Political Science Educator: volume 29, issue 2
Reflections
By Corina Lacatus (C.Lacatus@qmul.ac.uk)
Despite being central to the study of domestic and international politics, qualitative methods remain undertaught. Doctoral students may receive some basic training at their home institutions, usually delivered in survey courses dedicated to many types of qualitative data, and can seek support to attend more advanced training in the form of short training courses at a few methods (summer) schools. Outside of doctoral programs, the picture is even more dire. Masters-level students generally receive very limited training in qualitative methods (Emmons and Moravcsik 2020). At best, they may be introduced to a couple of methods they could use for qualitative data collection and analysis as they write dissertations or theses. The situation is even worse at the undergraduate level, where qualitative methods training is virtually non-existent in curricula (Brown, Nordyke, and Thies 2022; Hill 2002; Thies and Hogan 2005; Wagner, Garner, and Kawulich 2011). When it does exist, it is mixed with training in research design and undergraduate thesis development and writing.
It’s a common trope in the study of politics that you learn qualitative methods “by doing” them. While it’s an incontestable truth that conducting data collection and analysis is essential to become independent researchers, there is a dangerous set of assumptions behind such statements–that training in qualitative (unlike their more technically advanced quantitative counterpart) methods is not necessary, perhaps not even desirable and that qualitative methods are somehow intuitive and easy to “pick up” along the way.
Keeping students away from good qualitative methods training is detrimental for several reasons. First, it unnecessarily mystifies a fundamental domain of scientific training. Second, it artificially truncates student understanding of the social and political reality they study and inhabit. Third, it ultimately deprives students of the opportunity to acquire transferrable skills that are highly valued in the academic and non-academic careers they may choose to pursue (Lacatus 2025).
During my two decades of experience teaching and supervising research, I have found that the relationship students of Politics and International have with research design and methods courses is ‘complicated’. Contradictory terms are used to describe their experiences studying methods, with some students finding these courses very dry, too hard, and often even dead boring. At the same time, students (sometimes the very same students that complete the methods course) share how very useful the methodological training proved to be as they searched for jobs or tried to pursue further studies. How can this be?
Political research is a useful tool to which you can turn when you want to understand how politics shapes the reality around you. In other words, the aim of Politics and International Relations research is to seek knowledge (Barkin and Sjoberg 2015) and to uncover the political meanings behind the main (domestic and international) elements of the world. Yet, political research is “just as much a labour of love and a matter of good training” (Lacatus 2025: 10). To uncover both the emotions and the rationality that inform politics and policymaking, political research requires solid training in both the qualitative and quantitative tools that researchers use to analyze and understand them.
What drives research is a principles-based process of exploration and analysis with the goal of understanding a political reality. Just like in all disciplines, political researchers follow a set of conventional ‘rules’ about what makes research good, what the right tools are for good research, and how to ensure that others can replicate their study and its findings (Bennett 2014; Jackson 2015). These rules are the stuff that you learn in methodology and methods courses, and they are important regardless of the type of data–qualitative or quantitative–used to address research questions.
Qualitative research encompasses several approaches and methods of data collection and analysis. Empirical qualitative research employs different types of data, including interview data, visual materials, texts, and ethnographic data like participant observation notes and artefacts. Most qualitative researchers of politics and international relations do not make use of numerical data to draw causal inferences about politics. Rather, they prioritize delving deep into the ‘thick description’ of a small number of cases or a single case study. That said, qualitative research can make use of numerical data to offer more details on a certain context it analyses but it does not prioritize making causal claims about a large number of cases based on statistical data. Rather than being interested in causality across many cases, qualitative research gives more importance to analytical depth (Halperin and Palan 2015; Lacatus 2025).
If you decide to learn more about how you can pursue political research that uses qualitative data, you can learn about the very special role that you, as a qualitative researcher, can play in your research. You not only design the study and conduct the analysis, but you can also become an integral part of the data. The active participation of the researcher is essential to the very existence of qualitative data. This special relationship between researcher and the data they collect and analyze raises important questions about ethics, validity, and reliability. In methods courses, you can discuss all these important methodological questions and find out the answers to them as they apply to your own research.
