By Jeff Zuckerman
Dissertation Editor and CSS Faculty Member
One of the most challenging and important sections that
capstone researchers need to write is the methods section. In your proposal
it’s critical to describe what you plan to do and why, or once the research is
completed, what you did and why you did it.
In Walden doctoral studies, that’s Section 2. In
dissertations, it’s Chapter 3. Your task is twofold: You must show enough
details of the research method so that the study can be replicated, and you
need to show that what you did made sense and that your work was conducted
ethically and soundly.
Too often, though, students forget they are writing for a
reader rather than crafting a textbook. As Booth, Columb, and Williams (2003)
advised, put yourself in the shoes of a reader who pleads, “Just tell me
something that I don’t know so that I can better understand the topic of our
common interest” (p. 25).
I used to joke at residencies that, at the microlevel, does
your reader need to know every action you took to enclose a self-addressed
envelope? For example:
The researcher drove her tan 2004 Buick LeSabre missing a
front right hubcap to the U.S. Post Office in Monroeville, PA, purchased 100
first-class stamps featuring famous left-handed U.S. college lacrosse players
and then, after tearing off the backing, placed each stamp 1.55 mm from the
upper right corner of a business-sized self-addressed envelope.
Luckily, most surveys are now done online. No, your reader
does not need what brand of computer you used and whether you bought it at Best
Buy or OfficeMax. And per the 6th edition of the APA manual, you are
required to use first person when describing steps in the study:
I enclosed a self-addressed stamped envelope.
Unnecessary microscopic details aside, the largest chunk of
writing that we readers/editors sometimes snooze through is the pages and pages
of didactic narrative on research methodology. By didactic I mean instructive and preachy: the overwritten history of
quantitative versus qualitative methodologies (often from Creswell), the
paragraphs upon paragraphs on each method you did not choose to use, the textbook language pulled nearly
word-for-word from research books rather than your brief narrative of what
method you chose and why.
We get it: The rubric requires it. And your chair might
want all that. For example, the DBA rubric states you must “justify why [your
method] was used and why other methods were not selected.”
Bottom line? Yes, a detailed, concise narrative of what you
didn’t do and what you did do is needed. But do remember your reader.
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Reference
Booth, W. C.,
Columb, G. G., & Williams, J. M. (2003). The craft of research (2nd ed.). Chicago, IL: University
of Chicago Press.
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