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Tools and Methods

Understanding Media Studies
September 22, 2014
My cart o tools at the National
Archives and Records
Administration
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Methods
Methodology
Theoretical
Perspective
Epistemology
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METHODS: the techniques or procedures used to gather and
analyze data related to some research question or hypotheses

METHODOLOGY: the strategy, plan of action, process or
design lying behind the choice and use of particular methods and
linking the choice and use of methods to the desired outcomes

THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE: perspective: the
philosophical stance informing the methodology and thus
providing a context for the process and grounding its logic and
criteria

EPISTEMOLOGY: the theory of knowledge embedded in the
theoretical perspective and thereby in the methodology

(Michael Crotty, The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research Process
(Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998): 3)
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Epistemologies
Objectivism
Subjectivism
Constructionism

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Theoretical Perspectives
Positivist
Post-Positivist
Pragmatist
Interpretivist
Participatory
Postmodern
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Inevitably, we bring a number of assumptions
to our chosen methodology. We need, as best
we can, to state what those assumptions are
How, then, do we take account of these
assumptions and justify them? By expounding
our theoretical perspective, that is, our view of
the human world and social life within that
world, wherein such assumptions are
grounded.

(Crotty 7)

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(Crotty 5)
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(Crotty 5)
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Via Tempo tico: http://www.tempoetico.com/temethodology.html
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Via Fletcher
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Johnson &
Christensen 2004
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Via Creswell
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Via Reboot:
http://bit.ly/eipkb
R
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Practice / Production is research

if and only if it is (1) a systematic investigation, (2)
conducted intentionally, (3) to acquire new knowledge,
understanding, insights, etc., (4) justified, and (5)
communicated, (6) about a subject (71)


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Design / Creative Practice as
Research:

the method or methodology must always include
an explicit understanding of how the practice
contributes to the inquiry and research is
distinguished from other forms of practice by
that explicit understanding

(quoted on Scrivener 74)

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Via Fletcher
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Why bother studying methodology? Why not just
sit down and work out for ourselves how we go
about it?
In the end, that is precisely what we have to
do. Yet a study of how other people have gone
about the task of human inquiry serves us well and
is surely indispensable. Attending to recognized
research designs and their various theoretical
underpinnings exercises a formative influence upon
us. It awakens us to ways of research we would
never otherwise have conceived of. It makes us
much more aware of what is possible in research...
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Even so, it is by no means a matter of plucking a
methodology off the shelf. We acquaint ourselves with the
various methodologies. We evaluate their presuppositions. We
weight their strengths and weaknesses. Having done all that
and more besides, we still have to forge a methodology that
will meet our particular purposes in this research. One of the
established methodologies may suit the task that confronts us.
Or perhaps none of them do and we find ourselves drawing
on several methodologies, molding them into a way of
proceeding that achieves the outcomes we look to. Perhaps we
need to be more inventive still and create a methodology that
in many respects is quite new.

(Crotty 14)
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Methodolatry (n): common form of
academic idolatry; glorification of the god
Method; boxing knowledge into
prefabricated fields, thereby hiding threads
of connectedness, hindering New
Discoveries, preventing the raising of New
Questions, erasing ideas that do not fit into
Respectable Categories of Questions and
Answers

(Daly 1987)

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I use multiple methods to give greater rigor,
reliability and depth to the work I do. Each
element is designed both to test and to
complement the findings of other elements.
The different methods add layers of
information but also provide a means of
identifying inconsistencies and weaknesses.

(Bicknell 283-4)

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Sarah Bicknell, Here to Help: Evaluation and Effectiveness In Eilean Hooper-
Greenhill, Ed., Museum, Media, Message (Museum Meanings) (Routledge, 1999): 283-
4.
Virginia Crisco, Chris W. Gallagher, Deborah Minter, Katie Hupp Stahlnecker &
John Talbird, Graduate Education As Education: The Pedagogical Arts of
Institutional Critique Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language,
Composition, and Culture 3:3 (2003): 359-376.
Michael Crotty, The Foundations of Social Research: Meaning and Perspective in the Research
Process (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1998).
Mary Daly, Websters First Intergalactic Wickedary of the English Language (Trafalgar
Square Publishing, 1987).
Michael D. Gunzenhauser & Cynthia I. Gerstl-Pepin, Engaging Graduate
Education: A Pedagogy for Epistemological and Theoretical Diversity The Review
of Higher Education 29:3 (Spring 2006): 319-346.
Malcolm McCullough, Abstracting Craft: The Practiced Digital Hand (Cambridge, MA:
MIT Press, 1996).
Richard Sennett, The Craftsman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008).