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Methods of Qualitative Social Research have become an integrative part of university curricula. The aim of Qualitative Research is to describe the inner focus of the working field and the “Lebenswelt” (Hermeneutics), to gain a better understanding of social reality and to search for communication processes.

The goal of this course is to find out the characteristics of Qualitative Social Research in opposite to Quantitative Social Research methods. The main focus of this course is on the one hand qualitative methods of collecting data: interview methods, group discussions and methods of observation. The main object is the research of education and life long learning. The main focus of course on the other hand lies on the interpretation of data. Methods of text-, picture- and video-interpretation will be introduced: Qualitative Content Analysis, Grounded Theory, Methods of Hermeneutics. The target group of the course are students, who want to do their research by qualitative methods.

lecture, group work, presentations 

active participation, final paper 

Will be announced in the course.