Research Methods
- NINT 5005 - Research Methods (Spring 2008)
Monday 6.00pm - 7.50pm
Thursday 4.00pm - 5.50pm
This course aims to provide students with a solid grounding in the different logics, methodologies, and practices of the social sciences. It also will help students to develop a research design which leads to a substantive research project, such as an MA thesis.
The course is organized into two broad sections. The first focuses on the philosophy of social inquiry, and introduces students to some of the fundamental questions about epistemology (the theory of knowledge) and ontology (the nature of things) in order to clarify our understanding of the growth of scientific knowledge. We will focus on the traditional view of science, as well as some critics and alternatives, including the positions of positivism, realism, hermeneutics and critical theory. Second, we will explore what it means to ask ‘meaningful’ questions, and what counts as ‘adequate explanations’ within such frameworks.
The second and larger part of the course will be devoted to the challenges and principles of research design. We will begin by examining the current mainstream approach to research design and some of its discontents. We will delve deeper into the issues raised by these debates through a closer look at the strengths and weakness of common quantitative (cross-sectional, longitudinal, contextual, quasi-experimental approaches, etc.) and qualitative (case studies, comparative method, narratives, historical and counterfactual analysis, etc.) research designs. Readings will consist of both critical discussions about, as well as relevant examples of substantive research conducted using these approaches.
Throughout the course, students will systematically develop their own research proposal, through class assignments and drawing on course materials and discussions. Students will work through choosing a topic, coming up with a focused research question and defensible propositions (theoretical arguments), conducting a literature review, and proposing a research design (case study, comparative case study, quantitative analysis). While students are not expected to execute the study during the course, the proposal must be ‘do-able’.