I notice that the two terms methods and methodology are often mixed up. It is actually quite simple to remember the difference if you consider the etymology. The “-logy” part suggests that “methodology” concerns the knowledge of methods. Here is a quick run-down of how to differentiate between them in academic writing. A methods section in a paper In a conference paper or journal article, you typically want to describe the method you used.

My colleague Ragnhild Torvanger Solberg and I presented a paper at the Sound and Music Computing conference in Hamburg last week called: “Optical or Inertial? Evaluation of Two Motion Capture Systems for Studies of Dancing to Electronic Dance Music”. This is a methodological paper, trying to summarize our experiences with using our Qualisys motion capture system for group dance studies. We have two other papers in the pipeline that describes the actual data from the experiments in question.