Qualitative research

[Joe Wasserman]

I think that Boas's 'The Study of Geography' could play this role
excellently! It might not be quite as accessible as you were hoping
for, however, and it isn't drawing the line between qualitative and
quantitative research.

Cheers,
Joe Wasserman

On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 9:19 PM, galey modan <gmodan at gmail.com> wrote:
> On a sort of related note, I'm teaching a course this quarter in which
> students have had no other exposure to qualitative social science and are
> having a really hard time understanding how ethnographic work can be
> 'scientific' since the claims are not widely generalizable. Can anyone
> suggest a good, very basic and accessible text explaining what qualitative
> research is and how it differs quantitative research?  Ideally I'd like to
> find something that's around 20 pages.
>
> thanks,
>
> Galey
>
> 2011/3/8 Matthew Bernius <mbernius at gmail.com>
>
>> On Tue, Mar 8, 2011 at 9:40 PM, Bruce Mannheim <mannheim at umich.edu> wrote:
>>
>> >  The problem I ran into (and one
>> > I'll be better prepared for in the future) is that some (?)/many (?) of
>> the
>> > students were reading their first sustained non-fiction work.  (They've
>> all
>> > read novels and they've all read textbooks, which break the world into
>> > bite-sized chunks.)  So your students might need to be prepared for the
>> > reading they do before they actually delve into the first book.
>> >
>>
>> This has been my experience too. The first couple sections/classes often
>> end
>> up dedicated to teaching them "how to read" and "extract."
>>
>> Also, their exposure (or lack there of) to texts that take critical
>> positions on western stances should be taken into consideration as well.
>> During the first few weeks, especially if a student has never encountered a
>> critical social science/humanities course, the seemingly tamest of
>> statements can lead to the majority of the class shutting down (especially
>> Freshmen).
>>
>> -----------------------------
>> Matthew Bernius
>> PhD Student | Cultural Anthropology | Cornell University |
>> http://anthropology.cornell.edu
>> Researcher At Large | Open Publishing Lab @ the Rochester Institute of
>> Technology | http://opl.cias.rit.edu
>> mBernius at gMail.com | http://www.mattbernius.com | @mattBernius
>> My calendar: http://bit.ly/hNWEII
>>
>