Schedule, syllabus and examination date

Course content

The course will present a variety of common and cutting-edge qualitative research methods in human geography and beyond. It aims to give you the skills to design your research in a way that is analytically powerful and practically feasible. The course aims to increase your understanding of the choices involved in conducting qualitative research, including the assessment of what methods are suited to deal with different research questions.?

Learning outcome

You will be acquainted with the most important qualitative research methods, including interviews, focus groups, document analysis and ethnography. The techniques will be critically assessed, and their potential and limitation will be discussed. In addition to introducing you to the different methods, the lectures will focus on how different methods suit different designs and research questions, and how they can be the starting point for tailor-made research designs, triangulation and experimentation. You will also learn how to analyse qualitative data, by using different strategies of qualitative analysis, and reflect on how your study can inform others through empirical and theoretical generalization.

Through an interactive learning philosophy, the course will provide you with the chance to reflect on your own choices, and to get feedback from students and facilitators on your research design. You will also participate in practical exercises and role play making you better prepared for a fieldwork setting.

Knowledge

You will be able to obtain:

  • An understanding of qualitative research methodologies and their possibilities.
  • An understanding of how different methods and techniques can be used to generate different types of qualitative data, and learn about the ethical dilemmas and strategic limitations associated with these.
  • An insight into strategies for qualitative data interpretation and analysis, their possibilities and limitations.

Skills

The course will prepare you for selecting the appropriate methods for your research, and for conducting interviews and other qualitative data collection techniques.

You should be able to:

  • Design a qualitative study in the form of a research proposal, where you present an appropriate methodology for your research questions.
  • Design an interview guide, which translates your research questions into a suitable set of interview guides.
  • Analyse qualitative data in a rigorous manner, with or without software aids.
  • Reflect on and assess your own role (including your way of dealing with ethical dilemmas) in qualitative data collection and analysis.
  • Discus