Methods: Reporting what you did

Comments: There are 3 aspects to language choice in writing up your Methods that deserve special attention here:

It's useful to distinguish between stative and action types of verb – which can essentially be broken down as follows:

To be + to have = stative: i.e. properties, attributes, states – even the existence of things (subjects, etc.); these verbs usually describe the subjects’ background, or properties/attributes of the method/instrument.
e.g. "X was in HK" or "X had a HK Passport" - neither of these can take the passive form

To do = action/event: decisions made and procedural steps taken in the methodology; it is these verbs which offer us the choice of active or passive structures:
e.g. "We did 34 interviews"

[Note: to be eligible for conversion to a passive form , the verb needs to take an object - e.g. go and come can't be turned into a passive form]

2.  Passive vs Active

The passive works with verbs which can take objects – e.g.

I employed X à X was employed by me

Or, less directly:

I decided to do X à It was decided to do X

We see both patterns in the opening sentence of the text:

1. "It was decided to adopt the Language Diary method which was employed by Gibbons in his 1987 study"

The passive looks very stiff here - it’s the opening sentence of the section and is talking about a decision and not just a procedural step. So you should ask yourself whether the text gains anything by removing the "agent" ("I" or "We") from the text. Nowadays, the answer is increasingly "No", as scientists no longer insist on the use of the passive as a marker of objectivity. Let’s look at each verb choice in turn:

1. "It was decided…": Decisions on choice of method are ones taken by researchers for reasons specific to the study – the authorial "voice" needs to be heard. In fact (see 3. Below), this statement properly belongs in the Introduction, along with the rest of the discussion of reasons for choosing this method.

b) "the method which was employed" would normally be reduced to "the method employed". The main issue here is whether you would want to suggest that Gibbons used a 2^nd-hand method, or whether in fact he devised this method. If you use "employed", then the active form would convey more the idea of Gibbons "active" role. Later Poon says Gibbons "devised: this method, so the active form would be more appropriate. However, why not just use the more accurate verb – "devised" – and then leave it in the passive ("devised by Gibbons in his 1987 study") ?

3.  Past vs present (etc.) tense

The 2^nd sentence moves into the present tense – why? Basically, the writer is generalising about "this particular method", and no longer talking about her own (completed) study:

"This particular method of collecting data is useful because it minimises some of the problems experienced in other methods such as observation, where there is the possibility that the presence of an observer may influence the target behaviour"

It is only 9 lines later that she signals a return to talking about her own study by reverting to the past tense:

"There were 2 sections in the Diary".

As suggested above, Poon’s comparative review of the merits of choosing Gibbons’ method over other methods properly belongs in the Introduction, in the Literature Review section. After selecting her research questions, Poon could have devoted a paragraph or two to discussing the most appropriate means of getting answers to the research questions (or testing her hypotheses). This would have involved a review of any other studies which included similar rationales for the choice of methodology. This is an important aspect of any research study, and is often overlooked or treated lightly, with no real justification for the approach chosen.