comps reading - Introduction: The Research Process

1. Methods: the techniques or procedures used to gather and analyze data related to some research question or hypothesis (e.g., questionnaire, observation, interview, measurement and scaling, sampling, case study, statistical analysis…)

2. Methodology: the strategy, plan of action, process or design lying behind the choice and use of particular methods and linking the choice and use of methods to the desired outcomes (e.g., survey research, experimental research, ethnography, grounded theory, action research, phenomenological research, discourse analysis)

3. Theoretical perspective: the philosophical stance informing the methodology and thus providing a context for the process and grounding its logic and criteria (e.g., positivism/post-positivism; interpretivism such as symbolic interactionism, phenomenology, and hermeneutics; feminism; critical inquiry; postmodernism)

4. Epistemology: the theory of knowledge embedded in the theoretical perspective and thereby in the methodology (e.g., Objectivism, Constructionism, Subjectivism)