Social Research Design and Method

Catalog description

This graduate seminar is intended to acquaint students with critical issues in designing and executing social research. The goal of the course is to equip students to make their own analytically sound contributions to social research about technology, while critically considering their own roles as social scientists. Among the topics the course is likely to cover are: formulating good research questions and fitting appropriate methods to them; practical aspects of data collection; forms of validity; critical assessment of constructs and classifications; the roles of failure and surprise in social research; and positionality and the researcher's relationship to social policy.