Feminist issues in research methodology: The development of a cognitive scale

Feminist research methodology is a subject that is often under wide debate, with both theorists and researchers offering various guidelines for conducting feminist research. Current writings in the field suggest that feminist research is moving towards pluralistic models that acknowledge and take into account the fact that feminism is not monolithic in its politics or philosophy. However, a review of the literature suggests that, within this pluralistic framework, there are some common principles of feminist research that cut across the different methodologies used in social science. The focus of this article is to discuss these common principles of feminist research and illustrate how they guided the development of a cognitive scale for functional bowel disorders.