Advanced Research Design This course trains the analytical and research skills of Master students serving as a preparation or training for crucial aspects of students’ term papers, master thesis or internships at research institutes. These skills are essential for excellent studies, evaluations and also for evaluating expert recommendations or reports in the future career at universities, (international) institutions, research centers, politics, NGOs or elsewhere. The analytical skills that are trained and sharpened in this course serve as an additional – and increasingly required skill – for students and professionals in the social sciences.

The target group of this class are MA Students in their 2nd year, for instance those who are about to register for their master thesis or who are in the process of writing them. The aims of the course are to strengthen students’ analytical skills and to improve their abilities to evaluate a research design. With regard to academic writing, the course enables students to sharpen research questions and hypotheses and to improve methodological approaches for diverging research questions. You should be able to assess the state of the existing literature, identify research questions of interest, formulate strategies to answer them, know the methodological tools with which to conduct the research, and write up the results so that they can contribute to existing knowledge. The class will use examples from social sciences and discuss current research of students, the course will familiarize you with current standards of research in social sciences. Although the course is not in itself a lecture on statistical methods, it also refers to quantitative methods.

Course Objectives

• Assessing the rigidity and validity of reports and studies – their set-up and the presented findings.
• Knowledge of the elements and relevance of a research design
• Produce a rigorous and precise research design
• Formulate research questions & hypotheses
• Individual and collective components

Academic Integrity
This course is based on the principles of academic integrity established by Freie Universität Berlin. Academic dishonesty will not be tolerated. All documents submitted must be your own work and sources must be properly cited Schließen