Qualitative Methods

Catalog description

Some social scientific questions are best answered, or can only be answered, using qualitative methods, such as participant observation and interviewing. Qualitative methods can give otherwise unattainable insights into social reality and thus provide understanding of the mechanisms and meanings of social processes that might remain black boxes using non-qualitative methods. But the complexity of raw social situations and the fundamental nature of the methods required to describe and analyze these situations raise serious challenges for systematic and explanatory research. Over the course of the semester you will learn first-hand about the power and challenges inherent in qualitative methods by using them. You will design and carry out your own pilot research project using significant participant observation and interviewing. You will carefully construct a research plan intended to answer a specific, novel research question in the first few weeks of the course and then watch that design collide with the reality of the social world. You will spend the semester implementing, reflecting on, and revising that research plan. Class time will consist of instructor presentations, examinations of research based on qualitative methods, and workshops in which you will develop your plan or field techniques and evaluate the research of classmates in a constructive manner. Throughout the semester you will be evaluated through a series of small assignments. These smaller assignments will build upon one another and ultimately contribute to your final assignment, which is a research proposal designed to answer a specific, novel question grounded in the research you conduct during this class.