This course builds on Foundations of Social Research and Reasoning and deepens competencies in development research. Empirical and grounded information is very important for development practice and research, and as a practitioner, you will need to know how to build the knowledge, and perspective to problematise a social research issue and undertake evidence-based data collection in an ethical manner. In this course, you will learn how to define a problem, design research, collect data and present the findings. 

Alongside this, you will learn different research methods (quantitative, qualitative and participatory) and gauge their suitability for studying different research problems in different contexts. Finally, you will learn to apply select methods from quantitative, qualitative and participatory approaches in a hands-on setting with baseline surveys, in-depth interviews, and social mapping. This course includes lectures, a ​‘mock-transect’ walk in which you play the role of empirical research, two sets of field visits (one preliminary and one detailed), and a quantitative analysis workshop.