1. Selecting a methodology
Scholarship in Health Education Research and Innovation (SHERI) course
Rachel H. Ellaway
Community Health Sciences Office of Health and Medical Education Scholarship

2. The process of empiricism
Observe the world and identify phenomena for study
Describe phenomena in increasing breadth and depth
Identify relationships and differences within and between phenomena
Build models, develop theories and test them, break them, improve them
Iteratively refine models and theories to:
Explain the underlying structure/function of the phenomena
Predict how these phenomena will behave

3. Methods and methodology
Methodology: “the research design or plan that shapes the methods to be used in the study. The methodology provides a rationale for the choice of methods used in a study” Illing 2010
Methods: “the techniques used for data collection”
questions
methodology
methods
Illing J. Thinking about research: frameworks, ethics and scholarship. In Swanwick (Ed). Understanding medical education: evidence, theory and practice. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell: 2010.

4. Developing a methodology
Needs to be able to answer research/study questions
Should be grounded in theory and in ontological and epistemological paradigms
Practical questions
What kinds of data do you need?
How will you analyze them?
What is practical, allowable, parsimonious?
What methodologies have others used?
Do your skills and resources align with methodology?

5. Dimensions of methodology
Overall strategy
Problems
Hypotheses
Questions
Conceptual grounding
Data collection methods
Data analysis methods
Synthesis methods
Reporting

6. Modes of inquiry: METRICS
Metascholarship
Methods, tools, publication, translation
Evaluation
Value, good/bad, better/worse
Translation
Things from elsewhere, effectiveness
Research
Inductive knowledge and theory testing, generating
Innovation
New things, ideas
Conceptual
Deductive knowledge and theory, critiques
Synthesis
What do we know, how do we know, what do we not know

7. Exemplars Metascholarship Bibliometrics, discourse analysis Evaluation
Audit, program evaluation, Kirkpatrick levels
Translation
Effectiveness studies, adaptation
Research
Efficacy studies, experiments, trials
Innovation
Design-based research
Conceptual
Instruments, frameworks, critiques
Synthesis
Systematic review, meta-analysis

8. Methodological implications
Ontological
Exists
What kind of thing
Epistemological
What can we know
How can we know
Axiological
Beliefs and values

9. QQ Wars Quantitative Qualitative Multiple - parallel
How much?
Qualitative
How well?
Multiple - parallel
Mixed - integrated
Many paradigms and stances …
Creswell, J (2003). Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches. Sage.

10. Choosing between methodologies
Creswell’s ‘among 5’ qualitative methodologies:
Grounded theory
Ethnography
Phenomenology
Case study
Narrative research
Creswell J. (2013). Qualitative Inquiry & Research Design: Choosing Among Five Approaches. 3rd ed. SAGE.

11. Paradigm vs pragmatic Adopt/align established
Strengths
Weaknesses
Pragmatically borrow/adapt

12. From methodologies to methods
Alignment
Logical top down and bottom up
See the separate presentation on methods

13. Summary Your methodology is your overall inquiry strategy
Select methods within a methodological frame
Many methodological positions
Each with strengths, weaknesses, implications