Qualitative Methods of Social Research (M)

The course examines epistemological and methodological issues associated with qualitative research methods in sociology and related subjects, such as social/cultural anthropology. More specifically, it focuses on issues such as the logic of empirical social research, qualitative research design, ethnographic fieldwork, participant observation, interviewing, questionnaire design, comparative case studies, focus groups, data analysis techniques (e.g., content analysis), and their interpretation. Within the framework of the course, students have the opportunity to practice some of the above techniques in order to deepen their understanding of social and intercultural differences and to cultivate skills that are essential for research in the social and humanities sciences.
An introduction to grounded theory and its contribution to the evolution of qualitative research is also provided, as well as to issues such as positivism and how it entered qualitative research, and constructivism and how it influenced many scientific disciplines and established new bridges in research. Furthermore, the influence of feminism on research is discussed, along with how ethnomethodology gave a different position to the research subjects themselves, and how psychoanalysis, symbolic interactionism theories, and phenomenology alternate the focus of analyses between structures and subjects.

The course is structured into the following thematic units, which may correspond to one or more lectures:

Unit 1: Introduction to qualitative research
This section provides an introduction to qualitative research, as well as a brief reference to its history and its trajectory within the research cycle. The milestones that established it will be outlined, and its core characteristics will be analyzed, along with how research questions lead to its selection as a research method.

Section 2: Design and approaches in qualitative research and grounded theories
The second section presents the main methods in qualitative research and the types of data. To make the method selection process understandable, the steps of research design are discussed in detail:

1. Theory
2. Bibliography
3. Relationship between theory and research
4. Epistemological issues
5. Ontological issues
6. Ethical issues
7. Practical consequences/Evaluation research & Action research
8. Political context
9. Researcher training & values

Module 3: Ethics in qualitative research
Just as every research project nowadays is accompanied by its ethical principles, sociological research also has its ethical principles. Particular emphasis is placed on the necessity of ethics in qualitative empirical research, codes of ethics, and issues of confidentiality.

4th section: Ethnography and participant observation
We must be careful when taking ethnography as synonymous with participant observation, they are not synonymous, but these two terms refer to similar data collection approaches, according to which the researcher settles for a period of time in a social setting in order to observe, understand, and form an opinion on the culture and dynamics of a social group. Particular emphasis is placed on the differentiation between conventional and focused ethnography.

5th module: Qualitative interviews, focus groups, group interviews
The preparation of the interview guide is analyzed, as well as everything related to consent forms, audio recording, and transcription. Focus groups are also discussed, along with group interviews, which share common characteristics and key differences.

Unit 6: Discourse analysis, text and document analysis, and content analysis
We have linguistically oriented approaches to qualitative data collection, which are common in qualitative research, such as discourse analysis and conversation analysis, and we have the collection and qualitative analysis of texts and other documents (personal, visual, official documents of state origin/private origin, online documents). Content analysis is an approach to analyzing documents and texts—which may consist of words or images, and may be in print, online, written, or oral—that seeks, in addition to the qualitative component, to systematically and replicably quantify the content in question based on pre-established criteria.

Unit 7: Writing and perspective of qualitative educational research
This section focuses on qualitative research writing, generalization strategies, the presentation of research results, the connection of results with theory, research reflexivity, and the steps for establishing new foundations in the research process.