Support for Institutes and Research Groups on Qualitative and Multi-Method Research

定性和多方法研究所的主要任务是培训研究生和初级教员使用先进的定性方法。该研究所在定性/多方法领域发挥的作用与密歇根大学的ICPSR暑期学校在定量/统计工作方面的作用相同：为来自广泛的全国选民的大量学生提供精心设计的高水平教学。与ICPSR一样，该研究所对政治学学科的方法论培训水平有很大影响。该研究所在其项目中增加了一个定性和多方法分析研究小组。研究组在常规培训所两届会议之间的两天休息期间举行会议。研究小组的目标是帮助年轻学者在方法论领域积极参与出版工作，从而增加已发表研究的核心标准，供更广泛的学术界借鉴。研究小组的目的是为政治方法论学会夏季会议的并行作出贡献，在夏季会议上，高级和初级学者都会介绍方法论的创新研究。研究所及其相关研究小组因此发展到在定性和多种方法研究领域发挥双重作用的程度，从而维持高级培训和促进新的方法学研究，与政治方法论的定量/统计方面的高级培训和高级研究并驾齐驱。目前正在优先考虑四个领域，这些领域将在实践研究人员可用的分析工具方面产生重大收获：1.目前正在进行创新工作，将关于类型学的熟悉概念与关于概念化和测量的新辩论联系起来--从而使方法学家远远超出了类型学仅仅是一种“传统”且可能相当过时的分析工具的想法。2.需要开展新的工作，为“过程追踪”的实践建立严格的标准，并评估其对因果推理的贡献--从而推动该领域更有效地使用一种处于定性研究核心的方法。3.定性研究人员需要认真思考案例选择和确定推广标准的问题--这是关于确定范围条件、形成适用于特定分析范围的概念和案例选择的新工作中解决的一个挑战。4.自觉地构建采用多种互补方法的综合研究设计--这一领域需要协调一致的新关注，使该领域超越作为口号的“多种方法”的概念，而不是作为一套严格的研究规范。通过推进这一四重方法议程，研究所向在亚利桑那州立大学接受一般培训的广大读者传达了宝贵的新方法理解，并向参加研究小组的新一代学者提出挑战，以推动该领域朝着生产性方向发展。

The primary mission of the Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research is the training of graduate students and junior faculty in advanced qualitative methods. The Institute plays the same role vis-a-vis the qualitative/multimethod field as the ICPSR summer school at the University of Michigan plays for quantitative/statistical work: providing a high level of carefully designed instruction for a large number of students, drawn from a wide national constituency. Like ICPSR, the Institute has a large impact on the level of methodological training in the political science discipline.The Institute has added to its program a Research Group in Qualitative and Multi-Method Analysis. The Research Group meets during the two-day breakbetween the two sessions of the regular training Institute. The goal of the Research Group is to help younger scholars to step into the role of publishing actively in the field of methodology, thereby adding to the core canon of published research on which the wider academic community can draw. The aim is for the contribution of the Research Group to parallel that of the summer meetings of the Political Methodology Society, at which both senior and junior-level scholars present innovative research on methodology.The Institute and its associated Research Group have thus evolved to the point of playing a twofold role in the field of qualitative and multi-method research, thereby sustaining both advanced training, and the promotion of new methodological research, parallel to that in the quantitative/statistical side of political methodology.The methodological goals in promoting this training and advanced research are quite specific. Priority is currently being given to four areas that will yield major gains in the analytic tools available for practicing researchers: 1. Innovative work is now being done linking familiar ideas about typologies to new debates on conceptualization and measurement-thereby moving methodologists well beyond the idea that typologies are merely a "traditional," and possibly quite out-of-date, analytic tool. 2. New work is needed to establish rigorous standards for the practice of "process tracing," and for assessing its contributions to causal inference-thereby moving the field to more productively use a method that lies at the core of qualitative research. 3. Qualitative researchers need to think hard about issues of case selection and establishing criteria for generalization-a challenge that is addressed in new work on establishing scope conditions, forming concepts appropriate to a given scope of analysis, and case selection. 4. The self-conscious construction of composite research designs that employ multiple, complementary methods-an area that requires concerted new attention that will move the field beyond the idea of "multi-method" as a slogan, rather than as a set of rigorous norms for research.Through advancing this four-fold methodological agenda, the Institute conveys valuable new methodological understandings to the large constituency that receives the general training at ASU, and challenges a new generation of scholars who participate in the Research Group to advance the field in productive directions.