In broad strokes, qualitative inquiry is important when the main aim of the research is to develop a new concept, uncover a new hypothesis, or shed light on an unknown causal mechanism (Gerring 2017). You can use qualitative data for different purposes, depending on the different analytical goal that you have in mind–you can conduct exploratory analysis, for which qualitative data is particularly well suited, and you can also serve you if you are conducting a study based on causal explanation. In this respect, qualitative data is versatile, and you can study it aiming to add to our knowledge about an existing theory or to uncover a new explanation for a causal relationship or phenomenon.
Political reality is complex. Capturing this complexity through research is a real challenge. The toolbox of methods, approaches, and data social scientists use needs to be sufficiently diverse and open to complexity to make sense of this complexity (Fonseca and Segatto 2021). It is important to offer students of politics and international relations good training in as a wide a spectrum of research methods of possible, to equip them with the essential tools to better address persuasive questions about domestic and global political issues. Given that qualitative research is also widely conducted outside of academia: to inform policymaking, to motivate activism, and to drive businesses in a corporate setting, incorporating qualitative methodological training to our students represents essential preparation for their professional development. As researchers and teachers, we may have personal preferences for certain methods and for various labels we can use to describe them. Regardless of individual inclinations, there is no denying that qualitative research is very important for the study of politics and international relations. Hence, teaching and training researchers in the good principles of qualitative research is very important.
References
Barkin, J. Samuel, and Laura Sjoberg. 2015. “Calculating Critique: Thinking Outside the Methods Matching Game.” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 43(3): 852–71. https://doi:10.1177/0305829815576819.
Bennett, Andrew. 2014. Process Tracing: From Metaphor to Analytic Tool (Strategies for Social Inquiry). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Brown, Mitchell, Shane Nordyke, and Cameron Thies, eds. 2022. “Introduction to Teaching Undergraduate Political Methodology.” In Teaching Undergraduate Political Methodology, Edward Elgar Publishing, 1–6. doi:10.4337/9781800885479.00008.
Emmons, Cassandra V., and Andrew M. Moravcsik. 2020. “Graduate Qualitative Methods Training in Political Science: A Disciplinary Crisis.” PS: Political Science & Politics53(2): 258–64. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1049096519001719
Fonseca, Elize Massard Da, and Catarina Segatto. 2021. ‘Teaching Qualitative Research Methods in Political Science: Does One Size Fits All?’ Journal of Political Science Education 17(3): 493–501. https://doi.org/10.1080/15512169.2019.1656081
Gerring, John. 2017. “Qualitative Methods.” Annual Review of Political Science 20(1): 15–36.
Halperin, Sandra, and Ronen Palan, eds. 2015. Legacies of Empire: Imperial Roots of the Contemporary Global Order. Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.
Hill, Kim Quaile. 2002. “The Lamentable State of Science Education in Political Science.” PS: Political Science and Politics 35 (March): 113–16.
Jackson, P. T. 2015. “Must International Studies Be a Science?” Millennium – Journal of International Studies 43(3): 942–65. https://doi.org/10.1177/0305829815579307
Lacatus, Corina. 2025. Qualitative Research in Politics and International Relations. Thousand Oaks, California London New Delhi Singapore: Sage.
Lacatus, Corina, and Alex Nogues. 2021. Create Your Research Poster. SAGE Publications Ltd.
Thies, Cameron G., and Robert E. Hogan. 2005. “The State of Undergraduate Research Methods Training in Political Science.” PS: Political Science and Politics 38(2): 293–97.
Wagner, Claire, Mark Garner, and Barbara Kawulich. 2011. “The State of the Art of Teaching Research Methods in the Social Sciences: Towards a Pedagogical Culture.” Studies in Higher Education 36(1): 75–88. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075070903452594
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Corina Lacatus is a Reader/Associate Professor of Global Governance in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Queen Mary University of London. She is the author of Qualitative Research in Politics and International Relations (SAGE 2025) and the co-author (with Alex Nogues) of Create Your Research Poster (SAGE 2021).
Published since 2005, The Political Science Educator is the newsletter of the Political Science Education Section of the American Political Science Association. As part of APSA’s mission to support political science education across the discipline, APSA Educate has republished The Political Science Educator since 2021. Please visit APSA Educate’s Political Science Educator digital collection.
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