Tagged / interdisciplinary research

Methods or Methodology?

international, PG research

Yesterday our latest methodological paper ‘Methods or Methodology: Terms That Are Too Often Confused’ appeared online. [1]  We recently published a methods paper outlining the difference between Methods and Methodology as so many postgraduate students manage to get it wrong or don’t understand the distinction between the two.  There is a distinct difference between methodology and methods in research. However, too many students, researchers, and authors of academic papers do not seem to pay attention to the crucial difference. This is true not only in education research but also in many other academic disciplines. In simple terms, the term methods refers to the research tools and techniques; for example, in the qualitative field, interviews are a tool to collect data, and in the quantitative field, a questionnaire-based survey is an example of a data collection tool. Methodology is a broader concept as it refers to the overall approach to the research, includes a justification for this approach, and links to research philosophy, i.e., how we produce knowledge. This methodological note aims to explain the confusion, drawing on examples from the published literature in education research and beyond. It also considers the complexities and crossovers. The final section ends with key advice to researchers and authors on key mistakes to avoid regarding the difference between methods and methodology, including covering this in early supervision discussions.

Our interdisciplinary team, based in the UK and Nepal, comprises Dr. Orlanda Harvey in BU’s Department of Sociology & Social Work, Dr. Pramod Regmi in BU’s Department of Nursing Science, Dr. Preeti Mahato from Royal Holloway, University of London, Dr. Shovita Dhakal Adhikari, London Metropolitan University, Dr. Rolina Dhital, based at Health Action & Research in Nepal and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in BU’s Department of Midwifery & Health Sciences.  In addition it is worth mentioning that both Preeti and Shovita are both former member of staff in the Faculty of Health & Social Sciences (FHSS) at BU.  Finally, although the official publication date is Sept 2023, it only appeared online yesterday.  This new methods paper is part of growing series of methods papers by members of this team of academics [2-12].

 

References:

  1. Harvey, O., Regmi, P. R., Mahato, P., Dhakal Adhikari, S., Dhital, R., van Teijlingen E. (2023) Methods or Methodology: Terms That Are Too Often Confused. Journal of Education & Research, 13(2): 94-105.
  2. Regmi, P.R., Waithaka, E., Paudyal, A., Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2016) Guide to the design and application of online questionnaire surveys. Nepal Journal of Epidemiology 6(4): 640-644. http://www.nepjol.info/index.php/NJE/article/view/17258
  3. Regmi, PR., Aryal, N., Kurmi, O., Pant, PR., van Teijlingen, E, Wasti, PP. (2017) Informed consent in health research: challenges and barriers in low-and middle-income countries with specific reference to Nepal, Developing World Bioethics 17(2):84-89.
  4. Mahato, P., Angell, C., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P.P. (2018) Using Mixed-methods Research in Health & Education in Nepal, Journal of Health Promotion Official Publication of Health Education Association of Nepal (HEAN), 6: 45-48.
  5. van Teijlingen, E., Regmi, P., Adhikary, P., Aryal, N., Simkhada, P. (2019). Interdisciplinary Research in Public Health: Not quite straightforward. Health Prospect, 18(1), 4-7. https://doi.org/10.3126/hprospect.v18i1.19337
  6. Dhakal Adhikari, S., van Teijlingen, E., Regmi,P., Mahato, P., Simkhada, B., Simkhada, P. (2020) The presentation of academic self in the digital age: the role of electronic databases, International Journal of Social Sciences & Management 7(1):38-41.
  7. Shanker, S., Wasti, S.P., Ireland, J., Regmi, P., Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2021) The Interdisciplinary Team Not the Interdisciplinarist: Reflections on Interdisciplinary Research, Europasian Journal of Medical Sciences 3(2): 1-5. https://doi.org/10.46405/ejms.v3i2.317
  8. Arnold, R., Gordon, C., Way, S., Mahato, P., van Teijlingen, E. (2022) Why use Appreciative Inquiry? Lessons learned during COVID-19 in a UK maternity service, European Journal of Midwifery 6 (May): 1-7. https://doi.org/10.18332/ejm/147444
  9. Mahato, P., Tamang, P., Simkhada, B., Wasti, S. P., Devkota, B., Simkhada, P., van Teijlingen, E.R. (2022) Reflections on health promotion fieldwork in Nepal: Trials and tribulations. Journal of Health Promotion 10(1): 5–12. https://doi.org/10.3126/jhp.v10i1.50978
  10. Khatiwada, S., Gautam, P., Koju, A., Niraula, B., Khanal, G., Sitaula, A., Lamichhane, J., Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E (2023). Patient and Public Engagement in Health Research: Learning from UK Ideas. Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences, 8(1): 28–35. https://doi.org/10.3126/jmmihs.v8i1.57268
  11. Thapa, R., Regmi, P., van Teijlingen, E., Heaslip, V. (2023) Researching Dalits and health care: Considering positionality, Health Prospect 21(1): 6-8.
  12. Harvey, O., van Teijlingen, E., Parrish, M. (2024) Using a range of communication tools to interview a hard-to-reach population, Sociological Research Online 29(1): 221–232 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/13607804221142212

