methodology
Pluralmethodologies
- 1The collection of methods, practices, procedures, and rules used by people working in a particular field.
Like a playbook that lays out every move a team will use in a game.
The research group adopted a rigorous methodology combining surveys with field observation.
Each consulting firm guards its proprietary methodology for managing large projects.
Similarprocedure, technique, means
Note
Here the word has broadened from studying methods to naming a whole set of them, and it is the use most readers now meet: agile methodology in software, design methodology in engineering. Careful writers still notice the stretch from the study of method. Where a single procedure or technique is meant, those plainer words often serve better than methodology.
- 2The branch of study concerned with the methods used within a particular field.
Like studying how maps are made rather than reading a single map.
Her doctoral training emphasized methodology over the mere accumulation of facts.
Courses in research methodology teach students how to evaluate competing approaches.
Note
The -ology is doing its usual work here. The word came from French méthodologie, and by its parts it is method plus -ology, the study of method. Its home is the sciences, where it often sits beside epistemology, as in Donald T. Campbell's Methodology and Epistemology for Social Sciences (1988). Research methodology is the standard pairing, and the plural methodologies is common when several approaches are compared.
- 3The putting into practice of the methods, practices, procedures, and rules used in a particular field.
Careful methodology during the trial ensured that every sample was handled identically.
Reviewers rejected the survey after finding that its methodology in the field had been sloppy, with interviewers skipping whole sections of questions.
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Origin
From French méthodologie; by surface analysis it breaks down into method plus the suffix -ology.