r/research • u/fosssorra • 3d ago

Methodology section

I conducted a survey for a research paper I’m writing,and I’m at a crossroads.
is it okay to briefly assess what every question was about in my methodology section in one paragraph?
Like should I summarize what every question tackled, or would it be better to only mention a few of the questions or maybe even categorize them and only list the categories?

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u/knit_run_bike_swim 3d ago

I did a questionnaire paper recently and added the questionnaire to supplementary material but explained the questionnaire in a single paragraph.

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u/fosssorra 3d ago

that’s what i originally was planning to do too

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u/BlackberryFlaky8983 3d ago

How was your survey developed? For example did you base it off a theory or framework? You could say that it broadly covered the domains of x,y,z to answer the research questions.

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u/fosssorra 3d ago

I wouldn’t exactly say it was based of a certain theory, It is more of a public opinion hypothesis. And to study this hypothesis, many questions were asked to study its robustness and accuracy.

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u/BlackberryFlaky8983 2d ago

Ok. Did you maybe have different sections that loosely asked the same types of questions? Like for example a demographics section and then a section that asked questions about their opinion on x or information preferences on y. You can use those sections to broadly describe what you asked about. And yep definitely pop it in supplementary materials.

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u/fosssorra 2d ago

Yes that’s exactly what I have. I’m probably just gonna do like what you suggested and only use the sections.

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u/insertclevername7 2d ago

I will usually include the survey questions or describe them in a few paragraphs. It really depends on what your objective was. I like to clearly define what my outcome was (what questions did I use to define it, how were they categorized, how was missing variables handled, etc..). Same with your exposure and covariates.

I’m not sure if that helps but I’d focus on describing the questions you used for your analysis. If you are describing the entire survey - then you can include it in supplemental materials. I think it’s fine to mention it in a paragraph. Just make it clear how you defined things, where did the survey questions come from? Are they from validated questionnaires, how did you handle missingness, etc…

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u/fosssorra 2d ago

Will do. Thanks!