Methodological fit

Do you know what methodology you should use for your research project?

If there is a lot of extensive literature for a topic, then, according to Edmonson and McManus (2007) one could make a contribution to a mature theory then quantitative methodology would be the best methodological fit. If one strays and does a qualitative methodology in this case, they could run into reinventing the wheel error and may fail to fill a gap in the body of knowledge.

If there is just a little literature for a topic, then one could make a contribution to a nascent theory via qualitative methodologies, which in turn would be the best methodological fit (Edmonson & McManus, 2007).  If you do a quantitative research project here, you may be jumping the gun and running into possible false conclusions caused by confounding variables and may still fail to fill the gap in the body of knowledge.

Finally, one can stray from both pure qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and go into a mixed-methods study, and this can occur when there is enough research that the body of knowledge isn’t considered nascent, but not enough to be considered mature (Edmonson & McManus, 2007). Going one route here would do an injustice in filling in the gap in the body of knowledge, because you may be missing key insights that the each part of the mixed methodology (both qualitative and quantitative) can bring to the field.

So, prior to deciding which methodology you should choose, you should do an in-depth literature review.  You cannot pick an appropriate methodology without knowing the body of knowledge.

Hint: The more quantitative research articles you find in a body of knowledge, the more likely your project will be dealing with either a mixed-methods (low number of articles) or a quantitative method (high number of articles) project. If you see none, you may be working on a qualitative methodology.

Reference

• Edmondson, A., & McManus, S. (2007). Methodological fit in management field research. Academy of Management Review, 32(4), 1155–1179. CYBRARY.