Mixed Methods Research

This course is designed to assist researchers in combining two or more methodological approaches in empirical projects—so-called mixed methods research (MMR)—in order to strengthen the validity of their conclusions and demonstrate generalizability of their findings. The course will be especially useful for PhD students who are working on their theses, postdoctoral fellows who are transforming their theses into a monograph or series of articles as well as advanced researchers who wish to use more than one method in their published work, but are uncertain about how to proceed. Particular attention will be paid to the extent to which methods from diverging epistemologies can be combined, and if so how. The course is heavily weighted toward examples, class exercises and workshopping student projects. As such, the course is intended to guide students through the process of fitting an appropriately tailored mixed-method study design to their research question, establish a plan to assess their empirical claims using a combination of research methods, and work out how to approach, collect and analyze different types of empirical data at multiple levels of analysis 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.  

About the lecturer

Erin K. Jenne is a professor at the Department of International Relations at Central European University in Budapest, where she teaches MA and PhD courses on qualitative and quantitative methods; nationalism and civil war; foreign policy analysis; international relations theory; ethnic conflict management; nationalism and populism; and international security. Jenne received her PhD in political science from Stanford University with concentrations in comparative politics, international relations, and organizational theory. She has received numerous grants and fellowships, including a MacArthur fellowship at Stanford University, a Center for Science and International Affairs (BCSIA) fellowship at Harvard University, a Carnegie Corporation scholarship, a Fernand Braudel fellowship at European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, and a MINERVA Initiative grant on Chinese soft power, US Department of Defense. She recently published her second book, Nested Security: Lessons in Conflict Management from the League of Nations and the European Union (Cornell University Press, 2015). Her first book, Ethnic Bargaining: The Paradox of Minority Empowerment (Cornell University Press, 2007) is the winner of Mershon Center’s Edgar S. Furniss Book Award in 2007 and named a Choice Outstanding Academic Title by Choice Magazine. The book is based on her dissertation, which won the Seymour Martin Lipset Award for Best Comparativist Dissertation in 2001. She has published numerous book chapters and journal articles in International Studies Quarterly, Security Studies, Regional and Federal Studies, Journal of Peace Research, Civil Wars, Ethnopolitics, International Studies Review, Journal of Democracy, Research and Politics, PS: Political Science and Politics and Research and Politics. She currently sits on the editorial boards of Ethnopolitics, Foreign Policy Analysis, International Studies Review, and has served in several capacities on the Emigration, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration Section of the International Studies Association and the Comparative Politics Section of the American Political Science Association.