Types of Methodology

In one line

The methodology is the kind of question a study is asking; the method is how it collects its material; the tool is the instrument it collects it with.

In the wording a student can write in an exam: the type of methodology is the design of a study, determined by the kind of question it seeks to answer. Exploratory or formulative studies investigate a subject about which little is known, in order to formulate the problem. Descriptive studies establish accurately what is the case. Diagnostic studies establish why a condition exists and what is associated with it. Comparative studies examine two or more cases in order to establish what varies with what. Experimental studies manipulate a factor deliberately in order to test a causal hypothesis.

The three words MU uses, kept apart

One study uses all three. A descriptive study of legal aid (methodology) may use the survey method, employing a schedule administered by interviewers to a sample (tools).

1. Exploratory or formulative

When it is used. Where the subject is new or little studied, so that the researcher does not yet know enough to frame a precise question. Its object is to formulate the problem, not to answer it.

How it proceeds. A review of existing literature and records; discussion with people who have experience of the field, sometimes called an experience survey; and the examination of a few illuminating instances.

Its characteristics: flexible, unstructured, small in scale, and productive of hypotheses rather than conclusions.

Indian example. Before any survey of the working conditions of platform-based delivery workers could be designed, somebody had to establish how the work is actually organised, who the parties to it are and what the workers themselves regard as their problems. That preliminary work is exploratory.

Its limitation: it proves nothing and cannot be generalised, and treating its impressions as findings is the commonest abuse of it.

2. Descriptive

When it is used. Where the question is what is the case: how many, how often, of what kind, among whom, where.

How it proceeds. With a precisely defined population, a carefully drawn sample, standardised instruments and, usually, quantitative analysis. Precision is its whole virtue, so the design must be rigid where the exploratory design is flexible.

Its characteristics: structured, planned in advance, larger in scale, and aimed at accuracy rather than explanation.

Indian example. The Census; the National Family Health Survey; the National Sample Survey; and, in a socio-legal setting, a study establishing the number of undertrial prisoners in a state's prisons and their distribution by offence and by duration of detention.