This article builds on previous research and tries to establish the reasons for the selection of non-applicable research methods by Public Administration researchers in South Africa. For the purpose of this paper the hypothesis has been set that the methodological preference of the authors of the selected Public Administration articles and theses is determined by an association between the variable “research method” and the variable “institutional affiliation”. Two data sets are analysed, namely the one based on a survey of the research methods of completed South African doctoral theses in Public Administration from 2000 to 2005 and another one based on a survey of articles published in three South African peer-reviewed Public Administration journals from 2000 to 2005. By means of a chi-square test on the two datasets it is shown that an association between the institutional affiliation of authors and the sele