Write a definition of methods, methodologies + skills

Research skills consist of the tradecraft and other technical proficiencies that are necessary to both handle and gather material about a subject or idea. Examples include: Understanding Boolean search logic (library skills); foreign or archaic language proficiency (period-specific skills); organizing volumes of disparate information (bibliographic skills); understanding the complexities of DCMA and Fair Use (intellectual property knowledge and IT skills).

Research methods are the individual approaches a person takes towards research subject. Griffin points out that our choice of method is dependent on exactly how we wish to conduct our research: do I want to use textual analysis? am I going to use statistical models? will I be conducting interviews with people? At this point it would be important to mark the place where method and methodology deviate from one another: a method is a orderly arrangement of ideas; whereas a methodology is a body - a grouping - of previously established methods, used for a purpose (OED).

Once we have established our method(s) for collecting material, a person applies a methodology to group the data, or ideas for a purpose-- a focus; this focus is elucidating a truth, but not necessarily the truth about the researched sbuject. Examples of different methodologies and their impacts on a  researched subject can be seen in this example: A positivist would only value knowledge that could be verified through experience and empirical evidence; this philosophy of knowledge would be diametrically opposed to someone from the school of Critical Theory, which views knowledge as constructed and thus prone to both perspective and error. The truth the positivist arrives at and the methods he used concerning a subject would be challenged by the Critical Theorist. It is important to note though, that both constructions of what a subject is are valid-- I avoid Griffin's use of the word "good" because I think it adds a dimension of unnecessary morality to a possible truth. The plurality of truths within an idea, or at least its possibility to be subject-dependent and subject-independent within the same point of time seems to be one of the paradoxes of research.