Methodology in politics dissertations; the case study of faculty of World Studies’ dissertations

Some students may think that method section/chapter is not very important because in this chapter some anthological, epistemological and methodological accounts repeatedly will be discussed. However, among academics the methodology section/chapter is one of the most important section of a research. One of the main reasons to put ‘research method’ section or chapter in dissertations or articles is to achieve ‘replicability’, ‘transparency’ and ‘validity’ in empirical studies. This chapter/section needs to outline several issues such as research design, sampling approach, access, the nature of applied method such as interview or observation, coding frame, and analyzing method (Bryman 2012: 687). If the research method is not fully and appropriately clarified, the findings of research can be easily questioned or dismissed. This paper, with the general aim of exploring some aspects of ‘research methods in dissertations’ especially in political science and international relations, in a case study, examines the ‘methodology section or chapter’ in faculty of World Studies’ dissertations in the University of Tehran. This paper also is designed to examine the extent in which students tend to use empirical studies. In doing so, this paper by using quantitative content analysis, selected 137 master and PhD dissertations (out of 453) from different groups, languages and years to examine their tendencies towards empirical researches. Based on four key and common elements of research method section: the data collection procedures, study design, selection of participants, and the planned data analysis or analytic strategy (Fox and Jennings 2014: 137) it assesses how students clarify their research methods and how they applied these methods in practice. The findings of this research shows that 26 per cent of dissertations were carried out using empirical research methods which in comparison with previous figures, around 6 per cent (Delavari 1385: 118) and around 12 per cent (Seyed Emami 1389: 145), is a good achievement.