
Methodology chapter done…almost. ALMOST!!! I’ve divided this chapter into two main sections: the rationale for the methodological approach that I used and the research report, which is a descriptive, transparent account of the data generation phase. I originally set out to write my thesis in a linear fashion, beginning with the introduction and moving onto my literature review section. However, in practice, I ended up writing this chapter first because it was the most conceptually concrete section of my thesis in that it’s presenting what I actually did to generate the data for this thesis. In other disciplines the emphasis on methodology may be less pronounced but in my field, education, how I generated (as opposed to collected or gathered) the data is just as important as what I did with it. The coherence between my method of data generation and the type of data I ended up with is vital.
So, in a very real sense, this was the easiest chapter to write because it is largely descriptive. I managed to hammer this out and am now in the stage of editing the rationale I wrote a while back to make it more consistent with what I did. It’s turning out to be more work than I expected. I hope to have this last section done by the end of this week.
Well done on getting a draft of a chapter done! It’s interesting to know how different people approach the order in which they write their chapters. I wonder how many people write them in linear order etc. I have already drafted a couple of my main analysis chapters, have yet to write the methodology or literature review, so basically I’m writing them in a completely unlinear way…
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Thanks for your comments and encouragement! That’s great that you’ve gone and done your main analysis chapters – I have yet to start mine properly. I know quite a few people who are in a similar situation as you. I’m not sure what field you’re in but in Education essentially a thesis isn’t a thesis if there isn’t any data or analysis presented. Otherwise it’s a big literature review so I’m slightly worried about not having written the analysis properly (yet).
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