How to Write a Methodology Section
A methodology section states how you collected or generated the data and how you analyzed it, in enough detail that a knowledgeable reader can judge validity and, with the data, reproduce the results. The USC Libraries writing guide and the ICMJE Recommendations (January 2026) both treat those two jobs as the section's purpose. This page is the writing how-to for that one IMRAD part. It is not how to write the whole research paper, not how to write a research proposal (a future-tense plan; use SPIRIT 2025 if that plan is a randomised-trial protocol), and not how to present data (results).
By CitationEasy Editorial Team23 min read
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How to Write a Methodology Section: Quick Answer
Name the assignment and the design first. A completed empirical paper uses past tense. A proposal uses future tense. Then pick the reporting checklist that matches the design and the product: APA Style JARS for psychology and related social science, CONSORT 2025 for a completed randomized trial, SPIRIT 2025 for that trial's protocol, STROBE for an observational epidemiology study, or PRISMA 2020 for a systematic review. Write design, participants or data sources, materials, procedure, analysis, and ethics. Justify the choices. Do not invent a sample, an IRB number, or a finding to make the page look finished.
Copy-ready starting templates (not invented studies)
Assignment sentence:
This [empirical paper / thesis chapter / proposal] reports a [quantitative / qualitative / mixed-methods] [design] that asked [question].
Design sentence:
I used a [experiment / survey / interview / archival / mixed] design because [question] requires [what that design can show] rather than [what a rejected design cannot].
Sample sentence:
Participants were [who], recruited from [where], using [sampling method], with inclusion criteria [list] and exclusion criteria [list].
Instrument sentence:
The primary measure was [named, published instrument], cited from its manual or validation paper; secondary measures were [list].
Analysis sentence:
Prespecified analyses were [tests or qualitative procedures]. Exploratory analyses, if any, are labelled as such.
Ethics sentence:
An independent review body approved the protocol ([board name and ID if you have one]). Participants gave [written / verbal] informed consent.
Proposal tense swap:
Replace every completed-action verb with will: "We will recruit," "Participants will complete," "Data will be analysed."
Cite the instruments, designs, and software you actually used. The CitationEasy generator can format those records later; it cannot invent a protocol you never ran. Use how to write a literature review for the prior-work section that motivates the method, and active versus passive voice if the draft hides who did what.
What a Methodology Section Is
USC's guide Organizing Your Social Sciences Research Paper opens the methodology page with the definition this page uses. The first sentence is about methods; the next two name the questions the section must answer and the tense it uses.
USC Libraries, “The Methodology”
The methods section describes actions taken to investigate the research problem and the rationale for the application of specific procedures or techniques used to identify, select, process, and analyze information applied to understanding the problem, thereby, allowing the reader to critically evaluate a study’s overall validity and reliability.
The methodology section of a research paper answers two main questions: How was the data collected or generated? And, how was it analyzed? The writing should be direct and precise and always written in the past tense.
Richard H. Kallet's 2004 article in Respiratory Care (49(10), 1229–1232) is the methods-writing paper USC cites. His opening and his four-part job description are the clinical-science version of the same rule.
Kallet, “How to Write the Methods Section of a Research Paper” (2004)
The methods section of a research paper provides the information by which a study's validity is judged.
The methods section should describe what was done to answer the research question, describe how it was done, justify the experimental design, and explain how the results were analyzed.
For medical journals, the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (Recommendations updated January 2026) states the same purpose and then adds the hard line between protocol and results. Quote the ICMJE wording; do not paraphrase it into a results leak. The January 2026 update adds a dedicated AI section (Section V) and an authors'-access-to-data section (III.L.2). The Methods sentences below are unchanged; they are still the rule.
ICMJE Recommendations (January 2026), “Preparing a Manuscript,” Methods
The guiding principle of the Methods section should be clarity about how and why a study was done in a particular way.
The Methods section should aim to be sufficiently detailed such that others with access to the data would be able to reproduce the results.
In general, the section should include only information that was available at the time the plan or protocol for the study was being written; all information obtained during the study belongs in the Results section.
ICMJE also wants contracted help named in Methods: if an organization was paid to collect or manage data, say so. That sentence is not an acknowledgment. It is part of reconstructability.
