Your research methodology choices need to align

So you are expected to write a gazillion sections for your methods chapter. You are told you need a research philosophy or paradigm (what?), an approach, and a research design. Only THEN do you get into the nitty-gritty of what you actually do (your sampling, data collection, and analysis methods).

And you don't only need them... you need to justify them too! AND they need to be aligned with your research questions and aims. The worst...

The good news is that a lot of these things are generally already aligned.

The Methodology Alignment Table: from Research Question to ensuring trustworthiness.

For instance, if you are asking the question, "What is the relationship between job satisfaction and employee retention among IT professionals?" (I got you my business nerds), that screams to me that you are doing quantitative research. I already have an inkling that you may conduct a cross-sectional survey on at least 20 IT professionals. If all this holds true, your survey will ask questions about job satisfaction and questions about retention (ideally using existing, valid and reliable surveys from the literature), and you will correlate these two variables/constructs.

(If you want a deep dive into the connection between philosophy and methods, check out this book chapter, which extends this further into action and assessment.)

Rather than "thinking" about each option or choice separately, if you just make ONE decision for your methodology (e.g., I want to do a survey), the sections should, ideally, all come together.

Does this mean there is NO wriggle room? Not at all!

It is possible to do, say, qualitative deductive research, where you use open-ended interview or survey questions and receive qualitative responses. You can, technically, use pre-existing codes or tags to group these responses, which is a deductive strategy. This is perfectly valid, even though it deviates from the typical alignment presented in the table.

Similarly, it is completely normal for a pragmatist to choose one method, rather than a mixed methods design per se. However, a person with a more positivist or interpretivist alignment will be less likely to choose (and benefit from) mixed methods.

However, it is important that, if you do deviate from the general alignment, you are aware of it.

In other words, be aware of the alignment of your research methodological choices, but if you do drift, be extra mindful of presenting your justifications.