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Published March 31, 2003 | Version v1
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Designing a qualitative methods syllabus

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After some initial trepidation, I was excited about teaching a graduate seminar in qualitative methods. It could hardly be a more interesting time. The publication of King, Keohane, and Verba’s Designing Social Inquiry reinvigorated interest in qualitative methods, and I wanted to design the course to profit from this emerging debate. Whereas KKV appealed to qualitative researchers to do their best to adopt quantitative methodological guidelines, I wanted to encourage students to think about whether that is always the best prescription for qualitative research. What is gained, and what is lost from evaluating case-oriented, comparative research from the perspective of large-N, variable-oriented research? What are the strengths and weaknesses of qualitative research, and what types of questions or issues are best addressed with it? How does a researcher make valid causal inferences about complex political phenomena on the basis of case-study or comparative case study methods? I hoped to teach students how to create and critique sophisticated case study and comparative research. I also wanted them to be able to explain their methodological decisions to quantitative researchers in terms that the latter could understand and appreciate.

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2153-6767 (ISSN)