This award provides partial support for three summer workshops on field methods research. The workshop will provide training and instruction for 15 advanced sociology graduate students or junior faculty each year. The workshop will focus on direct field work experience and individualized session with a faculty mentor. The participants will meet three times a week for 4 1/2 weeks in two-hour seminar sessions. The seminars will be devoted to discussions of epistemological, technical, and ethical issues in field work, to the teaching of methods of analyzing qualitative data, and to ongoing discussions of the participants experiences in their field research. There is a great deal of interest in research using field work methods in the sociological research community, but most graduate programs provide very little formal training in these methods of data collection and in the analyses of qualitative data. This workshop will provide much needed systematic training and teaching for up to 45 advanced sociology students. The workshop should greatly improve the quality of sociological research based on field work methods.
