Wednesday, August 22, 2007

Methods and Methodologies - What's the Difference?

I have recently read "The Erosion of a method: examples from grounded theory", a paper by Thomas Greckhamer and Mirka Koro-Ljungberg. It is a useful critique of Grounded Theory but is equally relevant to any research methodology.

All research methods it seems to me have at least one significant Achilles heel. The authors perhaps suggest that Grounded Theory was under-theorised in terms of its epistemological foundations although the its methods are quite clearly defined.

The authors state that they 'agree with Crotty (1998) who defines methodology as the 'strategy, palan of action, process or design lying behind the choice and use of particular methods and linking the choice of methods to the desired outcomes'.

They state that the main outcome of Grounded Theory is theory generation (as opposed to testing a theory for example) and the chosen methods, coding, sampling, memoing etc, are the link from the data to the theory.

They also state another view of methodology as having a guiding theory or theoretical perspective on the research project.

Later the authors state, in terms of the original form of grounded theory, that it was essentially positivist in nature. Later on other versions of Grounded theory came into existence such as one that used constructivist notions. In this sense the theory is not grounded in the data but grounded in the researchers analysis and interpretation of the data. Hence instead of only one theory describing and predicting the data there may exist many. Since I do not believe in objective reality as existing independent of our interpretation of the world I am taking the constructivist's view as the underlying theoretical approach to adopt in my PhD.

Thus, have I now secured the methodology. Maybe? I think Maxwell 'Qualitative Research Design' will be worth turning back to: chapter 1 - A Model for Qualitative Research Design and Chapter 3 - Conceptual Framework? What do you think is going on?