Methods Versus Methodology
Course prompts use the two words as if they were synonyms. USC's writing tip, drawing on Schneider, splits them. Methods are the technical steps. Methodology is why those steps fit the question and the field. A student paper usually needs both in one section: what you did, and why that was the right way to do it. Do not write a philosophy-of-science essay that never names the sample.
| Put it in Method / Methodology | Put it somewhere else |
|---|---|
| Design, sampling, instruments, procedure, analysis plan, ethics approval | Findings, p values you observed, quotes that answer the question (Results) |
| Why this design beats a rejected alternative for this question | A full history of every method in the field (Literature review) |
| How you handled missing data, outliers, or saturation | What the cleaned data mean (Discussion) |
| Limitations of the procedure you already knew at protocol time | Limitations that appeared only after you saw the results |
Which Assignment You Were Actually Given
The words write the methodology hide three products. Mixing them is the usual reason a draft fails the tense test or invents a study that was never run. For a randomised trial, the product also picks the checklist: a completed trial report uses CONSORT 2025; the protocol that went to the ethics board uses SPIRIT 2025.
| Assignment | Tense | What the reader should see | Sister guide or checklist |
|---|---|---|---|
| Empirical paper or thesis chapter | Past | What you did, in enough detail to evaluate and (with the data) reproduce | This page; CONSORT 2025 if it is a completed trial |
| Research proposal or ethics application | Future | What you will do, with a sample-size plan and an ethics path, not fake completed numbers | How to write a research proposal; SPIRIT 2025 if it is a trial protocol |
| Whole-paper walkthrough | Mixed | Topic, review, method, results, discussion as one project | How to write a research paper |
A case-study methods paragraph still has to bound the case and name the evidence types; it is not a survey Method in disguise. A literature review that is a PRISMA systematic review needs a search-and-screen method; a narrative course review does not get a fake flow diagram.
Pick the Reporting Checklist Before You Draft
APA's seventh-edition Publication Manual puts Journal Article Reporting Standards in Chapter 3 and points authors to the free JARS site. The quantitative tables were published as Appelbaum, Cooper, Kline, Mayo-Wilson, Nezu, and Rao (2018), American Psychologist, 73(1), 3–25 (doi:10.1037/amp0000191). The qualitative and mixed-methods tables were published as Levitt, Bamberg, Creswell, Frost, Josselson, and Suárez-Orozco (2018), American Psychologist, 73(1), 26–46 (doi:10.1037/amp0000151). Those papers are the current APA reporting source. They do not replace design-specific medical checklists.
ICMJE tells authors to use the checklist that matches the design and points to the EQUATOR Network as the inventory. It names CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, and STARD (diagnostic accuracy) as examples, and it now also points authors to SAGER for sex and gender. CONSORT 2025 replaced CONSORT 2010 for randomized trials. SPIRIT 2025 replaced SPIRIT 2013 for the protocols of those trials. Both live on the joint SPIRIT–CONSORT site. STROBE remains the observational-epidemiology checklist. PRISMA 2020 remains the systematic-review checklist. JARS can sit beside those lists in a psychology journal; it does not replace them.
CONSORT 2025 statement (Hopewell et al., BMJ / JAMA / Lancet / Nature Medicine / PLOS Medicine, 14 April 2025)
The CONSORT 2025 statement supersedes the CONSORT 2010 statement, which should no longer be used.
We also restructured the CONSORT checklist, with a new section on open science, which includes items that are conceptually linked, such as trial registration (item 2), where the trial protocol and statistical analysis plan can be accessed (item 3), sharing of de-identified participant level data (item 4), and funding and conflicts of interest (item 5).
SPIRIT 2025 statement (Chan et al., BMJ, 2025;389:e081477)
The SPIRIT 2025 statement supersedes the SPIRIT 2013 statement, which should no longer be used or cited.
STROBE Statement (von Elm et al., 2007; 22-item checklist)
The STROBE Statement is a checklist of 22 items that we consider essential for good reporting of observational studies (see Table 1).
Our recommendations are not prescriptions for designing or conducting studies. Also, the checklist is not an instrument to evaluate the quality of observational research.
