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Methodology

• Survey Research | Definition, Examples & Methods

Survey Research | Definition, Examples & Methods

Published on August 20, 2019 by Shona McCombes . Revised on June 22, 2023.

Survey research means collecting information about a group of people by asking them questions and analyzing the results. To conduct an effective survey, follow these six steps:

• Determine who will participate in the survey
• Decide the type of survey (mail, online, or in-person)
• Design the survey questions and layout
• Distribute the survey
• Analyze the responses
• Write up the results

Surveys are a flexible method of data collection that can be used in many different types of research .

Table of contents

What are surveys used for, step 1: define the population and sample, step 2: decide on the type of survey, step 3: design the survey questions, step 4: distribute the survey and collect responses, step 5: analyze the survey results, step 6: write up the survey results, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about surveys.

Surveys are used as a method of gathering data in many different fields. They are a good choice when you want to find out about the characteristics, preferences, opinions, or beliefs of a group of people.

Common uses of survey research include:

• Social research : investigating the experiences and characteristics of different social groups
• Market research : finding out what customers think about products, services, and companies
• Health research : collecting data from patients about symptoms and treatments
• Politics : measuring public opinion about parties and policies
• Psychology : researching personality traits, preferences and behaviours

Surveys can be used in both cross-sectional studies , where you collect data just once, and in longitudinal studies , where you survey the same sample several times over an extended period.

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Before you start conducting survey research, you should already have a clear research question that defines what you want to find out. Based on this question, you need to determine exactly who you will target to participate in the survey.

Populations

The target population is the specific group of people that you want to find out about. This group can be very broad or relatively narrow. For example:

• The population of Brazil
• US college students
• Second-generation immigrants in the Netherlands
• Customers of a specific company aged 18-24
• British transgender women over the age of 50

Your survey should aim to produce results that can be generalized to the whole population. That means you need to carefully define exactly who you want to draw conclusions about.

Several common research biases can arise if your survey is not generalizable, particularly sampling bias and selection bias . The presence of these biases have serious repercussions for the validity of your results.

It’s rarely possible to survey the entire population of your research – it would be very difficult to get a response from every person in Brazil or every college student in the US. Instead, you will usually survey a sample from the population.

The sample size depends on how big the population is. You can use an online sample calculator to work out how many responses you need.

There are many sampling methods that allow you to generalize to broad populations. In general, though, the sample should aim to be representative of the population as a whole. The larger and more representative your sample, the more valid your conclusions. Again, beware of various types of sampling bias as you design your sample, particularly self-selection bias , nonresponse bias , undercoverage bias , and survivorship bias .

There are two main types of survey:

• A questionnaire , where a list of questions is distributed by mail, online or in person, and respondents fill it out themselves.
• An interview , where the researcher asks a set of questions by phone or in person and records the responses.

Which type you choose depends on the sample size and location, as well as the focus of the research.

Questionnaires

Sending out a paper survey by mail is a common method of gathering demographic information (for example, in a government census of the population).

• You can easily access a large sample.
• You have some control over who is included in the sample (e.g. residents of a specific region).
• The response rate is often low, and at risk for biases like self-selection bias .

Online surveys are a popular choice for students doing dissertation research , due to the low cost and flexibility of this method. There are many online tools available for constructing surveys, such as SurveyMonkey and Google Forms .

• You can quickly access a large sample without constraints on time or location.
• The data is easy to process and analyze.
• The anonymity and accessibility of online surveys mean you have less control over who responds, which can lead to biases like self-selection bias .

If your research focuses on a specific location, you can distribute a written questionnaire to be completed by respondents on the spot. For example, you could approach the customers of a shopping mall or ask all students to complete a questionnaire at the end of a class.

• You can screen respondents to make sure only people in the target population are included in the sample.
• You can collect time- and location-specific data (e.g. the opinions of a store’s weekday customers).
• The sample size will be smaller, so this method is less suitable for collecting data on broad populations and is at risk for sampling bias .

