https://at-ceu.studyguide.timeedit.net/modules/INTR5779?type=COREThis course is designed for students who are just embarking on their MA studies in the IR Department at Central European University. It is the first in a two-semester required sequence of Research Design and Methods, which aims to provide a gentle introduction to the tools that will help students to successfully plan, execute and write up a thesis on an international relations topic. The course is designed for students from both positivist and post-positivist traditions, in the belief that post-graduate students should have a basic familiarity with the dominant research approaches to the study of IR. Since the vast majority of MA students will be writing an empirical thesis, we believe that an RD course should cover the mainstream tools and techniques that are available to them. In this spirit, the course takes no position on which empirical approach is best. Instead, we have curated a kind of 'best practices' set of guidelines for conducting research on the topic of their choice, using tools and techniques ranging from positivist to interpretivist methods. To this end, we begin with a quick overview of useful bibliographic management programs, Google Scholar and webclippers in creating, organizing and processing one's desk research. We then map out the different epistemological approaches in the IR scholarship, ranging from positivist quantitative and qualitative approaches to non-positivist, interpretivist and critical approaches. We also discuss ontological assumptions undergirding these different approaches, as well as questions on how to approach, collect and synthesize the literature to convince the reader of the value of the research project. We then move to the basic building blocks of an MA thesis which will be split into qualitative and quantitative sessions. Both sessions will begin with research questions and puzzles-including what makes some more productive than others.We then turn to theory development and,, finally, cover how to formulate concepts for the purpose of empirical analysis/testing. The second half of the course final part of the course provides a practical survey of the mainstream methodological tools used by both quantitative researchers (data analysis, descriptive statistics, text-as-data and set theoretic methods) and qualitative researchers (including a discussion of how to select, conduct, and code interviews, and work with texts/discourses). The course also provides a basic introduction to statistical software to manage, visualize and analyze various types of data (especially R). The final session will familiarize students with computer-aided qualitative data analysis, particularly how to code, analyze and visualize textual data using NVivo or another software. We believe that there is value in learning about different research approaches from different scholars in the field. We also believe that students should get a map of the field before deciding how to specialize. There is value in teaching broad research design courses collaboratively by professors trained in different research traditions, using a different collection of tools and techniques. We also believe in learning through doing. Hence, this course is made up of a mix of mini-lectures, discussions, group and individual exercises to try to get people to think about where their chosen approach and subject-area fits into the panoply of research traditions in the field and get a taste of how to use the different research approaches. In this way, this course provides a pluralistic introduction to the variety of ways of conducting IR research. It will also serve as a foundational course to prepare students for the follow-up methods course in the winter semester, where they will specialize in quantitative, mixed methods, or qualitative/interpretivist methodologies.