Time for methodology

Gliding towards the end of the third year of my Ph.D. studies, it is perhaps not the most suitable time for rethinking my methodological stance. However, contemplating my work so far while writing the introductory part of my licentiate thesis over past months brought methodology to the front of my agenda.

The seventh version of the introductory part of my licentiate thesis - which is called 'kappa' here in Sweden and aims to map the enclosed articles onto the overall schema of the research program - was sent to the reviewer this morning for a second round of checking and commenting. Questions which arose along the way, however, stimulated me to grasp the opportunity for participating in the course 'Case study methodolog'. The course is organized by Martin Rudberg, professor in construction logistic at Linköping university. Today, the second session of the course was held at the Norrköping campus. As a preparation for this session, the participants - Torbjörn Glad, Andreas Ekeskär and me - had thoroughly read and analyzed a couple of chapters of the book "Case study research" by Robert Yin - a well-known figure in research methodology and the president of Cosmos Corporation.

The session was an educative forum for reflecting over such fundamental concepts as research strategies, generalization through case study research, components of a research design, criteria for choosing among research strategies, data collection methods and different research design arrangements e.g. single-case/multiple-case and holistic/embedded research design...

The subject area of research methodology is ripe with ambiguities and diverging or even conflicting schools of thought. There is no widespread agreement even about the underlying terminologies such as research strategies and research approach and how different concepts in this field should be labeled. Yet, rigor, systematic work, meticulous documentation and measures for continual examination of validity and reliability of the research design could be stipulated as undisputed verses of the ambitious researchers' mantra.