Is this methodology or results?

Question

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Specimen Collection

A total of 460 human stool specimens were collected between January to December 2020 from General Dhamar Hospital and different medical diagnostic laboratories located in Dhamar Governorate, Yemen. The stool specimens were collected from 250 males (rural: 120; urban: 130) and 210 females (rural: 95; urban: 115). The age of the participants ranged from <1 to 80 years.

—Population- and Gender-Based Investigation for Prevalence of Helicobacter pylori in Dhamar, Yemen

How come this is part of the research methodology? How did they know they were going to find the circumstances that made them able to collect 460 specimens?

The cited article is one of many that have these statements as a part of the research methodology. I think I have lost the line that discriminates between methods and results.

Answer 1

Actually, it is neither, but rather the process they followed to implement the methodology to determine the results. As you note, it is unlikely that they knew the number of samples beforehand, but possibly specified a minimum number that would get them meaningful results.

But where it is placed in the paper is probably unimportant. If it is in the methodology section it may just be their interpretation of the meaning of the word.

While methodology needs to be specified in advance for most purposes, "what we did" is also a form of methodology. Don't overthink it.

And, it isn't results, of course, as it doesn't describe what was found or the conclusions.