CONSORT 2025 is a 30-item checklist plus a flow diagram. SPIRIT 2025 is a 34-item protocol checklist plus a schedule figure. Do not paste a CONSORT flow diagram into a proposal, and do not cite SPIRIT 2013 or CONSORT 2010 as if they were still current. If the intervention itself is hard to reconstruct, add TIDieR (Hoffmann et al., BMJ, 2014;348:g1687). CONSORT 2025 integrated several TIDieR elements; the standalone TIDieR checklist is still the place to name who delivered what, how often, and with what materials.
| If the study is | Open this first | Method items that most drafts skip |
|---|---|---|
| Quantitative psychology or education study | JARS–Quant (Appelbaum et al., 2018) | Intended versus achieved N, data diagnostics, primary versus exploratory analyses |
| Qualitative interview, observation, or archive study | JARS–Qual (Levitt et al., 2018) | Researcher description, relationship to participants, rationale for stopping data collection |
| Mixed-methods study | JARS–Mixed / MMARS (Levitt et al., 2018) | Design type and how the strands were integrated, not two unrelated mini-studies |
| Completed randomized trial | CONSORT 2025 | Allocation, blinding, outcomes defined before the first participant, flow diagram, open-science items 2–5 |
| Randomized-trial protocol or ethics application | SPIRIT 2025 | 34 protocol items, enrolment–intervention–assessment schedule, patient and public involvement |
| Cohort, case–control, or cross-sectional epidemiology | STROBE | Setting and dates, eligibility, efforts to address bias, how study size was arrived at |
| Diagnostic-accuracy study | STARD | Index test, reference standard, and how each was interpreted — named by ICMJE, indexed on EQUATOR |
| Systematic review or meta-analysis | PRISMA 2020 | Databases, dates, criteria, and the flow of records — see the literature-review guide |
Quantitative Method: What JARS–Quant Requires
JARS–Quant Table 1 is organized like a journal article. The Method block is not "Participants, then a paragraph of procedure." Appelbaum and colleagues added Data Diagnostics and Analytic Strategy so readers can see whether the data set was altered before the tests, and whether a hypothesis was primary, secondary, or exploratory.
Appelbaum et al. (2018), on the Method additions in JARS–Quant Table 1
The Method section of the JARS–Quant Table 1 contains subsections on Data Diagnostics and Analytic Strategy.
These subsections were added for two reasons. First, they highlight the importance of including in reports descriptions of ways in which, if any, a data set has been modified prior to data analysis.
| Heading | What to report (from Table 1) | Common failure |
|---|---|---|
| Inclusion and exclusion | Criteria, including demographic restrictions | "Undergraduates" with no eligibility rule |
| Participant characteristics | Age, sex, ethnicity, SES, and topic-specific traits; genus and strain for animals | A convenience sample described as representative |
| Sampling procedures | Sampling method, percentage approached who participated, self-selection, setting, dates, payments, IRB and safety monitoring | Calling a volunteer pool a random sample |
| Sample size, power, and precision | Intended N, achieved N, how N was set (power or precision), interim analyses and stopping rules | "We recruited 50" with no justification |
| Measures and covariates | Every primary and secondary measure, including those collected but not reported here | An unnamed "survey we created" |
| Quality of measurements | Trainer reliability, multiple observations, psychometrics on this sample when possible | Citing a manual alpha and implying it is yours |
| Conditions and design | Manipulated versus observed; name the design JARS already tables (randomized experiment, observational, longitudinal, N-of-1, replication) | "We ran an experiment" with no assignment rule |
| Masking | Who knew the condition; how masking was done and checked | "The study was double-blind" with no procedure |
| Data diagnostics | Exclusion after collection, missing-data rules, outliers, transformations | Silent deletion of "bad" rows |
| Analytic strategy | Inferential plan and experiment-wise error control for primary, secondary, and exploratory hypotheses | A Results section full of unlabelled extra tests |
ICMJE's Statistics paragraph matches that last row: name the software package and version, and distinguish prespecified from exploratory analyses, including subgroup analyses. If you cite a published test, cite the manual or the validation paper, not a blog summary. Charles D. Spielberger's Test Anxiety Inventory (Consulting Psychologists Press, 1980) is a real instrument. Naming it does not license a fake mindfulness trial around it. Write "the TAI (Spielberger, 1980)" only if that is the form participants completed.
Qualitative Method: What JARS–Qual Requires
Levitt and colleagues wrote JARS–Qual because APA Style had no qualitative reporting module before 2018. Their definition of the data, and their refusal of a magic sample size, are the two sentences qualitative drafts most often need.
Levitt et al. (2018), JARS–Qual
The term qualitative research is used to describe a set of approaches that analyze data in the form of natural language (i.e., words) and expressions of experiences (e.g., social interactions and artistic presentations).
There is no agreed-upon minimum number of participants for a qualitative study.
Describe the researchers’ backgrounds in approaching the study, emphasizing their prior understandings of the phenomena under study (e.g., interviewers, analysts, or research team).
