This is a seminar on designing research and on writing effective research proposals. The exam and the proposal each count 50% of your grade. The problem statement is due in Week 3. The full literature search is due by week 6. A draft of your proposal is due by week 8 and the next-to-final draft is due in week 12. The final draft is due on the last day of class.

There is one exam. It will be distributed in week 4 and is due by class of week 11.

Much of what we learn in this seminar is the result of discussions about the research plans of the participants. This makes support for each other's work crucial to everyone's success. Support means coming prepared to provide helpful critiques and suggestions.

Send me all exams and proposal drafts by e-mail.

Text: Bernard, H. Russell 2006. Research Methods in Anthropology, 4th ed. Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press

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Week 1 - Anthropology in the social sciences

• Text chapter 1
• Discussion of individual projects (every week)
• class slides .pdf
• History of Methods in Cultural Anthropology

Week 2 - The language and logic of social research

• Text chapter 2
• class slides .pdf

Week 3 - The design of social research. Experimental thinking. Testing hypotheses

Problem statement due

• Text chapter 5 and pp. 550–553, and pp. 609–611
• Field experiment. Harris, Marvin, Josildeth Gomes Consorte, Joseph Lang, and Bryan Byrne 1993. Who are the Whites: Imposed census categories and the racial demography of Brazil. Social Forces 72:451462.
• class slides .pdf

Week 4 - The logic of representative sampling. The central limit theorem. Time allocation.

Final exam distributed

• Text chapters 6-7 and pp. 402–408
• Handwerker, W. Penn 2003. Sample design. In: Encyclopedia of Social Measurement , Kimberly Kempf-Leonard, ed. San Diego , CA : Academic Press.
• class slides .pdf

Week 5 - Nonprobability sampling.

• Text chapter 8
• Sampling culture. Handwerker, W.P. and D.F. Wozniak 1997. Sampling Strategies for the Collection of Cultural Data: An Extension of Boas's Answer to Galton's Problem. Current Anthropology 38:869-875.
• Chain referral sampling. Penrod, J., D. B. Preston, and M. T. Starks 2003. Discussion of chain referral as a method of sampling hard-to-reach populations. Journal of Transcultural Nursing 14:100–107.
• Snowball sampling. Chavez, Leo 1994. The power of the imagined community: The settlement of undocumented Mexicans and Central Americans in the United States. American Anthropologist 96:52–73.
• class slides .pdf

Week 6 - Composite measures: scales and indexes

Literature search due

• Text chapter 12
• Testing the unidimensionality of scales. Johnson, Allen 1995. A Guttman scale analysis of Machiguenka men's manufacturing skills. In: Using Methods in the Field, V. C. deMunck and E. Sobo, eds., Walnut Creek, CA: Altamira Press.
• Building and testing scales. Handwerker, W. Penn 1996, Constructing Likert Scales: Testing the Validity and Reliability of Single Measures of Multidimensional Variables. Cultural Anthropology Methods Journal 8(1), February.
• class slides .pdf

Week 7 February 21, no class

Weeks 8-9 Analyzing quantitative data

• Text chapters 16-18 (for reference and review)
• Statistical literacy. Utts, Jessica 2003. What educated citizens should know about statistics and probability. The American Statistician 57:74–79.
• Descriptive stats. Cronk, Lee 1989. Low socioeconomic status and female-based parental investment: The Mukogodo example. American Anthropologist 91:414429.
• Multiple regression. Graves, Theodore, and Charles Lave 1972. Determinants of urban migrant Indian wages. Human Organization 31:4761.
• Multidimensional scaling. Chavez et al. 1995. Structure and meaning in models of breast and cervical cancer risk factors: A comparison of perceptions among Latinas, Anglo women, and physicians. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 9(1):40-74.
• Consensus analysis. Reyes-Garcia, et al. 2005. Knowledge and consumption of wild plants. A comparative study of two Tsimane' villages in the Bolivian amazon. Ethnobotany Research & Applications 3:201-207.
• class slides .pdf
• Social network analysis. Slides from Dr. Christopher McCarty's presentation.

Week 10 Spring break

Weeks 11-12 - Analyzing qualitative data

• Text chapters 19-21 (for reference and review)
• Analytic induction - QCA Haworth-Hoeppner, Susan 2000. The critical shapes of body image: The role of culture and family in the production of eating disorders. Journal of Marriage and Family 62:212227.
• Ethnographic decision models Bernard, H. Russell and Gery W. Ryan 2005. Testing an ethnographic decision tree model on a national sample: Recycling beverage cans. Human Organization (in press) [Click HERE for Table 4]
• Analysis of narratives Rubenstein, Robert L. 1995. Narratives of elder parental death: A structural and cultural analysis. Medical Anthropology Quarterly 9:257276.
• Content analysis. Hirschman, Elizabeth C. 1987. People as products: Analysis of a complex marketing exchange. Journal of Marketing 51:98-108.
• Cultural schemas I. Kempton, Willett 1987. Two theories of home heat control. In: Cultural Models in Language and Thought , Naomi Quinn and Dorothy Holland, eds. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pp. 222-242.
• class slides .pdf
• what is analysis .pdf

Weeks 13-16 - Presentations

Final exam due, week 11

Proposal due, week 12