Oral interviews are a useful method for smaller sample sizes. They allow you to gather more in-depth information on people’s opinions and preferences. You can conduct interviews by phone or in person.

• You have personal contact with respondents, so you know exactly who will be included in the sample in advance.
• You can clarify questions and ask for follow-up information when necessary.
• The lack of anonymity may cause respondents to answer less honestly, and there is more risk of researcher bias.

Like questionnaires, interviews can be used to collect quantitative data: the researcher records each response as a category or rating and statistically analyzes the results. But they are more commonly used to collect qualitative data : the interviewees’ full responses are transcribed and analyzed individually to gain a richer understanding of their opinions and feelings.

Next, you need to decide which questions you will ask and how you will ask them. It’s important to consider:

• The type of questions
• The content of the questions
• The phrasing of the questions
• The ordering and layout of the survey

Open-ended vs closed-ended questions

There are two main forms of survey questions: open-ended and closed-ended. Many surveys use a combination of both.

Closed-ended questions give the respondent a predetermined set of answers to choose from. A closed-ended question can include:

• A binary answer (e.g. yes/no or agree/disagree )
• A scale (e.g. a Likert scale with five points ranging from strongly agree to strongly disagree )
• A list of options with a single answer possible (e.g. age categories)
• A list of options with multiple answers possible (e.g. leisure interests)

Closed-ended questions are best for quantitative research . They provide you with numerical data that can be statistically analyzed to find patterns, trends, and correlations .

Open-ended questions are best for qualitative research. This type of question has no predetermined answers to choose from. Instead, the respondent answers in their own words.

Open questions are most common in interviews, but you can also use them in questionnaires. They are often useful as follow-up questions to ask for more detailed explanations of responses to the closed questions.

The content of the survey questions

To ensure the validity and reliability of your results, you need to carefully consider each question in the survey. All questions should be narrowly focused with enough context for the respondent to answer accurately. Avoid questions that are not directly relevant to the survey’s purpose.

When constructing closed-ended questions, ensure that the options cover all possibilities. If you include a list of options that isn’t exhaustive, you can add an “other” field.

Phrasing the survey questions

In terms of language, the survey questions should be as clear and precise as possible. Tailor the questions to your target population, keeping in mind their level of knowledge of the topic. Avoid jargon or industry-specific terminology.

Survey questions are at risk for biases like social desirability bias , the Hawthorne effect , or demand characteristics . It’s critical to use language that respondents will easily understand, and avoid words with vague or ambiguous meanings. Make sure your questions are phrased neutrally, with no indication that you’d prefer a particular answer or emotion.

Ordering the survey questions

The questions should be arranged in a logical order. Start with easy, non-sensitive, closed-ended questions that will encourage the respondent to continue.

If the survey covers several different topics or themes, group together related questions. You can divide a questionnaire into sections to help respondents understand what is being asked in each part.

If a question refers back to or depends on the answer to a previous question, they should be placed directly next to one another.

Before you start, create a clear plan for where, when, how, and with whom you will conduct the survey. Determine in advance how many responses you require and how you will gain access to the sample.

When you are satisfied that you have created a strong research design suitable for answering your research questions, you can conduct the survey through your method of choice – by mail, online, or in person.

There are many methods of analyzing the results of your survey. First you have to process the data, usually with the help of a computer program to sort all the responses. You should also clean the data by removing incomplete or incorrectly completed responses.

If you asked open-ended questions, you will have to code the responses by assigning labels to each response and organizing them into categories or themes. You can also use more qualitative methods, such as thematic analysis , which is especially suitable for analyzing interviews.

Statistical analysis is usually conducted using programs like SPSS or Stata. The same set of survey data can be subject to many analyses.

Finally, when you have collected and analyzed all the necessary data, you will write it up as part of your thesis, dissertation , or research paper .

In the methodology section, you describe exactly how you conducted the survey. You should explain the types of questions you used, the sampling method, when and where the survey took place, and the response rate. You can include the full questionnaire as an appendix and refer to it in the text if relevant.

