• Overview

One of the main functions of the methods section is that it should enable other competent researchers to replicate your study. This means that, on the basis of the information in this section, if other researchers decide to repeat your study procedure with the same variables, they should get the same results. It is unlikely that they will do this just to verify the accuracy of your findings, but they might do it in different situations and with different subjects to find out whether your findings can be generalized or whether they are specific to particular participants and circumstances. For example, are the findings of a study on European adolescent girls and alcohol in 2010 applicable to adolescent boys? Or to a comparable sample of adolescent girls in 2020?

Another function of the methods section is that it gives readers confidence in your findings. The information you provide should be detailed enough for readers to understand that your procedures rigorously conformed to acceptable scientific standards. If they did, then it is likely that your results mean what you claim they mean.

Studies in the social sciences often collect data from a group of people who represent a larger population, by using some sort of research design. If this is the case of your study, you might have a subsection entitled Participants in which you give relevant details about your sample: for example, how many people were in it, the number of males and females, their ages, their socioeconomic status, their education, etc. If you recruited the population yourself, you must also give details about the sampling procedure (random, systematic or convenience sampling, for example) so that readers understand how representative your subset is of the population as a whole. If you did not recruit the subjects yourself, explain the source of your data (perhaps it was collected by other researchers and you will be subjecting it to fresh analysis).

After describing the data or the participants you will be studying, go on to explain what you measured and how you measured it. Be very specific because this is the part of your study that will enable other researchers to replicate it and they have to be able to do exactly what you did. Make sure that you list all the measures you used. If you have administered a standard test, say which one and why you preferred it over other tests. If you have administered a survey, provide the wording of all the questions. You may want to give all this information under subheadings such as Variables, Design, Measures and Procedures.

• Language features

Some sections of the standard IMRaD text are linguistically more varied than others because of their broad focus. This variety is particularly evident in the use of verb forms. For example, the introduction and the discussion, which focus on the research field in general, previous studies, the present study and recommendations for future work, can use all forms of the present, past and future (simple, continuous and perfect), and both the active and passive voices. On the other hand, the methods section has a more limited focus and this, in turn, means that the use of verb forms is also more limited.

Conventionally, researchers describe what they did in this section using the past simple passive and not the first-person, active form.



There are several reasons for this. Firstly, as Joshua Schimel points out, some people who were not authors may have taken part in the work (Schimel, 2012). For example, data may have been collected or instructions given by technicians, assistants, colleagues, friends or acquaintances. Since I or we in a scientific text refer to the author or authors, the use of the passive avoids unnecessarily identifying the agent of every action and enables the author to say exactly what readers need to know: that is to say, “Data were collected” or “Instructions were given”. Secondly, the methods section is the first section that focuses exclusively on the work in hand. Readers are aware of this and do not need to be told the agent of every action because it is obvious (the authors), is not important (someone the authors asked to help them) or distracts from the really important information (what was done). Thirdly, the methods section often describes a lengthy sequence of actions, and the repetition of the same subject (I or we) would be inelegant, annoying and ineffective, in the sense that it would emphasize the agent and not the action. And, finally, because you are describing work that you did and which is now complete, the most appropriate tense for your passive verbs is the past simple.