Q: Are 'scope and limitation' and 'limitation of the study' similar?

This is a fairly common ‘confusion.’ :-)

To begin, the first part is ‘scope and delimitations’ (and not ‘scope and limitation’). Scope broadly refers to the extent to which you plan to study/research your topic. This is done mainly to keep your research practical and feasible. Delimitations is a closely related term. It refers to the conditions or restrictions (so to speak) the researcher places upon the study. Practically speaking, there is very little difference between the two. At the most, you may consider delimitations as being a subset of scope. For a clearer distinction between the two terms, you may refer to this resource: Can I use the terms 'scope' and 'delimitations' interchangeably?

The limitations of the study refers to the shortcomings of the study – things you believe the research lacked or ways in which it could have been better.

Other differences are that scope and delimitations are established before starting the study, while limitations are describing after completing the study. Therefore, scope and delimitations are written in the Methods section of the paper and limitations in the Discussion or Conclusion section (the Conclusion forming the last part of the Discussion). For more help with limitations, you may refer to this resource: What should I write in limitations?

Hope that helps. As we talked about the Methods and Discussion sections, you may also find these resources useful:

• How to write the Methods section of a research paper
• The secret to writing the Results and Discussion sections of a manuscript

And finally, in case you are planning a paper, all the best for it!