Bid-generating Sandpit: Interdisciplinary Research towards Sustainable Development Goals

Illustration of a lightbulb with a group of people inside around a circular table, with computers and papers. They are clearly working together.

Register here

Calling early career researchers (including practice-led) for two days of sparking ideas, discovering new project partners, and developing interdisciplinary funding bids!

30 April – 1 May 2024

Bournemouth

Day 1 begins at 1230, Day 2 finishes at 1630, to enable travel from external universities.

The British Academy Early Career Researcher Network and Bournemouth University’s Centre for the Study of Conflict, Emotion, and Social Justice invite applicants for a two-day research collaboration, networking, and grant development event.

Participate in dynamic and interactive sessions to develop innovative research concepts addressing any of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UNSDGs), leading to funding bids across institutions and disciplines. Your goal is to form an interdisciplinary project team and build a funding proposal in only two days.

This two-day sandpit will be supplemented with two online follow-up sessions (summer and autumn 2024) to share your project progress and experiences.

We welcome any South West-based early career (as you choose to define it) researcher, artist, practitioner or anyone with a general interest in sustainability and emerging interdisciplinary projects. You must be based at one of the South West Cluster Universities. You should be keen to work in a multidisciplinary team, and willing to commit to attending the full sandpit, on both days. No prior experience of research funding is required.

To secure your spot in the Sandpit, please complete and submit the following application – note that all participants must commit to attending both full days:

APPLY HERE BY 8 MARCH 2024: https://forms.office.com/e/AkaeieQHKx

The event is facilitated by Dr. Catalin Brylla and Dr. Lyle Skains, with advisors to be drawn from senior Bournemouth University staff based on participant disciplines and interests.

If you have any queries, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Ageing and Dementia Research Forum – 26th January – Accessible Tourism

Fusion, Research Ethics, Research Integritiy

Details of the next ADRC ageing and dementia research forum are listed below. The forum is an opportunity for staff and PhD students to get together to chat about research and share experiences in a safe and supportive environment. Specific topics are discussed but there is also time for open discussion to mull over aspects of research such as project ideas and planning, ethical considerations and patient and public involvement.

Date, time, and campus Research areas
26th January 2023

15.30-16.45

BG601, Bournemouth Gateway

Lansdowne Campus

 ‘Accessible Tourism for Ageing and Dementia travellers’

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis and Dr Daisy Fan

Please confirm attendance by email to adrc@bournemouth.ac.uk

If you would like to discuss your research ideas at a future meeting, please email Michelle mheward@bournemouth.ac.uk

We look forward to seeing you there.

Ageing and Dementia Research Centre

SCRAMBLE EVENT : Come along to the ESRC Explore people’s relationships with digital technologies session

Funding opportunities

The ESRC have pre-announced the following call: Explore people’s relationships with digital technologies, discussed at the funding development briefing this week.

Who should attend?

All are welcome with an interest in exploring relations with digital technologies. This call should be social science-led, with at least 50% of the programme falling within ESRC’s remit. But to enable approaches to the challenge of understanding our relationships with technology, it should also look widely across disciplines, drawing on expertise from fields such as:

  • the humanities
  • computer science
  • software engineering
  • mathematical sciences.

RDS will be running a brainstorming session on the 10th November 13:00 -14:30. It will be an opportunity to identify potential collaborators/ themes for this network funding call. The session will be hosted on Zoom here

ACTION REQUIRED: Ahead of the event, we invite you to discuss your interests, potential collaborators, project ideas on Padlet. As ideas get added we can start to identify potential themes prior to the session. You can access the Padlet here.