JARS–Qual also wants the researcher–participant relationship, the recruitment process, the rationale for stopping (saturation is one possible rationale, not a slogan), the form of the data, how recording and transcription were done, whether codes were a priori or emergent, and a demonstration of methodological integrity (fidelity to the subject matter and utility for the research goals). USC adds that a qualitative Method is usually longer than a quantitative one because you are the instrument. Levitt's reviewers' note says the same: an average qualitative Method section is longer, and it may be chronological or narrative.
If the analysis is thematic analysis, name which school. Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke's 2006 paper "Using thematic analysis in psychology" (Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77–101, doi:10.1191/1478088706qp063oa) is the named six-phase procedure students mean when they write "we used thematic analysis" without a citation. In 2019 they clarified that the method they now prefer to call reflexive TA is not coding-reliability TA and not codebook TA ("Reflecting on reflexive thematic analysis," Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise and Health, 11(4), 589–597). Quote their 2006 definition; then name the six phases you actually ran, and say whether you followed the later reflexive framing. Do not invent twelve interviews and a fake NVivo project around it, and do not claim inter-rater reliability if you are doing reflexive TA.
Braun and Clarke (2006), definition
Thematic analysis is a method for identifying, analysing, and reporting patterns (themes) within data.
Braun and Clarke (2019), on the name they now prefer
a method we now prefer to call reflexive TA
| Phase | Official heading | What the Method should say you did |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Familiarising yourself with your data | How you read, transcribed, and checked transcripts against audio |
| 2 | Generating initial codes | Whether codes were data-driven or theory-driven; who coded |
| 3 | Searching for themes | How codes were collated into candidate themes |
| 4 | Reviewing themes | How the thematic map was checked against extracts and the full set |
| 5 | Defining and naming themes | What each theme is, and what it is not |
| 6 | Producing the report | That the write-up is part of analysis, not a dump of extracts |
Mixed Methods: Name the Design and the Integration
JARS–Mixed (MMARS in Levitt et al., 2018) assumes you already owe the reader the relevant JARS–Quant and JARS–Qual items for each strand. The extra job is to name the mixed-methods design and to show how the strands were integrated. John W. Creswell and Vicki L. Plano Clark's handbooks are the usual source for the three core designs course prompts still use: convergent, explanatory sequential, and exploratory sequential. Pick one. "We did a survey and some interviews" is two studies, not a mixed-methods Method.
| Design | Order | What "integration" must say |
|---|---|---|
| Convergent | Quantitative and qualitative strands collected in the same window | How you compared, related, or merged the two results, and what you did when they diverged |
| Explanatory sequential | Quantitative first, qualitative second | Which quantitative result the qualitative strand was built to explain |
| Exploratory sequential | Qualitative first, quantitative second | Which qualitative finding the instrument or test was built to examine |
Ethics, Consent, Sex and Gender, and AI
ICMJE requires an independent-review-body statement in Methods. It also requires a Helsinki explanation if that compliance is in doubt. USC notes that many undergraduate library-research papers do not need IRB review, but if the instructor or the university required approval, the endorsement and consent process belong in the section. Do not invent a protocol number.
ICMJE Recommendations (January 2026), ethics and AI in Methods
The Methods section should include a statement indicating that the research was approved by an independent local, regional or national review body (e.g., ethics committee, institutional review board).
Authors who used AI technology to conduct the study should describe its use in the methods section in sufficient detail to enable replication of the approach. including the tool used, version, and prompts where applicable.
The period before including is in the ICMJE HTML. Keep it if you quote the sentence. ICMJE Recommendations §II.A.4 already splits the disclosure: AI used for data collection, analysis, or figure generation belongs in Methods; AI used only for writing assistance belongs in acknowledgments. Tool name, version, and prompts are part of reproducibility, not decoration. Referencing AI-generated material as the primary source is not acceptable.
ICMJE also requires correct use of sex (biological) and gender (identity, psychosocial, or cultural), a justification if the sample is one sex only, a definition of how race or ethnicity was determined, and an explanation if those data were not collected. Race and ethnicity are social constructs in that guidance. The January 2026 Recommendations also send authors to SAGER (Heidari, Babor, De Castro, Tort, and Curno, 2016, Research Integrity and Peer Review, 1:2, doi:10.1186/s41073-016-0007-6). JARS–REC (2023) adds the same reporting duty to APA Style manuscripts. If your course is in psychology or medicine, those sentences are part of Method, not an optional diversity paragraph.
