requires this type of test or this type of test that you're asking for. The data doesn't allow for the underlying assumptions of the test. And if you are doing a quantitative study, I can recommend Laird L A E R D as a website. It's relatively inexpensive on an ongoing basis, but it can give you all the tests and, and all the underlying assumptions that need to be met in a test, as well as references. And it will provide you with the ammunition to be able to answer questions. And if it comes down to a battle, ultimately, it's probably you're going to side with your chair because they have the most power. Typically in a committee, one of the terms that has come up recently, in the past five or six years that I've been seeing and in qualitative studies is where I've been seeing it more often is triangulation. And if you watch crime shows or anything like that, or even, I'm guessing, superhero shows, they do a concept of triangulation. They narrow in on a point from one direction and narrow in it from another direction, narrow in from another direction, and from three directions, I can point, pinpoint exactly where it is. And that's the idea of triangulation and research. If I get data from three different areas, then where it combines in the middle, where it meets means, I've got a lot more confidence in the results that I've found. So in a qualitative study, you're going to find triangulation being things like, oh, I'm going to do interviews and then maybe I'll do some groups and then maybe I will get historical data from the files of the organization or organizations, allowing me to find information from three different directions. And you know, the prefix tri, Tri means three. I've been surprised a number of times when committees have asked for triangulation and they've said two sources of information is sufficient for triangulation. Technically, I guess that would be biangulation. It certainly isn't triangulation. But the idea is to get it from different directions. And if your committee asks for triangulation and they're fine with two directions, Two directions is less work for you than three directions. So you want to understand what they're asking for. And when they say triangulation means two, then you're going with two. But ultimately the underlying thing is I want to have more confidence in my results and my committee wants more confidence in my results. So they're going to be asking for multiple directions where you're collecting data. If you start with your data that you're collecting, you're going to be able to describe your methodology. Well, if you're just saying, hey, I'm going to use this methodology, it Might be a little hard to be clear, have clarity and certainty in what you're talking about. But if you're understanding the data you're collecting, then you'll be able to understand your methodology as well as your analysis the way that you're going to analyze this, and that's what you're going to be reporting in chapter three. And it allows for more certainty. What also helps, and this helps everywhere in the dissertation process is this is almost always a good answer. Look at dissertations that your chair has recently approved using the methodology that you want to use. That shows you, first, what's been done, but second, and more importantly, what your chair has approved in the past as an adequate, not only methodology, but explanation of the methodology. It's certainly not something for you to copy, but it is a reference for you for moving forward in, you know, completing your chapter three. And, and that's your goal, is to outline your Chapter three such that your committee is happy and understands what you want to do so that you can move forward. And this material will be helpful to you as well in your IRB application because they're going to ask you about how you're going to collect your data, and they're going to ask you about who's going to be involved. So they're going to ask a lot of questions that you're outlining in chapter three. I want to know if anybody who's out there in the world has any questions. Sure. IRB is Internal Review Board, however the acronym goes. It's. It's the location in the university, typically where you apply or you show them what you want to do, and they are there to protect participants. So if you've got participants coming into your study, they want to make sure nobody gets hurt, nobody's going to be traumatized because of research that was done in the 60s at Yale and Stanford and the Tuskegee Experiment and things like that, where participants were not treated well. We now have a barrier or hurdle to cross to show participants are going to not be hurt by participating in my research. Yeah, it's, you know, ethically, we don't want to hurt people. So, you know, a lot of schools call it irb. You can call it ethics, you know, whatever you call it, its purpose is to make sure that anybody who's involved isn't going to be negatively impacted. Which is why when you go for that approval, if you aren't using human subjects, you're using secondary data, things like that, your approval is going to be very quick. Boom, you're approved because nobody could be hurt. If you're using normal people, they're going to ask a bunch of questions. And there's also protected classes like minors and prisoners and pregnant women. Things like that is much harder to get approval because these are classes of people we want to take even more care of. Any other questions? Well, hearing no questions, what I'm going to do is, first of all, wish everybody a fantastic weekend. We'll be continuing these live sessions next week and probably through all of January just to see, you know, if we can help people move forward. So have a beautiful weekend and as well as the rest of your day and, and make progress on your dissertation and finish and go change the world.
