The Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research is a two-week meeting held each summer at Syracuse University. The Institute promotes the teaching and application of qualitative research methods in social science. The Institute is now firmly established as the premier venue for intensive instruction on, training to conduct, and preparation to teach qualitative and multi-method research. The Institute provides high-level, carefully designed instruction for a large and diverse group of attendees drawn from a wide national and, increasingly, international constituency. By June 2020, over 2,650 graduate students and junior faculty will have received instruction on advanced qualitative methods at the Institute. The Institute takes place at the same time as an associated Research Group, a two-day authors' workshop that meets at least once during each Institute's two-week duration. The Research Group encourages and empowers scholars to publish in the field of methodology, thus directly enhancing and expanding the core canon of published research on qualitative and multi-method research.
Given the inferential leverage that using multiple analytic techniques can deliver, the Institute's instructors and participants, and thus its pedagogy, are strongly concerned with how qualitative methods undergird and complement alternative analytic approaches. In addition, early versions of books and articles developing, disseminating and/or using qualitative methods have been presented and discussed at the Institute. "Road-testing" forthcoming work at the Institute gives authors an unparalleled opportunity to receive valuable feedback and criticism from an audience with diverse epistemic commitments and substantive interests. Interchange at the Institute has also resulted in collaborative writing projects among faculty and participants, and has stimulated new methodological research by both groups. In all, the Institute has improved methodological training in the social sciences, facilitating the production of more rigorous and useful research.
This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.
