This course attempts to delve into understanding and learning to apply qualitative methods to generate relevant evidence for a range of public health concerns. The course will take students through the entire process of framing research questions to choosing appropriate methods to data collection and analysis. 

Students will be exposed to a range of tools for generating and using qualitative evidence — verbal data (interview techniques, FGD), textual data (organisation newsletters, reports) and visual data (photo voice) and their juxtapositions as and when needed to engage with a range of public health issues and sites (formative research to process documentation to monitoring and evaluation). They will learn to appreciate the relevance of qualitative evidence for informing public health actions.

Students would also draw insights from the use of participatory tools in their Practice II engagement. While learning different research approaches and methods (epidemiological, qualitative, participatory), students would appreciate how these have their own strengths and relevance depending on nature of questions/​problems investigated and not necessarily in opposition to each other.