Crafting Research Questions and Qualitative Methodology
MIT OpenCourseWare offers this doctoral-level seminar from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, aimed at first-year PhD students preparing their initial research papers. The course walks through narrowing a research interest into a workable question, combining quantitative and qualitative techniques, and handling the practical problems of interviewing and fieldwork. Class sessions run as a seminar built around two threads: recurring themes across students' own paper topics, and methodological lessons drawn from assigned case-comparison studies. Materials include the reading list, assignments, and case studies used in class. It is aimed squarely at people already committed to a research project rather than newcomers to the field, and it treats methodology as something learned through comparison and critique of real studies rather than through abstract rules.