 This knowledge clip explains how to set up the methods section of your paper. After the introduction and theoretical framework, you present your methods section. In your methods section, you explain what kind of data you collected to answer your research question and how you collected that data and prepared it for analysis. For example, for quantitative research, you may use a questionnaire. In that case, you explain how the questionnaire was developed and presented to participants, how they had to fill it in and how you worked with the collected data. Based on your methods section, someone else should be able to replicate your study. This means that at some points, the methods section is very detailed. It is important to note that you always write the methods section in the past tense because the research has already been conducted once you present your full paper. There are, of course, many, many ways to write a methods section. We will explain a basic structure. Our methods section has four subsections, population and sample, procedures, instruments and analysis. In your paper, each subsection has a subheading. Let's take a closer look at the first subsection, population and sample. In this subsection, you describe the population and the sampling method you used to select the participants of your study. You explain how many potential participants were approached and how many filled in your questionnaire. In this subsection, you also present the demographics of your sample. For example, details on the gender and age of the participants. You can do that in the text or in a table. If you use a table, do not forget to refer to that table in the text. Now let's move on to the second subsection. In the second subsection on procedure, you explain the detailed steps you took in conducting your research. For example, if you used questionnaires, you explain how you contacted the participants, what kind of information you provided to them and how they had to fill in and return the questionnaire. In this subsection, you also mention the study design. In this example, we will use a cross-sectional design. A cross-sectional study is a type of research design in which you collect data at a single point in time. The next subsection is instruments. In this subsection, you describe the instruments you used to collect your data. For each variable, explain what scale you used and how many items the scale had. You must make sure you cite the original authors of the scale. Include the possible options for answering the questions and provide one sample question. For a scale for job satisfaction, it could look like this. Also in this subsection, do not forget to include how you measured your control variables. Examples of control variables that are often used are gender and age. The final subsection is analysis. In this subsection, you describe how you processed and analyzed your data. Avoid going into too much detail here, so do not start presenting or discussing any results yet. For example, for quantitative research, you describe how you prepared the data, what kind of analysis you did and what software you used to do the analysis. Now your methods section is ready and you can move on to the results section of your paper.