• How (describe) and Why (justify) study was conducted
• Blueprint of your (final) research design for others who may want to build on your work
• Establish research philosophy and understanding of theory (FAM is mostly interpretive, but can have positivist components)
• Detail all the important methodological choices (what/how) with rationale (why) e.g. Qual, quant, mixed? e.g. Sampling strategy - How you selected participants or collected data, your approach to analysing data
• Discuss limitations and problems/mitigations openly (demonstrates your understanding!)

How does this relate to my pilot project (FAM4008F)??

• Ask supervisor for guidance!

• Refer to (and cite!) your pilot study & findings, discuss briefly as pilot and precursor to main study

• Methodology needs to expand substantially on what you did in the pilot project, for example:

• Larger sample, new and improved approach to same method, additional (sub)question

• Additional method, additional (sub)question

• Remind reader of focus/aims/questions,
• Brief orienting roadmap
• Detail & Justify Methodology/ies

• Underpins other choices
• Interpretivism (importance of observer, each observer interprets reality uniquely and subjectively) OR (less often) Positivism (one reality exists separately from the observer, who strives for objectivity)

• Inductive (exploratory, start with data) OR Deductive (confirmatory, start with theory/hypothesis)?
• Qual, quant or mixed?

• e.g. Case studies (detail about selected cases, not trying to generalise), ethnography (rich observations, naturalistic), interviews (perceptions, narratives), content analysis
• Justify why you chose those strategies

• Usually FAM projects are Non-probability (non-random e.g. purposive, convenience, snowball) but content analysis can be Probability (random/representative)
• Units of analysis (content analysis)

How you chose participants/collected data - Query or manual selection of posts or cases on social media - Interviews, focus groups, participant observations etc. - Explain how these strategies align with your research design

• Qual - content, thematic, discourse, visual analysis
• Quant - Usu descriptive statistics (not required!) - Summarise data using central tendency, variability, and distribution (tables of frequency distribution, pie, bar charts)
• Data preparation (transcription, translation) and what software used e.g. NVivo, 4CAT, AI etc.

• Review ethical decision making
• Your positionality, what brought you to the topic, how your identity influenced the study, what you’ve learned on the journey

• Being critical is a strength of a researcher
• Limited time/resources, trade-offs and false starts are normal
• How did you mitigate issues that arose?

• Brief summary of key decisions,
• No new information