Then introduce the analysis by describing how you prepared the data and the statistical methods you used to analyze it. In the results section, you summarize the key results from your analysis.

In the discussion and conclusion , you give your explanations and interpretations of these results, answer your research question, and reflect on the implications and limitations of the research.

If you want to know more about statistics , methodology , or research bias , make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples.

• Student’s  t -distribution
• Normal distribution
• Null and Alternative Hypotheses
• Chi square tests
• Confidence interval
• Quartiles & Quantiles
• Cluster sampling
• Stratified sampling
• Data cleansing
• Reproducibility vs Replicability
• Peer review
• Prospective cohort study

Research bias

• Implicit bias
• Cognitive bias
• Placebo effect
• Hawthorne effect
• Hindsight bias
• Affect heuristic
• Social desirability bias

A questionnaire is a data collection tool or instrument, while a survey is an overarching research method that involves collecting and analyzing data from people using questionnaires.

A Likert scale is a rating scale that quantitatively assesses opinions, attitudes, or behaviors. It is made up of 4 or more questions that measure a single attitude or trait when response scores are combined.

To use a Likert scale in a survey , you present participants with Likert-type questions or statements, and a continuum of items, usually with 5 or 7 possible responses, to capture their degree of agreement.

Individual Likert-type questions are generally considered ordinal data , because the items have clear rank order, but don’t have an even distribution.

Overall Likert scale scores are sometimes treated as interval data. These scores are considered to have directionality and even spacing between them.

The type of data determines what statistical tests you should use to analyze your data.

The priorities of a research design can vary depending on the field, but you usually have to specify:

• Your research questions and/or hypotheses
• Your overall approach (e.g., qualitative or quantitative )
• The type of design you’re using (e.g., a survey , experiment , or case study )
• Your sampling methods or criteria for selecting subjects
• Your data collection methods (e.g., questionnaires , observations)
• Your data collection procedures (e.g., operationalization , timing and data management)
• Your data analysis methods (e.g., statistical tests  or thematic analysis )

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• Research process

A Beginner's Guide to Starting the Research Process

When you have to write a thesis or dissertation , it can be hard to know where to begin, but there are some clear steps you can follow.

The research process often begins with a very broad idea for a topic you’d like to know more about. You do some preliminary research to identify a  problem . After refining your research questions , you can lay out the foundations of your research design , leading to a proposal that outlines your ideas and plans.

This article takes you through the first steps of the research process, helping you narrow down your ideas and build up a strong foundation for your research project.

Table of contents

Step 1: choose your topic, step 2: identify a problem, step 3: formulate research questions, step 4: create a research design, step 5: write a research proposal.

First you have to come up with some ideas. Your thesis or dissertation topic can start out very broad. Think about the general area or field you’re interested in—maybe you already have specific research interests based on classes you’ve taken, or maybe you had to consider your topic when applying to graduate school and writing a statement of purpose .

Even if you already have a good sense of your topic, you’ll need to read widely to build background knowledge and begin narrowing down your ideas. Conduct an initial literature review to begin gathering relevant sources. As you read, take notes and try to identify problems, questions, debates, contradictions and gaps. Your aim is to narrow down from a broad area of interest to a specific niche.

Make sure to consider the practicalities: the requirements of your programme, the amount of time you have to complete the research, and how difficult it will be to access sources and data on the topic. Before moving onto the next stage, it’s a good idea to discuss the topic with your thesis supervisor.

>>Read more about narrowing down a research topic

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So you’ve settled on a topic and found a niche—but what exactly will your research investigate, and why does it matter? To give your project focus and purpose, you have to define a research problem .

The problem might be a practical issue—for example, a process or practice that isn’t working well, an area of concern in an organization’s performance, or a difficulty faced by a specific group of people in society.