ICMJE Recommendations (January 2026), reporting guidelines, on SAGER
Authors are encouraged to refer to the SAGER guidelines for reporting of sex and gender information in study design, data analyses, results, and interpretation of findings.
Heidari et al. (2016), SAGER
As a general principle, the SAGER guidelines recommend careful use of the words sex and gender in order to avoid confusing both terms.
| Situation | What to write |
|---|---|
| IRB or ethics committee approved the study | Name the board and the protocol ID the board issued. Do not mint an ID. |
| Undergraduate paper used public, non-human data | State that no human-subjects review was required and name the public source. |
| Interviews with identifiable people | State consent, recording permission, anonymization, and where identifiable files were stored. |
| AI coded transcripts or generated figures | Name the tool, version, and the prompts or settings, in Methods. |
| AI only copy-edited the manuscript | Disclose the tool in acknowledgments, not as a data-collection method. |
Verb Tense, Voice, and How Much Detail
USC's methodology page says the writing is always past tense for a completed study. APA Style §4.12 (verb tense) gives the same instruction for the Method's description of procedure, with present perfect only when you note that others have used a similar approach. Results stay past. Implications in the Discussion stay present. A proposal flips the Method into future tense; do not write a proposal as if the participants already arrived.
| Clause | Completed paper | Proposal |
|---|---|---|
| Recruitment | We recruited… / Participants were recruited… | We will recruit… |
| Instrument | Participants completed the… | Participants will complete the… |
| Established property of a published test | The scale consists of 20 items (present is acceptable for the instrument itself). | Same — the published instrument still exists. |
| Analysis plan | We used… / Data were analysed using… | We will use… |
| What you found | Does not belong here. See Results. | Does not belong here. You have no findings yet. |
APA 7 prefers first-person I or we for actions the authors performed. Passive voice is still common in some lab fields. Check the journal or the instructor, then stay consistent. The active-versus-passive guide is the grammar page; this page only needs the Method rule: the reader must be able to tell who did the recruiting, the measuring, and the coding.
Kallet's structure for a laboratory paper is still a useful order once the checklist is chosen: materials, how they were prepared, the protocol, measurements and calculations, then statistical tests. Organize chronologically. Use subheadings when the section is long. USC's "Problems to Avoid" are the usual student failures: irrelevant background, a how-to lecture on a standard t test, pretending obstacles did not happen, and confusing a list of sources with a method.
USC Libraries, problems to avoid (paraphrase the heading, quote the rule)
Do not provide any background information that does not directly help the reader understand why a particular method was chosen, how the information was gathered or obtained, and how that information was analyzed in relation to the research problem [note: analyzed, not interpreted! Save how you interpreted the findings for the discussion section].
The focus should be on how you applied a method, not on the mechanics of doing a method.
Failure Modes Students Actually Hit
- Results in the Method. ICMJE's protocol-versus-results line. Response rates you learned after the study, unexpected dropouts as findings, and "the intervention worked" all belong later.
- A number with no justification. JARS–Quant wants intended N, achieved N, and the power or precision rule. JARS–Qual wants a rationale, not a folklore n = 12.
- Volunteer pool called random. JARS asks whether self-selection occurred. Only call a sample random if every member of the stated population had a known chance of selection.
- Unnamed homemade survey. Cite a published instrument or describe the items you wrote, how you piloted them, and what they were meant to measure.
- Thematic analysis with no school. Name Braun and Clarke (2006) and, if that is the procedure, the later reflexive-TA papers. Do not bolt inter-rater reliability onto reflexive TA.
- CONSORT 2010 or SPIRIT 2013 on a new manuscript. CONSORT 2025 and SPIRIT 2025 superseded those statements in April 2025. A completed trial is not a protocol.
- Fake IRB ID. If you have a board letter, quote its number. If you do not, say so. "Protocol #2024-123" is not a style.
- Two methods, no integration. Mixed methods requires a named design and a sentence about how the strands meet.
- Silent data cleaning. JARS Data Diagnostics exists so outlier rules and imputations are not discovered in a footnote.
- AI that coded the data, disclosed only as a thank-you. ICMJE puts study-conduct AI in Methods.
- A methodology that is only a literature review of methods. Cite the sources that shaped the design; then say what you did.
- STROBE used as a quality score. The STROBE group says the checklist is not an instrument to evaluate study quality.
