INSTRUCTORS:

Dr. Mavis Jones (mavis.jones@dal.ca); 494-6733
Dr. Janice Graham (janice.graham@dal.ca); 494-3801

Office: Qualitative Research Commons, Tupper Link G33
Office hours: Wednesday 10:00 – 12:00, or by appointment
Course hours: Wednesday 1:00 – 4:00
Class location: Qualitative Research Studio, Tupper Basement BA1 (adjacent to MedIT)


Course description:

Where do the statistics leave off, and values, attitudes, and practices come in? How do you build a qualitative evidence base? This advanced graduate course will tackle ways of knowing, getting at, and understanding health. It will ground students in the theories, methodologies and methods of qualitative health research. The objective is to provide students with an understanding and demonstrated competence in data gathering techniques, description, interpretation and analysis of health matters. What matters, and what counts? We will examine current methodological and epistemological debates and practices surrounding evidence-based decision making. The course is designed to balance theoretical and practical components in order to meet the needs of graduate students in health disciplines working towards developing their own research project. Students will develop a theoretically sound rationale for their proposed research and gain experience in data collection, fieldwork, analysis and interpretation across a range of methods: participant observation, ethnography, interviewing, and focus groups. Through study and practice, we will as a group explore the strengths and weaknesses of each method. As a graduate student in this course, you will be developing a theoretically and methodologically sound rationale to address a critical issue of interest to you. You are expected to have come to the class with an idea of a project already in mind. During the course you will be applying the readings, exercises and discussions to your own research proposal, which you will present for peer feedback in late March.

Students will be expected to develop critical skills in assessing the merits of, and choosing, qualitative methodologies to address different types of problems. Students will be able, at the course’s end, to identify the value of different ways of knowing in answering health care research questions, and show competence in qualitative research design, data gathering and analysis. We will examine the tensions between qualitative and quantitative methodologies, and the evidence they produce in public health, clinical and community settings. The question of what constitutes relevant and valid evidence in the assessment of health interventions is central to these tensions.