Agenda:

13:00- 13:30      Information on the call and ESRC delivery plan overview.

13:30 – 14:15    Discussion around emerging themes from Padlet and potential collaborations.

14:15 – 14:30    Discussion about next steps.

If you have any queries or are unsure as to whether you ought to come along, please email your faculty facilitator in the first instance or Alexandra Pekalski apekalski@bournemouth.ac.uk .

New Book on Using Interactive Digital Narrative for Health & Science Communication

Book coverNew publication: Using Interactive Digital Narrative for Health & Science Communication

I’m delighted to announce that my new book publishes this week, as it provides an excellent example of the kinds of things we’re trying to do here at Bournemouth through the Sustainable Storytelling Lab and the Science, Health, and Data Communications Research Group: harness the power of narrative storytelling to effect positive behaviour change related to the UN SDGs. It also offers an overview of how two very interdisciplinary teams formed (thanks to a Crucible program) and established successful patterns of working, despite our vastly different spheres of expertise.

Book description:

Both the United Nations and the World Health Organization stress the need to address numerous increasingly urgent ‘global challenges’, including climate change and ineffectiveness of medication for communicable diseases.

Despite climate change resulting from human activity, most humans feel their contribution is minimal; thus any effort made toward reducing individual carbon footprint is futile. Likewise, individual patients feel their health is their own problem; current increases in outbreaks of formerly controllable diseases like measles and tuberculosis show that this is not the case. There is a dire need to instil a stronger sense of personal responsibility, to act as individuals to resolve global issues, and the pilot studies presented in Using Interactive Digital Narrative in Science and Health Education offer an entertainment-as-education approach: interactive digital narrative.

The researchers on these teams cross diverse disciplinary boundaries, with backgrounds in chemical engineering, microbiology, romantic studies, film studies, digital design, pedagogy, and psychology. Their approach in Using Interactive Digital Narrative in Science and Health Education to interdisciplinary research is discussed herein, as is the practice-based approach to crafting the interactive narratives for health and science communication and for specific audiences and contexts.

Interdisciplinary Public Health

international, open access, Publishing, Research Integritiy, writing

Yesterday the Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences published our editorial ‘Public Health is truly interdisciplinary’ [1].  This editorial was largely written to counteract some of the jurisdictional claims made in Nepal by certain people in Public Health.  These claims express themselves in arguments around the question whether Public Health is a single academic discipline or profession or whether it is a broad profession comprising many different academic disciplines.  There are two quite distinct and opposing views. Some argue that Public Health is a broad-ranging single discipline covering sub-disciplines such as Epidemiology, Management, Public Health Practice, Health Psychology, Medical Statistics, Sociology of Health & Illness and Public Health Medicine.  Those who support this argument, typically see: (a) Public Health is the overarching dominant discipline, which brings these sub-disciplines together; and (b) that a true Public Health practitioner amalgamates all these individual elements.  Others argue that Public Health is more an overarching world view or  interdisciplinary approach for wide-ranging group of professionals and academics [2]. In this view some Public Health professionals are first trained as clinicians, others as psychologists, health economists, health management, statisticians, or demographers, and so on and have later specialised in Public Health.

However,  their are people in the field claiming that Public Health is a single discipline that can only /or even best be practice and taught by those with an undergraduate degree in Public Health.  Basically suggesting you you need a Public Health degree to practice or teach the discipline.  Our editorial argues that this latter view suggests a rather limited understanding of the broad church that is Public Health.

This latest editorial is co-authored by Dr. Sharada P. Wasti in Nepal, Prof. Padam Simkhada, who is based at the University of Huddersfield and BU Visiting Faculty and Prof. Edwin van Teijlingen in the Centre for Midwifery, Maternal & Perinatal Health (CMMPH).  Both articles listed below are Open Access and free available to readers across the globe.

 

References:

  1. Wasti, S.P., van Teijlingen, E., Simkhada, P. (2020) Public Health is truly interdisciplinary. Journal of Manmohan Memorial Institute of Health Sciences 6(1): 21-22.
  2. van Teijlingen, E., Regmi, P., Adhikary, P., Aryal, N., Simkhada, P. (2019). Interdisciplinary Research in Public Health: Not quite straightforward. Health Prospect, 18(1), 4-7.