Musings on methodology

Thoughts, ideas and opinions on research methods

Musings on the research onion

ON 13TH SEP 20208TH OCT 2021 / BY

ALISONLAWSON68 / IN RESEARCH MODELS
Many of you will recognise the term ‘research onion’.
Disappointingly, this is not a sentient onion that has mastered the
skills of research, but is a shorthand reference to a well-known
and well-used model showing the various methodological
decisions one must make when designing a research project,
devised and published by Mark Saunders, Adrian Thornhill and
Philip Lewis (2015).

The idea behind the onion diagram is that each layer of the onion
represents a decision to be made about your research project.
Starting on the outermost layer of the onion, you select your
research philosophy, then on the next layer in you select whether
you will use an inductive or deductive approach. Moving further
into the onion you decide which data collection method will work
for your project and decide whether you’ll use just one of these or
a combination. In the final layers you decide whether your project
will be long term or time-constrained and consider data collection
and analysis.

It’s a very popular diagram used in many research methods

classes and it turns up in student dissertations a lot, as an
illustration of the research process and an aide-memoire of all the
stages of a research project’s methodology. It’s a very handy
diagram that makes the researcher think about the details of the
project, but necessarily stops short of going into the different
approaches available for surveys, interviews, etc. and the stages of
data analysis as it would then become the world’s largest onion.

The problems with the research onion, for me, are these. First, it is
often used out of context by students who do not understand all
the terms within it. Second, students often find it confusing and try
to join up the words in the diagram that seem to form a straight
line from the outermost layer to the centre of the onion, in the
mistaken belief that one must take a straight line through the
diagram, rather than choose the appropriate option from each
layer (probably because they have not read the accompanying text
in the book). Third, after seeing it in about 20 dissertations every
year for eight years I was frankly bored of looking at it.

So, I challenged my dissertation students one year to come up with

an alternative. And to my delight, one of them devised the
research rainbow layer cake. This was a fabulous alternative and
related to a foodstuff that was instantly appealing to many. The
student had labelled each layer of the cake with research
philosophy, inductive/deductive approach, data collection method
and so on, just as Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill have done with
their onion. I absolutely loved the rainbow layer cake and gave the
student lots of positive feedback for being so inventive. However,
the cake required an arrow at the side to indicate the order in
which one should consider each element of the methodology. This
was a shame, as it kind of looked as if one would eat a layer cake
one layer at a time, which is a bit weird. (Sorry if that’s how you
eat a layer cake.) I think this is a fundamental problem with basing
research diagrams on foodstuffs – I want the way in which the
diagram is used to mimic how one would eat the foodstuff and
that isn’t possible. You could say that this is entirely my problem
and not a problem with the diagrams, and you would be
absolutely right. There’s no way that the research onion or the
research rainbow layer cake were designed to mimic the way they
would be eaten. That’s just my brain not liking the idea of peeling
and eating an onion one layer at a time or eating a layer cake one
layer at a time. I know this is my problem, and I always push it to
one side when teaching, as I have never found a single other
person who has the same problem.

For me it would be much easier to represent the different

elements of methodology as a decision tree. This would involve
simple decisions leading to more simple decisions with no
foodstuffs involved. It would not be a graphical or artistic beauty,
but would appeal to my text-based mind, so may appeal to others
who prefer text to images.

So I set about devising my methodological decision tree diagram,

which I thought would be easy. But no! It really wasn’t easy to
make it look simple. And there were lots of decisions to be made
about what to include and what to exclude. What I found, in
essence, was that it is extraordinarily difficult to condense an
entire text on research methods into one simple diagram. But I
persevered and sent a draft to a colleague, Dr Devi Gill
(https://www.derby.ac.uk/staff/devi-gill/), who also loves
methodology, and she sent me some great feedback and some
more ideas. Eventually, this is what we came up with. (Apologies if
you need a microscope to read it.)

Our diagram is not perfect. For example, it shows only three

research philosophies. We mentioned interpretivism, pragmatism
and positivism as these are the three most commonly used by our
students and colleagues, but we know there are others. But like
Saunders, Lewis and Thornhill, who didn’t want to design the
world’s largest onion, we didn’t want to design the world’s largest
decision tree, so we had to draw a line somewhere. Maybe it
would be better to use a whole separate diagram for each research
philosophy. Maybe it would be better to have a group of options
from which one makes a choice, followed by another group of
options and so on, without the arrows showing what is
appropriate. What do you think? Do you have any comments on
our new diagram? Do you have your own favourite? I’d love to
know!

Reference

Saunders, M., Thornhill, A. and Lewis, P. (2015) Research Methods

for Business Students, 7th edition, Harlow: Pearson.
DECISION TREE METHODOLOGY RESEARCH DECISION RESEARCH
METHODS RESEARCH ONION

2 thoughts on “Musings on the research

onion”

1. Terry Shapiro
I think that’s brilliant! Please may I borrow it for our
undergrads? Have dropped you a mail on your derby.ac
address.

 8TH OCT 2021 AT 5:52 PM  REPLY

alisonlawson68
Glad you like it, Terry! Delighted that you can make use of it
with your students.

 10TH OCT 2021 AT 10:52 PM  REPLY

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