In this course, we will use this question to probe the philosophical foundations of research and learn how to problematise, formulate and design a research paradigm with an ethical process. As a development practitioner, you will need to collect many different types of information from a wide range of sources in the field as part of your work. It will be important that you conduct our own research – whether small-scale or large — to implement and evaluate your interventions. This requires a basic knowledge of social science research methods that you can deploy as and when the need arises. 

This course helps you frame research problems that you observe in the field and translate them into a research process that is ethical and grounded in quantitative and qualitative methods. We study sampling, biography, ethnography, case study, quantitative methods (descriptive, correlation, comparative and experimental). Finally, you will learn how to document and report on your research after framing a research proposal.