RESEARCH METHOD COHEN ok

Part Three
Styles of educational research
It is important to distinguish between design,
methodology and instrumentation. Too often
methods are confused with methodology and
methodology is confused with design. Part Two
provided an introduction to design issues and
this part examines different styles, kinds of, and
approaches to, research, separating them from
methods – instruments for data collection. We
identify eight main styles of educational research
in this section, including a new chapter on the
developing field of Internet-based research and
computer usage. Although we recognize that these
are by no means exhaustive, we suggest that they
cover the major styles of research methodology.
These take in quantitative as well as qualitative
research, together with small-scale and large-scale
approaches. As with the previous parts, the key
here is the application of the notion of fitness for
purpose.Wedonotadvocateslavishadherencetoa
single methodology in research; indeed combining
methodologies may be appropriate for the research
in hand. The intention here is to shed light on the
different styles of research, locating them in the
paradigms of research introduced in Part One.