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Introduction to Qualitative Interpretive Methods

Course Dates and Times

Monday 17 – Friday 21 February 2019, 09:00–12:30
15 hours over five days

Marie Østergaard Møller

mol@dps.aau.dk

Institution: Aalborg Universitet

This course is for PhD students who have just started an interpretive or qualitative research project. It is aimed primarily at students of political science, sociology, international relations and public administration, but students of other social science disciplines such as public policy and anthropology will also benefit from it.

The course is organised around the typical steps of a research process – from how to formulate an interpretive research question to how to present and document analyses. It introduces a broad spectrum of interpretive approaches with a focus in particular on narrative methods and discourse analysis. These two approaches provide a good representation of different interpretive strategies, and by understanding their logics and uses, you will be able to select a research strategy that best fits your own research question.

By the end of the course, you should have a working knowledge of interpretive methods, including insights into how they can be used in an interpretive research process.

Tasks for ECTS Credits

2 credits (pass/fail grade) Attend at least 90% of course hours, participate fully in in-class activities, and carry out the necessary reading and/or other work prior to, and after, class, including daily matrix-group work based on readings of the day.

3 credits (to be graded) As above, plus prepare a group presentation, which requires approximately five hours' work outside class, based on matrix work of the day.

4 credits (to be graded) As above, plus complete a four-page assignment to be handed in shortly after the course.

Instructor Bio

Marie Østergaard Møller is Associate Professor at Aalborg University in Denmark.

Her research interests include social and political categories, categorisation, frontline work, welfare state research, classic social theory of solidarity, and systematic qualitative methods.

@MarieOeMoeller

This course offers an introduction to different interpretive methods. You will learn to ‘read’ texts while becoming familiar with contemporary thinking about interpretation, narrative, and discourse. During the course we will focus on narrative method, hermeneutics, phenomenology, discourse analysis, deconstruction method and genealogy. The course is organised with the following six objectives in mind:

To examine the scientific criteria of interpretive research and to give you basic training in how to formulate an interpretive research question
To expose you to issues of conceptualisation, theory, research design, and strategies of framing questions and selecting cases
To help you organise and process material through interpretive coding strategies
To teach you how to choose the best strategy of interpretation for your research question
To explain how to condense and present interpretations
To draw conclusions from interpretive analyses.

The course will cover basic techniques for collecting, interpreting, and presenting analyses. Throughout it, we will operate on two interrelated dimensions, one focused on theoretical approaches to various types of interpretive research, the other on practical techniques for data collection, coding strategies and interpretive strategies of analysis, writing, and presenting findings.

Theoretically, the course considers questions such as:

What is ‘interpretive’ research?
What questions is it best suited for?
By what criteria does it meet or fail to meet the standards of scientific evidence?
What are the roles of concepts in interpretive research?
Can interpretive methods verify hypotheses, or only generate them?
Can interpretive research explain social phenomena, or only interpret them?
Do interpretive analyses have a small-N problem?
In what ways is interpretive research 'grounded'?

Practically, the course considers questions such as:

What scientific criteria apply for interpretive methods?
How do researchers ask the ‘right’ question to the ‘right’ material?
What collecting techniques can be used to enhance the quality of the material?
What interpretive position should ground the research?
What is the unit of analysis?
How do researchers organise the material and how do they ‘read’ it?
How can they make sense of their interpretations in a transparent, authentic and inclusive way?
How can they draw conclusions from their interpretive analyses?

The course introduces a broad spectrum of interpretive approaches; however, its theoretical focus will be on narrative method and discourse analysis, to expose you to methods which put rather different weight on inductive and deductive strategies of interpretation. This will strengthen your general knowledge of interpretive methods, and give you a solid basis for choosing the ‘right’ strategy of interpretation after the course.

This course will give you a basic understanding of how to choose between interpretive methods, including insight into hands-on tools that can be used during an interpretive research process. It will prepare you to take advanced courses in interpretive methods with a more specialised focus on (for example) ethnographic method, grounded theory, narrative method or discourse analysis.

By the end of this course, you should have a basic understanding of how to:

operationalise an interpretive research question
select and collect data for interpretation
organise and process data through interpretive coding strategies
analyse data using strategies of interpretation
condense and present interpretations.

None

Day	Topic	Details
1	Introducing interpretive methods	Welcome Interpretation of what?  Asking the ‘right’ question to the ‘right’ material Selecting and collecting data suited for  interpretation Introduction of written  student assignment.
2	Interpretive strategies, positions and methods (1) Hands-on strategies for interpretation and analysis (1)	Narrative methods What’s your unit of  analysis? Organising  your data? What’s in your data?  Reading your data.
3	Interpretive strategies, positions and methods (2) Hands-on strategies for interpretation and analysis (2)	Discourse analysis How to make sense of it? Sorting your data using  interpretive research strategies
4	Interpretive strategies, positions and methods (3) Hands-on strategies for interpretation and analysis (3).	Discourse analysis How to make sense of it? Sorting your data using interpretive research strategies.
5	Condensing and presenting interpretations. Drawing conclusions from interpretive analyses	Descriptive analyses Explaining analyses Chronologically analyses You only know what you (can) show – citations and displays. Scientific criteria Documentation Publication

