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Annoucements > COMPASSS Activities

COMPASSS Activities

This page reports the forthcoming and past seminars organized (or sponsored) by the COMPASSS Research Group. If you have any suggestion or comment concerning this page, please send an email to Damien Bol

Forthcoming activities :

15 June 2010, University of Manchester, UK

Systematic mixed-methods research training workshop

The Cathie Marsh Center for Census and Survey Methods and COMPASSS are pleased to sponsor the event

Systematic Mixed Methods Research: What, Why, and How?. The idea of systematising data and analysis is anathema to some qualitative researchers. Yet mixed methods research is, arguably, inherently a qualitative and not a quantitative activity. In this workshop we answer three questions about this potentially confusing situation. WHAT is it? WHY do it? HOW do you do systematic analysis using mixed (qual+quant) methods?

WHAT IS SMMR: Systematising means making explicit the comparisons and contrasts across cases, whilst also recognising the aspects that are incommensurate. Systematic research also focuses on the contextual factors that affect outcomes. These context factors are to some extent historical and they require triangulated evidence – ie. historical narratives and historical time-series or the interpretation of cross-sectional data from various dates.

WHY DO SMMR: The need for systematic research arises in part from some concerns we have about non-systematic research. Specifically, if an author knows only how to use qualitative methods, and has only got qualitative data, they are disabled as researchers. The best historians, the best anthropologists, the best sociologists, etc. all use mixed methods in their careers. We also argue that the prospects for purely quantitative social science are restricted. Fundamental social change makes panel studies continually out of date.

HOW TO DO SMMR: Several new techniques exist which offer the triangulated analysis of mixed data types. These rather obviously would include discourse analysis, narrative analysis, and the anthropology of budgeting or of economic categories generally. We provide both expert demonstrations and empirical examples of the following four systematic mixed-methods research strategies:

• Qualitative comparative analysis with crisp–set causality
• Fuzzy set interpretive analysis
• Fuzzy set causal analysis using QCA with calibration blended in
• Weighted analysis of non-random sample data sets
• [there are many other methods such as systematic case study comparisons, social network analysis, pluralist theory falsification and exploration, and multiple correspondence analysis, but we are not covering them in the workshop]

Staff, researchers, and students of all kinds are invited to attend. Registration is open until 5 June. A small fee is charged to cover the travel of the speakers, the food, and a small workshop pack.

The workshop will cover various topics such as:

• Randomised Trials vs. Real Samples in Epidemiological Research
  David Byrne (Univeristy of Durham)
• Implications of Open Systems for Research Methods
  Wendy Olsen (University of Manchester)
• Analysing the Productive and Protective Dimensions of Welfare
  Stefan Kuehner and John Hudson (University of York)
• The Qualitative Comparative Analysis of the Certification of International Footwear Companies
  Axel Marx (University of Antwerp Management School)
• [and many others...]

For more information, click HERE or send an email to Badru Bukenya

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