Using another MS student's research methods

[Barndog]

Hi All,

I'm in my second year of an MS program and just figured out my thesis (after hitting many brick walls). My current idea was to do a suitability study on a small location w/in a state. After contacting this state (a gov. agency), asking them if anyone would be interested in my results, I was asked to include the entire state, if I would follow methods used by someone who did a similar study on an adjacent state (since they offered funding, I agreed). The former study synthesized data already in existence, and also created a tool to analyze this information. I really liked their methods and would love to do the same thing, but how ethical is this? Of course I would cite their work, but I feel strange using their thesis as a guideline for my own. Not only that, the student was a former MS student in my department. I would ask my advisor, but he's not available until late next week, and I'm eager to get started.

Thanks.

[eco_env]

People often use methods develoepd by others (with citation), but I imagine your research is supposed to be original in some way, so if you do everything exactly they way the other person did, just in a different place, will there be anyting original about your research? what will you be contributing to your field? If the methods work well, there's no reason not to use them, but think about how you can build on previous work and make an original contribution.

Edited January 20, 2012 by eco_env

[Andsowego]

People often use methods develoepd by others (with citation), but I imagine your research is supposed to be original in some way, so if you do everything exactly they way the other person did, just in a different place, will there be anyting original about your research? what will you be contributing to your field? If the methods work well, there's no reason not to use them, but think about how you can build on previous work and make an original contribution.

I disagree somewhat with the bolded part. If the methods worked well in state A, there's absolutely no guarantee that they'll also work well in state B. Transplantation of methodology without consideration of contextual subtleties is inappropriate in my field (though I'm not sure about others). If you really want to use the same methodology as your peer, at the very least you should assess what the contextual differences are between the two states then make changes to your methodology accordingly.

Edited January 23, 2012 by Andsowego