https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/INTR5773?type=COREInternational Relations (IR) is an intrinsically interdisciplinary field. It includes scholars who employ a range of ontological assumptions and methodological approaches in their work. Moreover, researchers are increasingly blend two or more different social science strategies in a single project, in an approach known as mixed or multi-method research (MMR). The value of drawing on more than one approach is that many "big" research questions can only be answered by examining processes taking place across multiple temporal and spatial domains or at different levels of analysis. To assess the nature and scope of these processes, multiple methods might be leveraged sequentially or in combination to (1) shed light on multiple facets of a political phenomenon, (2) answer multiple related questions in a project, and/or (3), craft descriptively rich research reports. This course is designed to teach students how to combine two or more methodological approaches in their research projects as well as how to design and execute effective qualitative case research. The course will be especially useful for students who are working on their theses but are uncertain about how to proceed. It is heavily weighted toward examples, class exercises, and workshopping of student ideas, with instructor feedback on short written assignments. As such, the course is intended to guide students through the process of fitting an appropriately tailored multi-method study design to their research question; sketch a plan to assess their empirical claims; collect and analyze different types of empirical data at multiple levels of analysis or/and across different spatial and temporal domains. Finally, we discuss techniques for integrating the empirical results and writing them up in a convincing narrative style. The second half of the course then drills down into the nuts and bolts of how to select and analyze a small number of cases qualitatively over time and space.This course proceeds from the abstract to the concrete. In the first two weeks, we discuss the uses and attractiveness of the MMR approach and identify questions that are particularly well-suited for MMR. We also explore the limitations and challenges students are likely to face in applying MMR to their research projects, as well as the range of options available to scholars desiring to undertake multi-method research-from purely positivist to purely interpretivist to a mixed MMR approach. The next few weeks are used to address the unique challenges related to concept formation and theory development in multi-method research. This is followed by the hypothesis testing and data requirements associated with different types of MMR. The second half of the class is devoted to the principles of case research, ranging from how to choose and define cases to how to periodize cases to how to engage in case-intensive research using the tools of process-tracing, comparative historical analysis, and pattern- matching, among other techniques. The next few weeks cover techniques for data genera- tion and/or collection, data processing, case coding and comparative case analysis. The final sessions focus on the "write-up," namely how to derive empirical generalizations across dif- ferent case studies and how to integrate these findings in a single research report. Students will also become familiar with how qualitative data analysis software (QDAS) like NVivo and MaxQDA can be used to process, code and analysis multiple streams of qualitative data into synthetic conclusions. These tools may also be used to generate data visualizations that can be added to the report to support its general conclusions.