RESEARCH DESIGN FUNDAMENTALS

In an applied manner, the course addresses the question “How to design a research in social sciences?”. It starts from scratch, hence is targeted at students who did part of their BA or MA studies in a field different from the social sciences or who have only had some basic training in qualitative and/or quantitative methods and who have not yet followed a comprehensive research design seminar. Therefore, crucial decisions that have to be taken when designing a research process in social sciences, from problem definition and recognition of different research strategies (approaches) to harmonised selection of data collection, analysis and interpretations strategies, will be presented during the lectures. During the seminar part students are expected to prepare and discuss the backbone of a research design (a made-up case, approached with different strategies).
In the introductory part of the course, factors that decisively shape major characteristics of the intended research are introduced and discussed. In the main part, basic characteristics of methods and techniques that can typically be applied in various steps of research process are presented, discussed and illustrated with examples from a diverse field of social sciences to finally conclude with highly abstract and idealised concept of various predetermined types of research designs, without discriminating any of them in favour of the other.

Course leader

Samo Kropivnik University of Ljubljana

Target group

advanced students and junior researchers in political science and adjacent disciplines

Course aim

as above