Course Catalogue

The purpose of the course is to enhance and reinforce knowledge and understanding of the various steps in the research process. Hence, students should develop skills needed to formulate research questions, develop a design for answering those questions, and implement and evaluate the research effort. Students will be exposed to a number of research strategies and issues. Although different research strategies will be more relevant to some disciplines than others, a broader view of the research process should enable students to identify strengths and weaknesses of empirical research efforts in various disciplines. Thus, the goal of the course is not only to improve the student´s research skills, but also to become a better consumer of research.

Although this is not a statistical course, certain topics (e.g., measurement and experimental design) are tied to statistical analysis. Hence, a basic understanding of statistics (e.g. correlation, regression, analysis of variance) is assumed.

The course will cover research related to:

• experimental and
• quasi-experimental designs,
• survey designs
• suggestions from the participants to cover additional research approaches might be accommodated, e.g. by offering additional lectures

In addition to introduction and overview of the various research approaches, the course will include critical evaluations of selected empirical studies.

The course is intensive and will be conducted as a blend of lectures and discussion of selected parts of the course materials, as well as critical evaluations of selected empirical studies. In addition the participants own research problems will also be addressed.

Prior to the course, participants are expected to prepare a presentation (2-3 slides) of their research proposal addressing the participants research problem, how this relates to prior insights, as well as how the research problem is planned (thought) researched empirically.

The course will be on campus, but if you for some reason are not able to follow the course physically, we can provide an opportunity for you to follow the course digitally.

Visit our website for more information (see course details).