Before you submit
- The section opens with the design and the question it can answer
- A named reporting checklist (JARS, CONSORT 2025, SPIRIT 2025, STROBE, PRISMA, STARD, or the journal's own) was used as a draft list
- Participants or data sources, sampling, setting, and dates are reconstructable
- Every instrument is named and cited, or described if it is new
- The analysis plan distinguishes prespecified from exploratory work
- Ethics approval or an explicit "no human-subjects review" statement is present
- Sex and gender terms follow ICMJE / SAGER if the sample is human
- Tense matches the assignment (past for a completed study, future for a proposal)
- No results, quotes that answer the research question, or invented protocol numbers
Cite the Methods You Borrowed
USC is explicit that the Method should cite the works that informed the choice of a survey, a test, or an analytic procedure. That is a reference list, not a methods lecture. APA 7, MLA 9, and CMOS 18 disagree about author lists and titles; they agree that an undocumented instrument is unfinished. Use which citation style if the course did not name one.
Format the instruments and software you actually used
A Method section fails when the procedure cannot be reconstructed and again when the tests, manuals, and reporting checklists are uncited. Generate each record from the DOI or the manual entry, then keep the style the assignment named.
Related Guides
- How to Write a Research Paper
- How to Write a Research Proposal
- How to Write a Literature Review
- How to Write a Case Study
- How to Present Data
- Active vs Passive Voice
Frequently Asked Questions
- What is the difference between methods and methodology?
- USC, following Schneider, treats methods as the technical steps (sampling, instruments, procedure, analysis) and methodology as the reasoning that makes those steps fit the question and the field. Most student papers put both in one section: what you did, and why you did it that way.
- How long should a methodology section be?
- USC says it is usually shorter than the other body sections except the introduction and conclusion, but a qualitative Method is typically longer than a quantitative one because the researcher is the instrument (Levitt et al., 2018, say the same). Length follows the checklist, not a page quota. If a knowledgeable reader cannot reconstruct the procedure, it is too short.
- Should I write the methodology in past or future tense?
- Past tense for a completed study (USC; APA 7 §4.12 for the procedure). Future tense for a proposal or ethics application. Do not write a proposal as if the sample already existed, and do not put observed findings in either version of the Method.
- Do I need IRB approval in a student methodology section?
- If an independent review body approved the study, ICMJE wants that statement in Methods, with the board and the real protocol ID. USC notes that many undergraduate library-research assignments do not require IRB review. Follow your institution. Never invent a protocol number.
- How do I justify sample size?
- For quantitative work, JARS–Quant wants intended N, achieved N, and the power or precision method that set the target. For qualitative work, JARS–Qual wants a rationale tied to the design; there is no agreed minimum n. "Twelve interviews" is not a rule unless your method paper says so.
- Where do I report AI use?
- If AI collected, coded, classified, or generated study materials, ICMJE January 2026 puts the tool, version, and prompts in Methods so the approach can be replicated. If AI only edited prose, disclose it in acknowledgments. Do not cite a chatbot as a primary source. Section V of the January 2026 Recommendations is the expanded AI chapter; the Methods sentence itself did not change.
- Which reporting guideline should I follow?
- Match the design and the product. JARS–Quant, JARS–Qual, or JARS–Mixed for APA-style empirical psychology papers; CONSORT 2025 (not 2010) for a completed randomized trial; SPIRIT 2025 (not 2013) for that trial's protocol; STROBE for observational epidemiology; STARD for diagnostic accuracy; PRISMA 2020 for systematic reviews. EQUATOR is the index. A journal may require more than one list.
- Can I put results in the methodology to show the method worked?
- No. ICMJE: information obtained during the study belongs in Results. A response rate you learned after fieldwork, an unexpected dropout pattern, and any test of whether the intervention "worked" are results. You may describe the plan for handling missing data in Method.
- How do I cite a questionnaire or statistical test?
- Cite the published manual, validation paper, or methods paper you actually followed (for example Spielberger, 1980, for the TAI, or Braun and Clarke, 2006, for six-phase thematic analysis, plus 2019 if you used reflexive TA). USC says the Method should cite the sources that shaped the procedure. Format those records in the style the course named.
- Is this the same as writing a research proposal?
- No. A proposal describes work that has not happened yet and therefore uses future tense and planned N. A randomised-trial protocol should follow SPIRIT 2025, not CONSORT 2025. This page is the completed-study Method. Use the research-proposal guide for the plan, then rewrite the verbs into past tense after you run the study — and update anything the protocol did not anticipate, without moving results into Method.