A good Methods section provides a complete recipe for your study

A good methods section lists the ingredients necessary to replicate your study, but also describes the techniques used to combine them, and explains the order in which to do so. Take a published article and identify the following:

1.      The ingredients (data) needed to create the measures and data set

2.      How each measure is constructed (ingredients used, the techniques for manipulating the data, the steps in the process for combining them)

3.      How the data are combined in the analyses

4.      How the data are analyzed.

5.      If there are missing ingredients, steps, or techniques, note them. Do you think you could replicate this study based on this information if you had access to the same data?

 Repeat these steps with one of your methods sections. Do you think someone else could replicate your study? If not, identify what’s missing and add it to your methods section.

© 2021 Timothy G. Pollock

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