de Laurențiu Ștefan

This is a long overdue post. One of the things I enjoy most this semester is the workshop I have initiated two months ago, in mid-October. Seven weekly sessions have taken place since our very first introductory meeting of October 13.

This is not a proper research methods workshop, as we are not focusing on qualitative vs. quantitative approaches, on how to interview or how to analyse public data. This is more about what research subject do we choose, what is the unit of analysis, its characteristics of interest, what are the key concepts and how do we make them „operational”. I like to compare what we do with the panning of a trip. First we chose whether we want to go to the seaside, to the mountains, stay inside the country or travel outside. Decide whether this is a family trip, or an adventure with an old buddy, a romantic trip in two, or a group endeavor. Once these are decided, we need to know for how long are we gone and whether we want to cover more destinations or explore fewer in-depth. Then choose the destinations, determine the number of days we will spend in each city and maybe even draft a wish list of places (museums, restaurants etc.) we would like to see once we are there. Of course, things may change on the way, accidents happen, or „must-see” places pop up once we are on the move. But generally speaking, we have a plan. The (research) plan is what you do before embarking on the (research) journey, what you do with your mind and a piece of paper – after of course something has triggered some (research) interest and after many relevant lectures of specialized books and articles.

I also compare this approach with script-writing or with scribbling a musical score.

Drafting research plan is a specific skill for social science researchers that is not treated with enough attention in our departments. One may argue that this should be a concern only for doctoral students and developed only in doctoral schools – but I strongly disagree with this approach. Graduation theses should be built on clear and well-structured research plans. Students at all levels have problems in picking an interesting but manageable research subject and in developing it as to get to non-intuitive findings. And it is definitely not their fault, but of ours, of the teachers who tutor them on this path.

For the moment this is a pilot project, at the same time a structured upgrade of our discussions in the Romanian Politics Study Group. It was welcomed by my colleagues at the Faculty of Political Sciences, endorsed by the Regional Francophone Center for Advanced Research in the Social Sciences (cerefrea.eu) and effectively sheltered by the New Europe College.

These are the two announcements:

http://www.cerefrea.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=78&Itemid=468&limitstart=10

http://nec.ro/PublicEvents-submenu/nov/program.html

And this is the „official” presentation of the concept of the workshop:

University of Bucharest, Faculty of Political Science

Centre Régionale Francophone de Recherches Avancées en Sciences Sociales (CEREFREA)

New Europe College

Building an Effective Research Design in the Social Sciences

Workshop for graduate students

(coordinator: Dr. Laurentiu Stefan, University of Bucharest)

The objective. The workshop aims mainly at assisting a limited number of graduate students in social sciences in designing their research as a first but essential step to high-quality research papers or dissertations. The objective of this workshop is twofold:  to train social science students 1) to develop effective research designs and to assist them in streamlining the research design for their MA or doctoral dissertations, 2) to have an effective reading of the scholarly literature.

The need. Although major Bucharest-based social science departments have their own doctoral schools, the undergraduate studies in general provide no solid building blocks on which doctoral students could develop their own research. Social sciences in Romania, with few notable exceptions, do not have a long tradition, and therefore the emphasis on research is relatively new. An indicator for this state of affairs is the poor ranking of the Romanian Universities in the QS World University Rankings. In many cases, the low quality of the research output by Romanian researchers stems from an ill-conceived research design.

The focus: The workshop will focus on building an effective research design, in other words, a research design that would clearly indicate the research question(s) and the main hypotheses, the unit of analysis, the properties or variables of interest, the measures of these variables and the choice of categories, the cases that are selected and the methods to gather the information to test the hypotheses and to answer the research question(s). The workshop is therefore dedicated to the stage that precedes the field work and will not address issues related to various methods of data collection, will not delve into data coding and analysis and will only marginally touch upon the issue of reporting on the research findings.

The structure. The very notion of “workshop” is indicative of the main approach. After a brief introduction of the main concepts and a description of the research stages, there will be multiple ways through which students will develop their skills in building their own research design. First of all, there will be plenty of examples that will accompany the introductory discussions. Second, there will be a very detailed reading of carefully selected research papers published in major journals with the aim of unveiling the research design. Third, established Romanian scholars will introduce the participants to this workshop to the research design that provided the backbone for their own past or present research. Last, but not least, participants will gradually refine their initial research design that will be constantly adjusted during open discussions throughout the sessions of the workshop.

Follow up: Most of the participants are enrolled in graduate programs, so they have an utmost interest in developing an effective design for their own research. The fieldwork, the cases they selected and the information gathered and analysed for their research project should reflect the input provided during the workshop. I am considering a follow-up workshop where the next stages of a research project are considered

Main target group: doctoral students in the social sciences

Secondary target group: undergraduate students with a demonstrated interest in pursuing research

The size of the (initial) group: five doctoral students and around ten undergraduate students (overwhelmingly in their final year, therefore working on their graduation theses)

Main lecturer: Dr. Laurentiu Stefan, a graduate of political science (BA, University of Bucharest, 1996, MPhil, University of Cambridge, 1998, PhD, Bucharest-based National School of Government, 2003) and an established researcher, with multiple contributions to European-wide research projects. He is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Bucharest (Romania) since 1999. He was a fellow of the New Europe College (Bucharest, 1999-2002), and of the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Vienna, 2000). He was the initiator and the chair of the Romanian Society for Political Science (2000-2005). Most of his research focuses on recruitment of political elites, at both the national and local level (including legislators and cabinet ministers). His main research interests also include parliament, political parties, coalition politics and political careers. He is the author of Patterns of Political Elite Recruitment in Post-Communist Romania (2004) and Who Governs Romania? Profiles of Romanian Political Elites before and after 1989 (2012) and contributed to edited volumes, includingLandmark 1989. Central and Eastern European Societies Twenty Years after System Change (LIT Verlag, Berlin, 2010), edited by Heinrich Best & Agnieszka Wenninger andParliamentary Elites in Central and Eastern Europe (Routledge, 2013) edited by Elena Semenova, Michael Edinger and Heinrich Best. He also co-authored articles in theJournal of Legislative Studies and the East European Politics.

Timeline: ten sessions, over a four months period (October 2014 – January 2015), Mondays, between 17:30 and 19:30

2014 sessions: October 20, 27, November 3, 10, 17, 24, December 8, 15

2015 sessions: January 12, 19, 26