The chapter may be captioned as *research design and methodology* which describes your overall research strategy and how you collected and analysed data.
First subheading should be research design where you define and describe the type of design you chose for your research (exploratory, descriptive, correlational, experimental, diagnostic, etc.). Equally explain why you picked a particular research design over others. Support everything with references.
The next subheading should be the research methodology. “Research methodology is a systematic way to solve a problem. It is a science of studying how research is to be carried out. Essentially, the procedures by which researchers go about their work of describing, explaining and predicting phenomena are called research methodology. It is also defined as the study of methods by which knowledge is gained. Its aim is to give the work plan of research” (Farooq, 2019).
Under methodology, have a subheading for the specific research method you are using; qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods. “Research methods are the various procedures, schemes, steps and algorithms used in research. All the methods used by a researcher during a research study are termed as research methods. They are essentially planned, scientific and value-neutral. They include observations, theoretical procedures, experimental studies, numerical schemes, statistical approaches, etc. Research methods help us collect samples, data and find a solution to a problem. Particularly, business and scientific research methods call for explanations based on collected facts, measurements and observations and not on reasoning alone. They accept only those explanations which can be verified by experiments” (Farooq, 2019). Explain why the specific research method is the best for you research.
Next subheading should be the sources of data. Are you collecting data from primary sources, secondary sources or both and why?
Under sources of data, have subheadings for primary data source(s) and explain where primary data will come from, for example, interviews, focused groups, etc.
Have another subheading for secondary data source(s) and explain where it will come from. For example, books, book chapters, peer-reviewed journal articles etc.
Have a next subheading on how you will collect the primary and secondary data (method of data collection). Note that the method you use to collect the data is different from the sources of the data. Here you describe in the case of primary data that you had 10 focused groups discussions, for example, with these types of research participants over a period of 5 months etc. For secondary data, method of data collection could imply searching databases like google scholar, online libraries etc.
Next should be the instruments you used to collect the data. Notepads, laptops, phones etc. and describe how you used them and for what purposes.
Next should be the study area, if it’s a case study, for example, Cameroon. In addition, the sample size specifying the number of research participants who took part in your research, the sampling method i.e., how you settled on the particular sample size. For example, was it snowball sampling, cluster etc.?
Next is Data transcription. Method you used to transcribe data and how long it took you to transcribe the data.
Next is method of data analysis. Was it thematic, content analysis etc? And why?
Next is ethical considerations addressing issues such as anonymity etc.
And the last should be the limitations of your methodology and design as a whole.