Hiya, I am at that final stage of writing up... I was wondering how long methodology chapters should be. I know that the length varies.

My chapter is around 4000 words at the moment... but people have been saying that theirs is around 10,000-20,000 words. I am going a social sciences type PhD but based in Engineering. Its a mixed method approach.

My supervisors have said, whatever does the job is fine... but probably a big more guidance would do wonders! Many thanks in advance.

It probably depends how many chapters you've got in total and how it fits into your structure as a whole. I found Patrick Dunleavy's publication 'Authoring a PhD' helped me to plan my structure although according to him my chapters are too long (he suggest chapters of around 10,000 words +/- 2000 words I think).

My methodology section is around 5,000 words but it forms part of the first chapter which also includes my literature review, research questions and some other bits (...I'm not suggesting this is necessarily a good idea for everyone though!)

Mine is also around 4000. It's about case study research. Did you include a discussion on the paradigm? that usually takes a good chunk of the chapter.

My Methodology is 19 pages/7000 words ish, but I'm in the sciences. My chapter is purely methodology, with some theory. But bigger questions I'm leaving to the relevant discussion chapter.

10 000 words per chapter average sounds very high to me, I have 10 chapters and a limit of 80 000 words, I suppose it depends on subject and University...