Summary of Chapter 7: Establishing Your Contribution 95
- In the social sciences or humanities it may be necessary to describe both the
research program and the stance you have adopted as researcher. - Understand where your work lies on the dimensions that are appropriate to your
discipline: theoretical or applied, study or case study, and so on. Use this under-
standing to inform your explanation of your intended contribution. - Positioning requires justification. For example, if you decide on a case-study ap-
proach, explain why, and justify your choice of specific case to study; if a long
description of the case is needed, note that you will do this in a separate follow-
ing chapter.
Method:
- Discuss the range of research methods that could be used to test your hypotheses
or answer your questions, and choose the most appropriate. Don’t forget to jus-
tify your choice, even if it is standard for your discipline. - Experimental validation requires an experimental design. Expect to have to ex-
plain it in detail, and also to justify it. Make appropriate choices of measurement
or assessment mechanisms. - ‘Method’ and ‘methodology’ are not the same thing. ‘Method’ refers to spe-
cific techniques and ‘methodology’ refers to the stance you are taking as the
researcher. - If only one method is to be used, describe the research instruments to be used
in implementing it. If more than one method is to be used it is usually better to
defer the descriptions of research instruments to the particular chapters where
you implement the methods and obtain results. - If you have not already described your detailed research procedure in the ‘Re-
search Design’ chapter you should describe it first before you go on to report any
research results.
Organization:
- Design a narrative flow that takes the reader painlessly through the central part
of your thesis—the part that consists of the new ideas that you are arguing for
(and is thus the most unfamiliar). - Be alert to the different narrative structures used in different kinds of thesis.
- Ensure that at all stages you have a clear understanding of the argument you
intend to use for linking of question, data, analysis, and outcome.