Alternatively, you might choose to investigate a theoretical problem—for example, an underexplored phenomenon or relationship, a contradiction between different models or theories, or an unresolved debate among scholars.

To put the problem in context and set your objectives, you can write a problem statement . This describes who the problem affects, why research is needed, and how your research project will contribute to solving it.

>>Read more about defining a research problem

Next, based on the problem statement, you need to write one or more research questions . These target exactly what you want to find out. They might focus on describing, comparing, evaluating, or explaining the research problem.

A strong research question should be specific enough that you can answer it thoroughly using appropriate qualitative or quantitative research methods. It should also be complex enough to require in-depth investigation, analysis, and argument. Questions that can be answered with “yes/no” or with easily available facts are not complex enough for a thesis or dissertation.

In some types of research, at this stage you might also have to develop a conceptual framework and testable hypotheses .

>>See research question examples

The research design is a practical framework for answering your research questions. It involves making decisions about the type of data you need, the methods you’ll use to collect and analyze it, and the location and timescale of your research.

There are often many possible paths you can take to answering your questions. The decisions you make will partly be based on your priorities. For example, do you want to determine causes and effects, draw generalizable conclusions, or understand the details of a specific context?

You need to decide whether you will use primary or secondary data and qualitative or quantitative methods . You also need to determine the specific tools, procedures, and materials you’ll use to collect and analyze your data, as well as your criteria for selecting participants or sources.

>>Read more about creating a research design

Finally, after completing these steps, you are ready to complete a research proposal . The proposal outlines the context, relevance, purpose, and plan of your research.

As well as outlining the background, problem statement, and research questions, the proposal should also include a literature review that shows how your project will fit into existing work on the topic. The research design section describes your approach and explains exactly what you will do.

You might have to get the proposal approved by your supervisor before you get started, and it will guide the process of writing your thesis or dissertation.

>>Read more about writing a research proposal

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How to Write Research Methodology

Last Updated: May 21, 2023 Approved

This article was co-authored by Alexander Ruiz, M.Ed. and by wikiHow staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD . Alexander Ruiz is an Educational Consultant and the Educational Director of Link Educational Institute, a tutoring business based in Claremont, California that provides customizable educational plans, subject and test prep tutoring, and college application consulting. With over a decade and a half of experience in the education industry, Alexander coaches students to increase their self-awareness and emotional intelligence while achieving skills and the goal of achieving skills and higher education. He holds a BA in Psychology from Florida International University and an MA in Education from Georgia Southern University. wikiHow marks an article as reader-approved once it receives enough positive feedback. In this case, several readers have written to tell us that this article was helpful to them, earning it our reader-approved status. This article has been viewed 516,256 times.

The research methodology section of any academic research paper gives you the opportunity to convince your readers that your research is useful and will contribute to your field of study. An effective research methodology is grounded in your overall approach – whether qualitative or quantitative – and adequately describes the methods you used. Justify why you chose those methods over others, then explain how those methods will provide answers to your research questions. [1] X Research source

Describing Your Methods

• In your restatement, include any underlying assumptions that you're making or conditions that you're taking for granted. These assumptions will also inform the research methods you've chosen.
• Generally, state the variables you'll test and the other conditions you're controlling or assuming are equal.

• If you want to research and document measurable social trends, or evaluate the impact of a particular policy on various variables, use a quantitative approach focused on data collection and statistical analysis.
• If you want to evaluate people's views or understanding of a particular issue, choose a more qualitative approach.
• You can also combine the two. For example, you might look primarily at a measurable social trend, but also interview people and get their opinions on how that trend is affecting their lives.

• For example, if you conducted a survey, you would describe the questions included in the survey, where and how the survey was conducted (such as in person, online, over the phone), how many surveys were distributed, and how long your respondents had to complete the survey.
• Include enough detail that your study can be replicated by others in your field, even if they may not get the same results you did. [4] X Research source

• Qualitative research methods typically require more detailed explanation than quantitative methods.
• Basic investigative procedures don't need to be explained in detail. Generally, you can assume that your readers have a general understanding of common research methods that social scientists use, such as surveys or focus groups.