Day	Readings
1	Soss, Joe, 2006 Talking Our Way to Meaningful Explanations – A Practice Centered View of Interviewing for Interpretive Research in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn pp. 127–149 New York: M.E. Sharpe Wagener, Hendrik Meaning in Action – Interpretation and Dialogue in Policy Analysis Chapter 1 and 2, pp. 3–23 New York: M.E. Sharpe Weiss, Robert S., 1994 Respondents: Choosing Them and Recruiting Them in Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies pp. 15–37 New York: Free Press Yanow, Dvora, 2006 Thinking interpretively: philosophical presuppositions and the human sciences in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn pp. 5–26 New York: M.E. Sharpe Yanow, Dvora, 2012 Ways of Knowing in Interpretive Research Design pp. 24–44 London: Routledge
2	Schaffer, Frederic Charles, 2006 Ordinary Language Interviewing in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn pp. 150–160 New York: M.E. Sharpe Mark Bevir, 2006 How Narratives Explain in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn pp. 281–290 New York: M.E. Sharpe Riessman, Catherine Kohler, 1993 Narrative Analysis in Qualitative Research Methods Series 30 pp. 1–70 London: SAGA Publications
3	Fairclough, Norman, 2003 Social analysis, discourse analysis, text analysis pp. 21–61 Discourses and representations pp. 123–155 in Analyzing Discourse: Textual analysis of social research London: Routledge Phillips, Nelson & Cynthia Hardy, 2002 Discourse Analysis – Investigating Processes of Social Construction in Qualitative Research Methods Series 50 pp. 1–87 London: SAGA Publications
4	Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe, 2014 Beyond the Positivity of the Social: Antagonisms and Hegemony in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics Chapter 3, pp. 79–131 London: Verso Stavrakakis, Y., Horwarth, D., & Norval, A., 2000 Introducing discourse theory and political analysis in Discourse theory and political analysis: Identities Chapter 1, pp. 1–23 Manchester: Manchester University Press Dreyfus, Hubert. L. and Paul Rabinow, 1983 Interpretive Analytics in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics, pp. 104–124 Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983, second edition
5	Miles, Matthew B., Michael A. Huberman and Johnny Saldana (2014) Displaying the Data in Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook, 3. edition. Chapters 5,11,12, pp. 105–120, 273–338 London: SAGE
Case Material	Lindekilde, Lasse Discourse and Frame Analysis: In-depth Analysis of Qualitative Data in Social Movement Research in: D. della Porta (ed.) Methodological Practices in Social Movement Research Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 1–38 Government of Denmark, 2009: A Common and safe future www.nyidanmark.dk, pp. 4–30

Software Requirements

None

Hardware Requirements

None

Literature

Government of Denmark, 2009: A Common and safe future
www.nyidanmark.dk

Dvora Yanow, 2006
Thinking interpretively: philosophical presuppositions and the human  sciences
in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn pp. 5–27
New York: M.E. Sharpe

Dvora Yanow & Peregrine Schwartz-Shea, 2012
Ways of Knowing
in Interpretive Research Design pp. 24–44
London: Routledge

Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, 1983
Interpretive Analytics
in Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics pp. 104–125
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1983, second edition

Laclau, Ernesto and Chantal Mouffe, 2014
Beyond the Positivity of the Social: Antagonisms and Hegemony
in Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics Chapter 3, pp. 79–131
London: Verso

Lindekilde, Lasse
Discourse and Frame Analysis:  In-depth Analysis of Qualitative Data in Social Movement Research
in D. della Porta (ed.) Methodological Practices in Social Movement Research pp. 1–38
Oxford: Oxford University Press

Mark Bevir, 2006
How Narratives explain
in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn pp. 281–290
New York: M.E. Sharpe

Miles, Matthew B.,Michael A. Huberman and Johnny Saldana (2014)
Displaying the Data
in Qualitative Data Analysis: A Methods Sourcebook, 3. edition Chapters 5,11,12, pp. 105–120, 273–338
London: SAGE

Fairclough, Norman, 2003
Social analysis, discourse analysis, text analysis pp. 19–61
Discourses and representations pp. 121–156
in Analyzing Discourse: Textual analysis of social research
London: Routledge

Phillips, Nelson & Cynthia Hardy, 2002
Discourse Analysis – Investigating Processes of Social Construction
in Qualitative Research Methods Series 50 pp. 1–87
London: SAGA Publications

Riessman, Catherine Kohler, 1993
Narrative Analysis
in Qualitative Research Methods Series 30 pp. 1–70
London: SAGA Publications

Schaffer, Frederic Charles, 2006
Ordinary Language Interviewing
in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn Chapter 7, pp. 150–160
New York: M.E. Sharpe

Soss, Joe, 2006
Talking Our Way to Meaningful Explanations – A Practice Centered View of Interviewing for Interpretive Research
in (ed. Dvora Yanow and Peregrine Schwartz-Shea) Interpretation and Method: Empirical Research Method and the Interpretive Turn pp. 127–149
New York: M.E. Sharpe

Stavrakakis, Y., Horwarth, D., & Norval, A., 2000
Introducing discourse theory and political analysis
in Discourse theory and political analysis: Identities Chapter 1, pp. 1–23
Manchester: Manchester University Press

Weiss, Robert S., 1994
Respondents: Choosing Them and Recruiting Them
in Learning from Strangers: The Art and Method of Qualitative Interview Studies pp. 15–37
New York: Free Press

Recommended Courses to Cover After this One

Summer School

Analysing Discourse
Expert Interviews for Qualitative Data Generation
Focus Groups for Qualitative Data Generation
Ethnography
Strategies of Interpretive/Qualitative Political Research
Qualitative Data Analysis: Methods and Procedures

Winter School

Analysing Political Language
Advanced Qualitative Data Analysis
Knowing and the Known: The Philosophy and Methodology of the Social Sciences

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Introduction to Qualitative Interpretive Methods

Course Dates and Times

Instructor Bio

@MarieOeMoeller

Software Requirements

Hardware Requirements

Literature

Recommended Courses to Cover After this One