Faculty
Associate Professor Kai Hockerts & Assistant Professor Anne K. Roepstorff, Visiting Professor: Associate Professor Marie Østergård Møller, Political Science, Aarhus University

Course Coordinator
Assistant Professor Anne K. Roepstorff

This course applies to all PhD students with an interest in how to make valid conclusions out of qualitative data while drawing on Computer Aided Qualitative Data Analysis Systems (CAQDAS) – specifically Nvivo. Since space is limited, priority will be given to students who are experienced in working with qualitative methods and data. It is a precondition for receiving the course diploma that participants attend and actively participate in the entire course.

In the application for the course, applicants should make a short paper about their research, methods used and prior experience with coding of qualitative data (1-3 pages). First, the course participants must download the free trial version of Nvivo at http://www.qsrinternational.com/products_nvivo_free-trial-software.aspx and go through the tutorial in the following guide: Lyn Richards: “Teach-yourself NVivo 8: the introductory tutorials”. 

The aim of the course is to give PhD students an overview of ways to choose a specific method and the implications of the sort of answers available from that as well as tools to actually use the data constructively in the research process and work out theory suggestions from own data.  

The course will help to connect the empirical and theoretical parts of a research project through introductions and discussions of how to build theory on the basis of empirical material. The course will spend one full day (out of three) to introduce the use of Nvivo as a tool to comprehend the often vast material in a qualitative study.

The themes of the course include:

The course allows time to discuss the participants’ own projects and challenges, including how to work the empirical data into valid conclusions and theory.

The course focus is on the process of choosing and accessing the empirical material for the students’ projects and how to work with the data in order to get substantial and interesting research contributions out of this process. As such, the course will on the one hand give an idea of the choices of empirical data collection at hand (with specific focus on qualitative methods and data) – and what the consequences of these choices might be in the end for potential type of conclusions. On the other hand, the course will give input to how to work with the material at hand in a well-documented way in order to obtain interesting and relevant findings for the PhD thesis.

After the course the students should possess:

Lecture plan

Time/period	Faculty	Title
DAY 1
9:30-12:30	Kai Hockerts & Anne Roepstorff	Introduction, theory building vs. theory testing, qualitative vs. quantitative, methods/data, single case vs. multiple cases
13:30-17:00	Kai Hockerts & Anne Roepstorff	Student presentations
DAY 2
09:30-12:30	Kai Hockerts & Anne Roepstorff	Data collection, case selection
13:30-16:00	Kai Hockerts	Data analysis, within case and cross case analysis
DAY 3
9:30-12:30	Marie Østergaard Møller	CAQDAS introduction & practice
13:30-16:00	Marie Østergaard Møller	CAQDAS introduction & practice
16:00-17:00	Kai Hockerts & Anne Roepstorff	Summing up and evaluation

The course will run over a total of three days and be a combination of lectures with workshops, dialogues and student discussions.

Bjerg, Ole (2008): Methods and epistemology, i: Vallgårda, S. and Koch, L. (ed.): Research Methods in Public Health. Munksgaard International, Copenhagen 2008

Law, John (2004) ”After Method. An Introduction” i After method – mess in social science research, Routledge.

Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. (1989): “Building Theory from Case Study Research” in Academy of Management Review 1989, vol. 14, no. 4, pp. 532-550

Eisenhardt, Kathleen M. & Melissa E. Graebner (2007): “Theory building from cases: Opportunities and challenges” in Academy of Management Journal 2007, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 25-32

Bernard, Russell (1994) “Participant Observation” i Research Methods in Anthropology. Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

Amit, Vered (2000) “Introduction: Constructing the field”, i Amit ed. Constructing the Field. Ethnographic Fieldwork in the Contemporary World, New York: Routledge.

Bernard, Russell (1994) “Unstructured and Semistructured Interviewing” i Research Methods in Anthropology. Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches, Thousand Oaks: SAGE.

Holstein, James A. & Jaber F. Gubrium (1995) “Rethinking interview procedures” i The Active Interview, Thousand Oaks: SAGE

Bryman, Alan (2004). Social Research Methods. 2. Ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 28-29 and 273-278.

Miles, Matthew B. & Michael A. Huberman (1994): Qualitative Data Analysis, 2. Ed. Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: SAGE (pp. 1-12 and pp. 239-287)

Charmaz, Kathy (2006): Constructing Grounded Theory: A practical Guide Through Qualitative Analysis. London, Thousand Oaks & New Delhi: Sage (pp. 42-95).

Lyn Richards: “Teach-yourself NVivo 8: the introductory tutorials”

To apply for the course, please fill out the registration form and send it to Course Secretary Maja Dueholm ( md.ikl@cbs.dk) before 15 June 2011