Qualitative Research in Social Sciences (389-DL-20)
Instructors
Joseph Michael Guisti
Trained as a sociologist specializing in the biopolitical implications of lived experience and non-credentialed expertise, I primarily work in the nonprofit sector, specializing in data and evaluation. Upon completing my PhD, I spent four years working in the neighborhood gun violence intervention sector in Chicago, supporting street outreach, workforce development and case management services at Institute for Nonviolence Chicago before moving back to my home state of California, where I now work in the homelessness services sector. I continue to serve in academia part time, as faculty director of the online major in Social Sciences at Northwestern University's School of Professional Studies, and as a course instructor.
Meeting Info
Online: TBA
Overview of class
This course will equip students with the skills to investigate complex human experiences and social phenomena using qualitative research methods. Students will learn how to design qualitative research projects, collect data, and analyze it using multiple frameworks. The course will introduce them to three qualitative data collection strategies: field observation, semi-structured interviewing, and content analysis, and students will learn the epistemological, analytic and ethical considerations attendant to each strategy by evaluating existing scholarship and designing a hypothetical qualitative research project of their own. By the end of the course, students will have designed a research proposal that describes how qualitative research would answer a social science question of their choosing. As part of this project, students will develop a research question, review some existing scholarship on their question's topic, collect example data, conduct an initial, exploratory analysis on the data they collect, and present their findings with reference to the scholarship they reviewed.
Registration Requirements
Prerequisites: none.
Note: This course is limited to School of Professional Studies students only. Undergraduate students in other schools at Northwestern are not permitted to enroll in this course.
Learning Objectives
By the end of this course, you will be able to:
Develop a research question that's well-suited for qualitative research methods
Plan an original qualitative research project.
Collect qualitative data using ethnography, content analysis, and semi-structured interviews.
Synthesize peer-reviewed journal articles in relation to a research question.
Evaluate the epistemological, analytic, and ethical considerations across multiple qualitative data collection methods.
Analyze qualitative data using the analytic frameworks taught in the course.
Class Attributes
Asynchronous:Remote class-no scheduled mtg time