Viva questions (methodological focus)
*This blog returns to method and methodology, answering two related but distinct questions.
Emeritus Professor Emmanuel Tsekleves and I have been in brief discussion on LinkedIn this week. He posted that when he asks in viva, “why this methodology and not another?”, the responses from PhD candidates can be rather underwhelming. Our discussion drew distinction between method and methodology. We were in agreement that the two matters are related but require the candidate to be minded to be answering specifically to which of the two is actually being asked about. My point was that I thought it a reasonable rule-of-thumb to ask for clarification as to whether the question is focused upon method or methodology. My two answers below clearly distinguish the two by what is focused upon in response. As was pithily summarised, related to one’s research question, the difference being:
“For methodology, it’s what kind of knowledge your question needs. For method, it’s which tool gets you that.”
Emmanuel Tsekleves, LinkedIn 19th October 2026
The offered advice in structuring your answer is broadly the same. The key point is recognising the subject-matter shifts. The following brings together the words of Emmanuel Tsekleves, LinkedIn 19th October 2026, to apply to both method and methodology. He refers to the same 3-Line Defence for both:
1. “My question asks ___.”
Say what kind of answer you need: For methodology, it’s what kind of knowledge your question needs. For method, it’s which tool gets you that. [i.e.,] a measure, a meaning or a mechanism.
2. “So I chose ___ because it gives me ___.”
Link your method[ology] to that kind of answer.
3. “I considered ___, but it couldn’t ___.”
Tell me the alternative you rejected, and why.
Thank you, Emmanuel. With this guidance close-to-hand, I next answer both questions. The differences between method and methodology become clearly demarcated by what each question invites in response. I am also now mindful of brevity and being invited to expand an answer. I allow for this in my responses below.
Question: why this method and not another?
My question asks how the different intentions of parties in public-private partnership projects relate to governance and conflict?”. I needed an answer derived from what multiple perspectives of the parties involved. This was also exploratory research and therefore prioritise qualitative interpretation over quantitative measure. I chose a single method qualitative approach and gathered all primary evidence using semi-structured interview.
I considered methods only once the broader methodological priorities were established. I could dismiss survey because of the quantitative interest in measures it aligns to. I considered accessing data as the contracts and reporting on specific projects but I know from experience these documents are vast, commercially sensitive, and would direct my question toward specific governance rather than allow consideration of how intentions relate more broadly. At initiative level the multiple-party interest this question posed of UK PFI drew into question the reliance upon well-documented data sources such as formal government reporting and matters of public record. My question was inherently less trusting of such filtered views. Semi-structured interview gave me direct access to those people behind such reports at initiative level and/or what was intended regardless of what contracts and reports said at project level. This therefore gave the desired access to other perspectives which do not necessarily become refined by what is filtered out of that formal reporting.
If I am prompted to offer more detail (and I hope I will be) then I can further add that the single method of semi-structured interview I used was specifically aimed at elite informants. Elite informants is a term used by the strategic management literature, and in this research context means individuals operating within PPP who could offer party-specific insights at the needed organisation-to-organisation (or thereabouts) level of different intentions. This elite informant literature is well established (50 years of use) and could offer a sophisticated understanding of how to conduct semi-structure interview of people in such senior positions. This guidance is also clear on the potential advantages of addressing research questions differently when a researcher can be positioned as the insider (as I am). Better access, more rapport, and more possibility of getting to the more interesting and challenging questions. The range of potential interview candidates accessible to this researcher, coupled with hermeneutic structure of interview style and reflexive thematic analysis used to establish key themes, was deemed the most appropriate means to establish meaning from between individual perspectives. A single method of semi-structured interview was therefore taken forward as the means to establish the evidence to answer this research question.
Question: why this methodology and not another?