• For example, suppose you conducted a survey and used a couple of other research papers to help construct the questions on your survey. You would mention those as contributing sources.

Justifying Your Choice of Methods

• Describe study participants specifically, and list any inclusion or exclusion criteria you used when forming your group of participants.
• Justify the size of your sample, if applicable, and describe how this affects whether your study can be generalized to larger populations. For example, if you conducted a survey of 30 percent of the student population of a university, you could potentially apply those results to the student body as a whole, but maybe not to students at other universities.

• Reading other research papers is a good way to identify potential problems that commonly arise with various methods. State whether you actually encountered any of these common problems during your research.

• If you encountered any problems as you collected data, explain clearly the steps you took to minimize the effect that problem would have on your results.

• In some cases, this may be as simple as stating that while there were numerous studies using one method, there weren't any using your method, which caused a gap in understanding of the issue.
• For example, there may be multiple papers providing quantitative analysis of a particular social trend. However, none of these papers looked closely at how this trend was affecting the lives of people.

Connecting Your Methods to Your Research Goals

• Depending on your research questions, you may be mixing quantitative and qualitative analysis – just as you could potentially use both approaches. For example, you might do a statistical analysis, and then interpret those statistics through a particular theoretical lens.

• For example, suppose you're researching the effect of college education on family farms in rural America. While you could do interviews of college-educated people who grew up on a family farm, that would not give you a picture of the overall effect. A quantitative approach and statistical analysis would give you a bigger picture.

• If in answering your research questions, your findings have raised other questions that may require further research, state these briefly.
• You can also include here any limitations to your methods, or questions that weren't answered through your research.

• Generalization is more typically used in quantitative research. If you have a well-designed sample, you can statistically apply your results to the larger population your sample belongs to.

Template to Write Research Methodology

Community Q&A

• Organize your methodology section chronologically, starting with how you prepared to conduct your research methods, how you gathered data, and how you analyzed that data. [13] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0
• Write your research methodology section in past tense, unless you're submitting the methodology section before the research described has been carried out. [14] X Research source Thanks Helpful 2 Not Helpful 0
• Discuss your plans in detail with your advisor or supervisor before committing to a particular methodology. They can help identify possible flaws in your study. [15] X Research source Thanks Helpful 0 Not Helpful 0

You Might Also Like

• ↑ http://expertjournals.com/how-to-write-a-research-methodology-for-your-academic-article/
• ↑ http://libguides.usc.edu/writingguide/methodology
• ↑ https://www.skillsyouneed.com/learn/dissertation-methodology.html
• ↑ https://uir.unisa.ac.za/bitstream/handle/10500/4245/05Chap%204_Research%20methodology%20and%20design.pdf
• ↑ https://elc.polyu.edu.hk/FYP/html/method.htm

About This Article

To write a research methodology, start with a section that outlines the problems or questions you'll be studying, including your hypotheses or whatever it is you're setting out to prove. Then, briefly explain why you chose to use either a qualitative or quantitative approach for your study. Next, go over when and where you conducted your research and what parameters you used to ensure you were objective. Finally, cite any sources you used to decide on the methodology for your research. To learn how to justify your choice of methods in your research methodology, scroll down! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Methodology

Ann Del Bianco

Ann Del Bianco [1] is an Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her research interests include alternative methodological approaches, holistic conceptual frameworks, the lifegrid, esophageal cancer, environmental and occupational cancer, cancer prevention, and environmental and ecosystem health.

Methodological considerations to researching children’s return to school during the COVID-19 pandemic

Methodology is an important part of the research process, providing a common language and toolkit necessary for researchers to conduct good studies needed to acquire knowledge. It provides a detailed roadmap that explains the different steps taken and types of decisions the researcher has made. In this way, it provides a level of transparency, which is important especially if another researcher wants to replicate the study results. This is possible for quantitative studies that are objective and use numerical data, but not for qualitative studies that are subjective and use other data, such as those that are text-based or images.

