July 25-26

Qualitative literacy is the ability to read, interpret, and assess qualitative social science evidence competently. This course is centered on a single question. Suppose you were given two books, each based entirely on one year of ethnographic observation, and were told that one of them is a piece of empirically sound social science and the other, though interesting and beautifully written, is not. What criteria would you use tell the difference?

One could ask the same question of a different kind of qualitative research. Suppose the two books were instead based on in-depth interviews with the same sets of respondents, and were informed that one study is sound and the other is not. What criteria would you use?

Qualitative research has been indispensable to the study of inequality, poverty, race, education, public health, gender, immigration, the family, criminal justice, and much more. But quality varies, and each of the hundreds of ethnographic and interview studies published yearly on these issues is, from a social scientific perspective, either sound or unsound.

In this workshop, sociologists Mario Small and Jessica Calarco will help participants develop the tools needed to assess qualitative research produced using in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation. The course will introduce five key criteria to assess the quality in qualitative research: cognitive empathy, heterogeneity, palpability, follow-up, and self-awareness. It will offer participants the opportunity to practice evaluating qualitative research on their basis.

This course is intended for anyone who seeks a higher level of qualitative literacy, including social scientists, researchers, students, evaluators, policy makers, and journalists.