My question asks how the different intentions of parties in public-private partnership projects relate to governance and conflict?”. The kind of knowledge this requires is interpretative and less accepting of what is claimed as objective truth. It invites exploratory rather than confirmatory framing. The question is rather provocative and stems from a problematising of extant literature and brings together matters not previously connected. Working phenomenologically and positioning the research hermeneutically was deemed the best fit to underpin what was asked.
The objectivity of positivism was clearly the antithesis of what is being asked here. However, other positions which are more subjective in nature were considered and also determined insufficiently challenging at an ontological rather than epistemological level. I was unconvinced that this question best sat upon either critical realism or pragmatic perspectives once this more deeply-seated challenge was contemplated more fully. This meant many months of trying out different perspectives and turning initial enthusiasm for them into reasons to dismiss them.
I anticipate a detailed answer is required here. I can expand by example the reasoning behind dismissing early framings contemplated. The examiners can guide me as to whether one example or each progression is of interest. However, if of interest I can pin-point specific decisions and reasoning for seeking other methodological fits to better compliment the question posed.
Firstly, the positivist positioning was clearly a poor fit but here too I needed to be remove myself from positions I had first considered. I had to rethink my interest in social psychology. It became apparent that the theory-first and positivist positions demanded of me came to be problematic for unexpected reasons. I started out with a theoretical framing (the theory of planned behaviour) but came to realise this insisted upon making specific claims, demanding I commit my whole research design around an ex-ante commitment to interactions at specific levels. This theory is broad-reaching but it remains positivist in this sense of making claims to then measure against. That flagged another question of working too closely with deductive reasoning or in other ways working to frameworks of what is claimed to be.
Secondly, I was then for some months more enthusiastic about either critical realism or then later some form or pragmatism. However, I remained unconvinced that these positions escaped fully an interest in becoming confirmatory. Critical realism, by my reading of it, remains interested in adding meaning to what is. The empirical, actual, and real layers of the critical realists’ iceberg seem to me still floating upon a Descartes-sea. Pragmatism, the epistemological framings at least, seemed to lead toward an answer rather than consider the possibility of there being more than one. Whereas the constructivist perspectives, post-modern and the fully clean-slate approach to theory building of grounded theory would have frustrated my view that governance theory was already informing some of what I was asking about.
Once I realised the Husserl and Heideggerian challenges to other worldviews had concern for matters of intentionality (the directedness of thoughts or actions towards something else) and that this aligned with hermeneutic concern for establishing meaning from between human perspectives, this more clearly aligned with the question posed. In retrospect this seems patently obvious. I can relate to that as a third round of exploring methodology because I then encountered a different problem as an unresolved debate between academic fields on how phenomenology is to be applied as a methodology.
With foundations set, I next came to realise that phenomenology in the social sciences was not a settled methodology. It transpired through close reading of this literature that it remains at odds with phenomenology as a philosophical tradition. The distinctions are important, and for my research question it proved more useful to avoid this contemporary war of words between scholars. My research design could avoid this entire debate. Instead, I could more directly adopt hermeneutic interview techniques and analysis that complements this philosophical underpinning as advocated by Bruan and Clarke and their reflexive thematic analysis. This was useful background, as it further justified my escape from the social psychological framing I had adopted by the end of year 1.
Methodology was therefore considered in depth in this research. I found myself becoming the sociologist rather the psychologist as I progressed, and this realisation being clear on the social rather than psychological framing of intentions that were of interest. From that moment onwards, the path towards choice of methods became more clearly marked. Phenomenology is focused upon individual experiences, and a hermeneutic positioning gave means to interpret meaning from between those different experiences. Accessing insight from the experiences of individuals sitting in senior positions—i.e., where governing and governance are close-to-hand and where conflict is most likely seen from above—was deemed most of interest. The method of semi-structured interview to gather evidence and reflexive thematic analysis to develop the themes from that totality of transcript were therefore settled upon this ontological and epistemological underpinning.
…to be continued
*[Caveat lector: these are journal entries created in near real time of writing-to-think. Take all care and caution in using anything here for purposes beyond understanding of one person’s preparations for viva examination]