There are many different ways a research question can be posed and answered. Depending on the choice made, there is an impact on the research approach taken, the selection of research design, and the type of data collected (which needs to be done in an ethical way). Researchers also need to use a common language to describe how the data was analyzed and interpreted. For instance, in the social sciences, it is typical for qualitative researchers to use conceptual and/or theoretical frameworks to inform this process. The table below provides a simplified overview of what a methodology section addresses within a research study. The table is not meant to be exhaustive; it is meant as a guide.

All research begins with a topic. In this example, it is children and the COVID-19 pandemic . Prior to each new school year during the pandemic, schools request that parents/legal guardians decide the mode of delivery (remote only or in-person) for their children’s education, which is made with or without input from their children. Little is known on how children feel about returning to in-person learning during the pandemic and why. An example of a good research question about this issue that could be posed would be: In York Region, Ontario, to what extent does grade three, in-person school enrolment for the 2021–22 school year reflect how students going into grade three feel about the prospect of going back to in-person school during the COVID-19 pandemic and why? Note that the research question is framed to capture students from York Region and follows a mixed methodology because it uses both quantitative and qualitative research approaches. The first part is quantitative because it uses numbers to describe and make predictions about student enrolment. The second part is qualitative because it is about understanding how students going into grade three feel and why. The study can also be considered as cross-sectional because the data collected represents only one moment in time.

The research design for the first part of this question is descriptive and uses enrollment data gathered by school boards. This means that it will use secondary data , because the information used was already collected by someone else for other purposes. From this data, we might learn that 95% of grade three students are going back to in-person learning for the 2021–22 school year. Enrolment data is publicly available, but the most current data can only be obtained by contacting each school board serving York Region. These population-based findings might in turn be generalized to other populations. If you wanted to also obtain more sensitive information tied to enrolment data, such as race, gender, and household income, you would have to inquire if this data is collected by the school boards and then submit an official request and research proposal to each of the Research and Ethics Boards (REBs) of the involved institutions (including your own university). This is because such data is not publicly available or accessible, and the study also involves interviewing human participants. If approved, this additional data would allow you to examine, for example, if there is a relationship between in-person enrolment and household income, changing it to a correlational research design. You could use statistical analysis software to then analyze the data, and previous research from the literature to help interpret it.

The dataset from the school board would never include confidential information like the student’s name, address, or contact information. Therefore, you could not expect to contact and recruit a sample of this population to interview them for the second part of the research question. Before considering interviewing seven and eight year olds, there are several ethical issues that need to be considered, since these children are not of age to provide informed consent. Their parents or legal guardians would need to consent, ideally in writing, for their child to partake in the study, which would maintain anonymity and permit withdrawal from the study at any time. The study would have to be fully explained to all involved, including how data would be stored, and for how long, as well as how findings would be communicated.

Phenomenology is a qualitative research design you might choose to understand the feelings that these children are experiencing. It is an approach that evaluates how a phenomenon (e.g., in-person learning during a pandemic) is consciously experienced (e.g., by a student going into grade three). The primary data (collected solely for the purposes of the study) could be gathered using an interview guide that consists of demographics and a series of open-ended questions, and probes that would allow different themes to emerge during the interviews. To collect the primary data, you could use a technique called convenience sampling. This might mean that you live in York Region and directly ask parents in the community if their children could be interviewed for your study. As part of the methodology, you would have to position yourself, to try to avoid any researcher biases or conflicts of interest you may bring to the collection and interpretation of the data. For instance, if you are interested in gaining perspectives across York Region and you had an eight-year-old child, interviewing a sample of only their closest friends that go to the same school and using leading questions to do so would be problematic. Also, if you were funded to conduct the research, you would have to ensure that this was disclosed and that your funder was impartial.

