Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research receives National Science Foundation grant

The Institute for Qualitative and Multi-Method Research (IQMR) is beginning its 11th year—and its fourth at the Maxwell School—with a new grant of $150,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Associate Professor of Political Science Colin Elman is principal investigator on the new NSF grant, the fifth in the institute’s history. Elman co-founded and co-directs the workshop, a two-week summer program that is hosted by Maxwell’s Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs. IQMR teaches qualitative research methods and complementary analytic techniques to graduate students and junior faculty in political science and related fields. The institute has grown from a 2002 class of 45 to a 2011 class of 159; overall, more than 1,000 participants have attended during its first 10 years.

Most of the participants are selected to attend the institute by nomination from member institutions. The 70 subscribers in 2011 consisted of departments and research centers from universities in the United States and abroad, including Harvard, Yale, Berkeley, Princeton, Columbia, Toronto and Oxford. Local members that nominated Maxwell graduate students included the departments of political science, sociology and public administration, and the social science program.

Some participants are also admitted through an open pool competition. This fellowship competition is for students from non-members, or who attend subscribing institutions but are not nominated. Typically, more than 200 applications are received for the open-pool slots. The new NSF grant will enable an increase from 12 to 18 open pool spaces at each of the 2012, 2013 and 2014 institutes.

Roughly 30 instructors, leading methodologists from the United States and elsewhere, teach at each annual institute. They explore the uses, techniques, strengths and limitations of qualitative and multi-method research. “IQMR is now firmly established as the leading venue for teaching this research tradition,” says Elman, “and hence Syracuse has become a prominent destination for instructors and participants from top social science programs.”

An additional dimension of IQMR is an authors’ workshop, where junior faculty and other scholars are invited to present manuscripts on qualitative research methods. Feedback includes detailed, constructive criticism on their projects, with a view toward helping move them closer to publication. Five of the volumes discussed at the authors’ workshops are forthcoming from Cambridge University Press, and a sixth from Princeton University Press.

The 11th annual Institute will be hosted by Maxwell’s Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University in June 2012.