6215-Qualitative Methods-2425_S2

Professor: Anne-Laure Fayard.          annelaure.fayard@novasbe.pt                          

 Course Location: Meeting room A211

 Time: Wednesday 9:30 am to 12:30 pm

Course Description

This course  provides a “how-to” of ethnographic research. Students will conduct an

ethnographic project of their own, complemented by weekly readings and discussions. It deals in

an applied way with two interrelated topics:

1.     Field methods of research

The course covers methods that allow you to enter natural social settings to capture data about human behavior in the actual contexts in which people pursue their daily lives. These methods include especially observation and interviewing. The emphasis is on studying first-hand and close-up the ongoing worlds of other people.

2. Exploratory data analysis

The course will help you learn how to make sense of data inductively, i.e., from the  bottom up. This course is not about hypothesis testing. It is about building grounded theory. Our focus will be on the coding and categorization of qualitative data (observational notes and interview transcripts). You will learn to go beyond the journalistic description of data to the analysis that characterizes good inductive social science.

 In some fundamental sense, field methods and exploratory data analysis cannot be taught. There are no codified techniques; no rules, formulas, checklists, or recipes; no formal standards of rigor or significance. Yet there is broad agreement in the field about the quality of particular studies. There is no one best way of field research, but there are clearly better and worse ways. There are norms of evidence and inference that resist articulation but are manifest in the studies that achieve influence. There is much that an apprentice scholar has to learn about how to do good field research, but it cannot be taught.

         It is often said that the only way to learn how to do good ethnography is to read the good ethnographies. As far as it goes, this is true of field research more generally and not just ethnography, but it is only half the story. The only way to learn the norms and standards of this research is to read studies that embody those norms and set those standards. But the only way to acquire the practices and attitudes and skills needed to meet those standards in your own work is through trial and error.