Karen O'Reilly

When designing a research project, it is really useful to clarify important aspects of your methodology before going on to describe the actual methods that you will (or might) use – even if you only do this for yourself. 

Methodology is the understanding (ology) of how the research will be approached, the logic (informed by philosophical debates and considerations) that informs and shapes the actual methods used, how and when, as well as other decisions around sampling, ethics, and so on. 

Methods, alternatively, are the means through which data are collected or generated, the practical steps employed to achieve your aims.

Thinking about Methodology 

When it comes to thinking about methodology, you can start by consulting a few good textbooks on the philosophy of social sciences, or a range of methods textbooks, to get an overview of the topic. However, the philosophy of social science is a vast field; it can be a bit daunting, not least because there is a lack of consensus around how certain terms are used. 

In my book Qualitative Research Methods for Everyone, I try to give succinct definitions for some of the key terms, including positivism, interpretivism, phenomenology, hermeneutics, relativism, realism, and practice theory (or structuration). I have also tried to provide a path through some of the muddy sediment of philosophical thought in my book Ethnographic Methods. I rely quite heavily (and unashamedly) on the wonderful Philosophy of Social Science, by Benton and Craib (2023). 

Here’s a little taster: “phenomenology, in its simplest application, means obtaining the actors’ point of view, tapping into their lived experiences, feelings, and meanings, how they relate to the world” (O’Reilly 2025: 20)

But you can also take a more pragmatic approach, by simply asking yourself (or your team) how the things you are interested in might be learned about. What would count as evidence or knowledge, for example, of children’s actions, of people’s choices, of community rules, of norms, of gaps in knowledge? Thinking your methodology through like this works very well for achieving coherence for your project and for clarifying why you chose what methods. 

Thinking about methods 

When it comes to thinking about methods, I advocate a toolkit approach (O’Reilly 2025). 

A toolkit is a collection of expert skills, knowledge, procedures, tools, or information.

The toolkit logic asks you to put a range of potential methods in a virtual toolkit and make them available as possibilities to consider as relevant for your project. In my toolkit I have put interviews, focus groups, ethnography, and creative methods. For each method you consider, I recommend spending a bit of time thinking about what it can offer, what insights it can (and cannot) yield. For example, interviews give participants the opportunity to think through and express how they understand things, what they mean to them, what they have experienced. But they do not necessarily tell you what a person actually did or would do. They are not so useful at looking at practices. 

Further Reading 

Benton, T. and Craib I. (2023) Philosophy of Social Science: The Philosophical Foundations of Social Thought 3rd edn, Bloomsbury Academic.

O’Reilly, K. (2012a) Ethnographic Methods, 2nd edn, London: Routledge.