QUALITATIVE RESEARCH METHODS
IN GEOGRAPHY & DEVELOPMENT

GHY 492 / 692
Spring 2012

Course syllabus

Class calendar

Office hours &
general teaching policies

Bibliography / literature review assignment

The class field research project

Useful research resources

Plagiarism (yes, you really should read this)

Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) information

GENERAL COURSE INFORMATION

Professor

• Mark M. Miller; Ph.D. (Arizona), M.I.M. (Thunderbird)

• Tel: 601 266 4729

• E-mail:m.m.miller@usm.edu

• Office: Walker Science Building, room 225

• Office hours & general teaching policies

• Website: http://ocean.otr.usm.edu/~w301497/

• Please see my advice on how to excel in my geography classes.

Grading: undergraduates

Grading: graduate students

Learning objectives

Scorch's Pyrography. Retrieved January 22, 2012: http://www.scorchpyro.co.uk/OtherItems.html

What is geographic research? I am very fond of the romantic notion that our mission as geographers is to uncover "what lies beneath the dragon." Cartographers once emplyed icons such as dragons and sea serpents to cover our areas of ignorance on maps. Today, we may be able to image and map the physical contours of the entire globe, but there remains much more in the world that we do not understand -- still covered by dragons -- than what we do understand.

As geographers, we have a wide range of research frameworks and techniques at our disposal. Ideally, these complement one another to peel away the dragons and deepen our understandings. One of the most fundamental divisions in geographic research -- and social science research as a whole -- is quantitative vs. qualitative research. Quantitative research is the study of what can be measured: distance, temperature, wealth, health indicators, attitudes or opinions expressed on a scale, and so on.

Qualitative research is the study of what cannot be readily or usefully measured. This may include exploratory research, reviews of existing research literature, people's complex stories, pictures, very complex phenomena, and so on.

Our mutual objectives in this new course are to:

• Appreciate the role of qualitative methods in geographic research, both alone and as a complement to quantitative methods
• Gain a broad perspective on several major qualitative research techniques, as well as some theoretical frameworks for conducting qualitative research
• Gain greater familiarity with research journals and facility in reading research articles
• Learn and understand a little bit more about our world in the process
• Apply our class scholarship to an applied development project in Mississippi
  
• Working together, create a new course for the USM geography curriculum

• Undergraduate students will prepare themselves for possible graduate study, or critical thinking in any career.

• Graduate students will draft the methodology component of a literature review for their theses, professional papers, or dissertations, focusing in particular on relevant qualitative research.

Class meetings

• Mondays 5:30 - 8:15 (?) p.m. + one field research trip

• WSB 223

Required reading

• Charmaz, Kathy. 2006. Constructing Grounded. Sage.

• Cooperrider, David, and Diana Whitney. 2005. Appreciative Inquiry. Berrett-Koeler.

• Graduate students only: Jesson, Jill, Lydia Matheson, and Fiona Lacey. 2011. Doing Your Literature Review. Sage.

• The professor will assign additional, online readings throughout the semester.

Suggestions on how to succeed in this class:

• Read my teaching policies

• Read my gratuitous advice for students

Zits. November 2, 2004