GSSS - Selected Qualitative Methods

Course objectives 
The goal of this course is to provide PhD candidates with high-quality guidance and information on conducting qualitative research, allowing them to profit from the expertise on qualitative methods available in the School of Social Sciences. At the end of the course, students:

• have gained knowledge of different qualitative methods of data collection and analysis 
• understand the role and position of selected qualitative methods in interdisciplinary / multi-method research 
• are able to link qualitative data to their PhD research questions 
• have gained hands-on experience in designing and using selected qualitative methods tools and analyzing the relative data 
• are able to critically reflect upon methodological choices and the implications for data analysis 

Course content 
The course is meant for PhD candidates in different phases of their fieldwork: candidates both designing their methodological tools and who have already collected (some or all) field data will benefit from attending this course. There will be a practical focus on how to design qualitative data collection tools and choice of methods, as well as on how to analyze qualitative data and on the process of writing about results. Both social science students and students coming from non-social science disciplines are welcome to participate in this course. If the composition of students allows, the teachers plan to pay particular attention to multi-method and inter-disciplinary research approaches. PhD candidates in a before-fieldwork phase will benefit from the course’s relatively broad focus on a variety of qualitative methods, on their strengths and weaknesses, on their combination with other methods, and on important issues when planning the methods for data collection. PhD candidates in an after-fieldwork phase will benefit from the course’s practical focus on how to analyze qualitative data, and on the process of writing about results. Whenever possible, participants will be invited to work with their own collected material to increase the effectiveness of the course.