Social Science Research Council

Purpose of Conference

The annual International Predissertation Fellows' Conference was designed to accomplish several goals.

First, it was to foster a sense of community among IPFP Fellows by engaging them in critical, cross-disciplinary discussions of thematic and methodological concerns that both sharpened their intellectual development and encouraged their innovative tendencies.

Second, the conference was to serve the Program's own intellectual agenda of contributing to the internationalization of the social sciences by underscoring the intellectual value and challenges of conducting social science research in a multidisciplinary and transnational framework.

Finally, it was the purpose of the conference to strengthen Fellows' research design skills by providing cross-disciplinary and cross-regional fora in which participants explored the variety of methodological options available to them in the conduct of social science research and the ways in which research methods developed in one discipline may be useful in another.

The conference sought to encourage cross-disciplinary dialogue and fluency in a variety of research methods -- both quantitative and qualitative -- so that participants could come to fully appreciate the crucial interaction between the decision about what to study and the decision about how to study it.

The workshop was designed to foster intellectual cross-fertilization across disciplines and across regional foci. While it was not the purpose of the workshop to persuade students to use one set of methods versus another in their dissertations, our intent was to encourage young scholars to explore the relative advantages of different methodological approaches to their research and to gain new perspectives on theoretical issues with which they were engaged that will serve them in their future research careers.

Duration and Participants

A group of about 20 IPFP Fellows and nine faculty met over several days to discuss theoretical and methodological concerns at issue in the conduct of research in the developing world. All IPFP Fellows were expected to participate in the Fellows' Conference. Fellows who were unable to participate in the conference with their cohort were invited to participate in the conference the following year.

Scholars representing a range of disciplines and geographic areas served as conference faculty. Conference faculty moderated the workshops and conducted plenary sessions. The role of faculty in the workshops was to foster discussion and debate among the Fellows and to assist them in identifying important issues as they emerged, issues both of a thematic as well as methodological nature, e.g. identification of data sources, data collection, data analysis.

Struture of Conference

Roughly one-third of the conference was devoted to plenary sessions on research design and methods of data collection and analysis. The bulk of the conference consisted of small group discussions of each Fellow's ideas for a research project in the developing world -- from the very preliminary ideas of the current Fellows to the more developed research plans of former Fellows.

Fellows were invited to organize impromptu discussions during meals and free times on topics of their choice -- anything from the practical to the methodological to the theoretical. Arrangements were made for seating those choosing to take part in discussions over meals at a single table. A sign-up board was set up in some central location and Fellows were encouraged to propose discussion topics and/or sign up to participate in these discussions at least two hours before the group was scheduled to meet.

Plenary Sessions. Plenary sessions addressed the problem of research design and the use, misuse, and abuse of various data collections methods. Conference faculty conducted the plenary sessions informally, using their own case material to address topics among the following:

Concurrent Workshops. Three concurrent workshops were devoted to discussions of each Fellow's current thinking about how to address his or her research goals as presented in a written Statement of Research Goals, described below, which was distributed to all conference participants. Roughly seven Fellows were assigned to each workshop. Efforts were made to assign Fellows to a given workshop on the basis of their thematic concerns. A given workshop included Fellows from different disciplines, different universities and with interests in different regions of the world. Each Fellow offered a 5 - 7 minute introduction to the discussion of his/her statement which highlighted the research questions discussed therein and the methods chosen to address them and indicated issues regarding which feedback was desired. Each statement was allotted about an hour of discussion time.

The workshops were not intended to provide opportunities for Fellows to defend a choice of research question or to expound upon a topic. Rather, they were intended to provide opportunities for Fellows to explore with colleagues ways of getting at answers to questions. Discussions were explorations of ideas and emphasized adequacy of methodology in addressing a given theoretical issue; adequacy of attention to country/region-specific concerns; problems of data collection, analysis and interpretation.

Fellows' Preparation for the Conference

In preparation for the conference, each Fellow was expected to prepare an 8 -10 page memorandum -- Statement of Research Goals-- which served as the bases for the small-group discussions. The document was not to discuss the IPFP training program. Rather, it was to discuss the Fellow's plans for dissertation research as they were currently conceived. Obviously, this discussion was preliminary in the case of current Fellows, as it was the purpose of the fellowship to provide input to the design of a dissertation project.

The Statement of Research Goals was to provide background for a discussion. It was intended to constitute an exercise in research design, not a preliminary dissertation proposal. The document had to:

Statements were distributed to all Fellows and faculty attending the conference several weeks in advance so that everyone could be adequately prepared to provide feedback on them. Each Fellow was asked to discuss the content of statements of participants in the workshop to which he/she had been assigned. The rationale for requesting this preparation was to insure that the Fellows had read each others' statements with some care and to facilitate rapid and thoughtful entry into the workshop discussions.

Fellows were also invited to prepare for the conference by familiarizing themselves with materials included in a bibliography composed of recommendations of current and former conference faculty. The readings addressed or illustrated the application of research methods used in social science and were intended as a resource for the future.