Thread by @raulpacheco

Opinion that may or may not be unpopular:

We lack serious training in research methods choice and selection.

We keep saying "choose the method according to the research question". But this requires that the student KNOW multiple methods, for data collection AND data analysis.

Moreover, developing criteria for method choice and selection requires students to learn heuristics that can help them build decision trees and models of the type
"IF research question 1
THEN (data collection method 1 AND data analysis 1)
ELSE search RM"

This is why research methods training is very hard, and why it's imperative that whoever teaches methods goes over the details of multiple methodological and empirical strategies, using case studies: so students can see for themselves how researchers make methodological choices.

I choose ethnography as a core methodological strategy because it helps me understand the lives of individuals facing water insecurity, toilet insecurity, and those who work in the informal waste sectors. I know how to use many other methods, but I make an actual choice/decision.

One of the reasons why I assign multiple empirical analyses in my courses is that I want my students to learn HOW different researchers and research teams have made decisions on which methods for data collection, analysis and presentation they used. Which heuristics did they use?

I was thinking of teaching an advanced course on ethnography, and realized that one of the ways in which I have learned how to improve my own ethnographic work is by reading book-length ethnographies. I have read many! I've learned about the decisions ethnographers made.