Data collection would end once data saturation was reached, meaning that no new themes were emerging during your interviews. One example of a theme that might come up consistently would be household income. If the quantitative portion of your study already found a relationship between in-person enrollment and household income, your study is able to show what is called data triangulation . This means that you have cross-referenced different methodologies and data sources to verify and show the same results, increasing the validity and reliability of your work (for quantitative studies) and showing credibility (for qualitative studies).

Examples of some other data that might come out of the interview would be students who say they are “feeling excited” because they “cannot wait to see friends and teachers,” or perhaps students who are “feeling anxious” because of “wanting to stay home, but cannot because parents have to go to work,” or even “worried” because they “might contract COVID-19 by attending school.” Software programs such as NVivo can help you analyze data, and the subsequent interpretation or discussion should be couched in a theoretical framework informed by the current literature and/or drawn explicitly from your findings. Note that the example research question provided above explores just some of the research designs that may be selected, as well as some data, sampling, and ethical considerations that would need to be identified in the methodology section of a research study.

Discussion Questions

Use Table 1 to answer the following questions.

• What should a methodology section of a research study include?
• Come up with another research question that can be derived from the topic, children and COVID-19 . What sort of research approach and design could you use to answer this question? Would you use primary or secondary data? How would you collect and/or obtain the data? What are the ethical considerations that need to be made?
• Describe some of the kinds of data that might be generated. How might you analyze this data?

Table 1: Research methodologies and their components. The ways in which each method or process are applied also depend on broader methodological, ethical, and other considerations.

Additional Resources

Creswell, J. W., & Creswell, J. D. (2018). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (5 th ed) . California: Sage.

Del Balso, M. & Lewis, A.D. (2012). First steps: A guide to social research (5 th ed). Canada: Nelson Thomson Learning.

Lahman, M.K.E. (2018). Ethics in social science research: Becoming culturally responsive. California: Sage.

Leung L. (2015). Validity, reliability, and generalizability in qualitative research.  Journal of family medicine and primary care ,  4 (3), 324–327. https://doi.org/10.4103/2249-4863.161306

Loseke, D.R. (2016). Methodological thinking: basic principles of social research design (2 nd ed). California: Sage.

Palys, T. & Atchison, C. (2021). Research methods in the social and health sciences: Making decisions . California: Sage.

Silverman, D. (2021). Doing qualitative research (6 th ed). California: Sage.

Scribbr. (2020, June 12). How to write a research methodology in 4 Steps. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yplWZs3dqNQ .

Virginia Tech Libraries. (2011, May 31). Qualitative vs quantitative research. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ddx9PshVWXI .

Yilmaz, K. (2013). Comparison of quantitative and qualitative research traditions: Epistemological, theoretical, and methodological differences.  European Journal of Education,   48 (2), 311-325. Retrieved August 25, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org/stable/26357806

References to Embedded Links in the Table

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Bhandari, P. (2021, March 2). An introduction to inferential statistics . Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/statistics/inferential-statistics/

Bhandari, P. (2021, June 3). Population vs sample: what’s the difference? Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/population-vs-sample/

Bhandari, P. (2021, July 7). An introduction to correlational research . Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/correlational-research/

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McCombes, S. (2021, July 16). How to do survey research . Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/survey-research/

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Thomas, L. (2020, May 8). What is a longitudinal study? Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/longitudinal-study/

Thomas, L. (2020, June 5). What is a cross-sectional study? Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/cross-sectional-study/

Thomas, L. (2020, October 2). An introduction to simple random sampling . Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/simple-random-sampling/

Thomas, L. (2020, October 2). How to perform systematic sampling . Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/systematic-sampling/

Thomas, L. (2020, October 12). How to use stratified sampling . Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/stratified-sampling/

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Thomas, L. (2021, August 16). An introduction to cluster sampling . Scribbr. https://www.scribbr.com/methodology/cluster-sampling/ .

• The author has previously published under the name Ann Novogradec. ↵

Showing Theory to Know Theory Copyright © 2022 by Ann Del Bianco is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.22215/stkt/da01

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