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Dear Gavin, Chris, Ken, Teena, Keith an others, I can see where Gavin's argument goes but it doesn't ring a bell. It ascribes more to careful thinking than I see in practice. I'm more convinced that the slip between 'methods' and 'methodology' is based on the individual human advantages of lazy, advantage-grabbing conversational habits of talking. A more plausible and practical explanation, for me at least, goes as follow: 1. All theses have been required to have a section in which the candidate demonstrates their competence in the study and choice of methods of analysis and information collection. This has been naturally and obviously titled 'Methodology' (the study of methods). 2. This title of the chapter is commonly used in discussion and idle chat in a wide variety of ways. For example, 'Have you done your Methodology yet?' 3. These sentences using 'Methodology' that make accurate sense to the word-careful are easily literally interpreted in other more simplistic ways by learner and word-careless that enable them to think and act to reduce the effort of learning, thinking and study as well as to gain other personal advantages such as from posing. 4. One outcome is those who do not know start to think that 'Methodology' == 'Methods' 5. This is naturally followed by a reduction in quality of the PhD in depth of understanding and quality of outcomes in many ways. This is in part because it removes the need to study method and in part because it simplifies understanding of individual methods. 6. A further quality reducing issue that follows the same path of lazy and careless simplification is the way that the necessarily separate ways of thinking of the different areas of methods associated with data collection, data processing, data analysis, concept formation, conceptual analysis, epistemological analysis and ontological analysis become conflated into 'research methodology'. This is also done to gain the 'benefits' of lazy and careless thinking and reduction in effort of understanding. 7. The multiple individual advantages (for academics and students) of taking this position have lead to it being used widely (the false 'benefits' include reduction in difficulty of PhD and research in general, easier teaching of research methodology, more simplistic conversation requiring less care, more simplistic view of the different types of methods and their differences, ease of overclaiming knowledge and status, and boasting etc). I feel the above offers is a more likely explanation of the phenomena on four grounds: a) The driving processes are obvious and causal b) There are obvious and substantial gains to participating individuals c) I've seen it happen and done it myself b) It is easy to test and the test demonstrates the process I agree with Gavin that the consequences in terms of error and epistemological tension are less in the science disciplines, but that doesn't offer an explanation of 'why' in terms of human behavior and its messy carelessness and advantage seeking. The remedy is increasing the need. Thoughts? Best wishes, Terry -----Original Message----- From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Gavin Melles Sent: Sunday, 14 December 2008 1:07 AM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: Inventing Research Methods Hi Chris, Ken and others These are important questions and one discipline which can be helpful is to maintain the distinction between methods (i.e. interview) and methodology (qualitative, quantitative, mixed methods). While many technical and empirical sciences, e.g. medicine and engineering, use both terms synonymously this is because a tradition and convergence on ways of doing things leaves no doubt as to the overall epistemological and ontological commitments of such fields - in short, such fields (I speak from working with an engineering faculty for two years and medicine for three years) talk of research designs, methods, methodology, relatively indiscriminately. In the social sciences (I'll include my own fields of anthropology, education, but not linguistics), there is a real need to rationalize, i.e. make explicit the methodological commitments one has, which themselves serve as a logic or rationale for methods one uses. Method Invention, in the sense of coming up with new ways of gathering data or more generally accessing the world, is a relatively unconstrained enterprise, i.e. we need put no limits on it, so even cultural probes, visualisation strategies, etc., will be acceptable in as much as there is some coherence with the epistemological and ontological commitments that inform our methodological affiliations as researchers. For example, I have made the case in two recent articles (Design Issues http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/abs/10.1162/desi.2008.24.4.88 and Artifact http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a906181402~db=all~order=pag e; I also alluded to the value of pragmatism in a previous life of applied linguistics http://ahh.sagepub.com/cgi/content/refs/4/3/283 and for qualitative methodology http://search.informit.com.au/fullText;dn=126256420458728;res=E-LIBRARY) that pragmatism - properly understood - provides such a methodological rationale for mixed methods in design research. Hope this contributes Dr Gavin Melles Research Fellow, Faculty of Design Swinburne University of Technology Office: 613 92146851 Skype: gavin.melles Member of Australian French Association for Science & Technology (AFAS) Associate Fellow, Communications Research Institute (CRI) http://www.communication.org.au/ Regional Council Member (2008-2011) for Adult, Community and Further Education AFCE), Victoria