RSCH8635 gives doctoral students pursuing qualitative dissertations the philosophical grounding and methodological breadth needed to choose and defend a specific qualitative approach for their own research. Rather than treating "qualitative research" as a single undifferentiated method, the course treats each approved methodology as resting on distinct philosophical assumptions about knowledge and reality, with its own logic for data collection, analysis, and reporting.
Philosophical foundations and approved qualitative methodologies
Core topics
- Philosophical foundations of qualitative inquiry: The epistemological and ontological assumptions underlying qualitative research broadly — how qualitative researchers conceptualize knowledge, meaning, and reality differently than quantitative researchers, and why this matters for how a study is designed and judged
- Ethnography: Immersive, culture-focused inquiry that examines a group's shared patterns of behavior, language, and meaning-making, typically through extended fieldwork and participant observation
- Case study: In-depth, bounded investigation of a single case (an individual, organization, program, or event) to develop a rich, contextualized understanding of a specific phenomenon
- Grounded theory: A systematic methodology for generating theory directly from data through iterative coding and constant comparison, rather than testing a theory determined in advance
- Phenomenology: Investigating the lived experience of a phenomenon from the perspective of those who experienced it, aiming to describe the essential structure of that experience
- Heuristics and generic qualitative research: Heuristic inquiry's emphasis on the researcher's own lived experience as a starting point for understanding a phenomenon, alongside generic (basic) qualitative research as a flexible approach when a study's purpose doesn't require the specific structural commitments of the other named methodologies
Students analyze primary sources and the scholarly works of the developers of each methodology, building toward genuine competency in executing a qualitative study and direct preparation for conducting their own dissertation research.
RSCH8635 assignments include methodology comparison papers, primary source analyses, and qualitative design justifications
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Frequently asked questions
The choice depends primarily on the nature of the research question and what kind of understanding the student is actually trying to produce, not on personal preference for one methodology's name or reputation. A question about how a particular cultural or organizational group shares meaning and behavior points toward ethnography; a question that requires deep, contextualized understanding of one specific, bounded instance points toward case study; a question aiming to build new theory in an under-theorized area points toward grounded theory; a question about the essential nature of a lived experience (such as what it is like to undergo a particular life event) points toward phenomenology; a question centered on the researcher's own lived experience as a primary data source points toward heuristic inquiry; and a question that doesn't fit neatly into any of these more structured traditions may be best served by generic qualitative research. RSCH8635 is structured to walk through the philosophical foundations and primary scholarly sources behind each option specifically so students can make this match deliberately and defend it credibly in their dissertation proposal, rather than defaulting to whichever methodology happens to be most familiar or popular without considering whether its underlying assumptions actually fit their research question.