25 Mar 2026
Why Methodology Matters – Q & A with an early career researcher
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Why Methodology Matters – Q & A with an early career researcher
In this blog, Dr Mark Adley, who completed his ARC NENC-funded PhD in October 2025, shares reflections on what he discovered about research methodologies during his PhD journey.
Across this blog, Mark refers to two methodological research papers that he developed as part of his PhD. The links for these are at the end of the blog.
Why is methodology important?
The methods we use in research have a big impact on what we discover. In health research, there has been a strong focus on biomedical approaches. This can mean we overlook other important ways that people understand health and illness. The methods we choose affect whose voices are included in research, and this then influences whose knowledge shapes policies and the design of health services.
If you’d told me a few years ago that I’d be writing methodological papers I don’t think I’d have believed you! It took me a long time to understand about research philosophy, and perhaps these papers were a way of leaving some hints for other novice researchers.
Can you give a brief explanation of research philosophy?
Here is one example – if we think about mental ill health, and how our worldviews (or paradigms) might affect our research. Where one person might consider mental health to be a medical issue, another person might think this reflects a spiritual imbalance. These worldviews are linked to our understanding of what we believe to be the truth and how we classify those beliefs (ontology). We would then find data to support our beliefs in different places, such as clinical research or in religious teachings. These examples of ‘how we know’ are called epistemology.
Methodology then looks at what approaches we would use to study mental health – for example using clinical study designs or immersing ourselves into other cultures. This methodology then informs the methods we use – our research tools – such as blood tests or observing religious rituals.
The infographic below helps to illustrate this.
You have published two papers on research methodology as part of your PhD. Can you tell us more about how they came about?
They started from email conversations I had with Prof. Maurice Yolles from Liverpool John Moores University during my PhD. I contacted Prof. Yolles after finding out about an ontology called bounded relativism that he had played a huge part in. His encouragement gave me the confidence to write the papers. I was also greatly supported by my PhD supervisors Prof. Amy O’Donnell and Dr Steph Scott, and by the reviewers and editor of the journal who gave me a lot of help to develop my writing.
One paper then became two. The first looked at how the methods that I used connected the lived experiences of the study participants with wider social structures. The second paper presented a visual framework of relationality (below).
Can you explain ‘relationality’?
When I was reading through the interviews in the study, people were describing experiences that I understood, but I didn’t yet have the right words to explain them. That changed when I read a paper by Robert Cooper called Peripheral Vision. Cooper described “relationality” as something that includes both our relationships with others and the fact that our relative social positions are always shifting. It also includes how we relate to the world around us. Once I had this idea in mind, I could finally describe things in the interviews that I hadn’t been able to put into words before. It felt like a real breakthrough, and I think it helped make the whole study much stronger.
What’s next?
One of the challenges for me is working out how to use these methodologies when working with members of the public. A big part of the challenge is the language we use. For example, if I tell people that I used ‘descriptive phenomenology’ as the basis for the study, most people understandably look puzzled!
I genuinely believe that public contributors can add a lot of value to discussions about research philosophy and methodology. But the terminology can feel confusing or off‑putting, even when the ideas themselves are very relevant to people’s lived experience.
To tackle this, I’ve been working with two public advisors to explore how we can make research philosophy and methodology easier to understand and more user‑friendly. We’re making progress, so watch this space!
More information
Methodological papers
Other linked publications
If you would like to find out more about this work, please email Dr Mark Adley – [email protected]