Summer Institute for Research Design in Cultural Anthropology

East Carolina University, Greenville NC

Investigators

Abstract

This project involves the third set of three years of a summer institute in research design in cultural anthropology. Experts in research design and in the link between data and theory will teach a set of 12-15 graduate students chosen competitively from Ph.D. programs throughout the US during a period of 3 weeks. Course content will cover a broad spectrum of issues focusing on the link between theory and the development of research objectives, concepts, definitions, variables, measures and hypotheses; the relationship between quantitative and qualitative approaches in the ethnographic context; systematic data collection procedures; probability and non-probability sampling; statistical distributions and elementary data analysis. The emphasis will be on concepts (e.g., sampling theory), research design, an introduction to data management in both a qualitative and quantitative context, and strategies of hypothesis testing. This project is important because it will provide an introduction to research issues in scientific anthropology for graduate students who may not be receiving an adequate exposure to these issues in their departments. The results of this workshop should be to increase the competence of students to do significant dissertation research projects and to become more proficient social scientists in general.