Vignette Methods in Interpretive Research

In this course, you will learn how to develop vignettes while familiarising yourself with contemporary thinking about deliberative manipulation to integrate experimental logic into an interpretive or qualitative investigation.

We will learn:

• the scientific criteria behind vignette method
• variance theory versus process theory as forms of causal explanation
• the pros and cons of stimulation in an interpretive or qualitative research design.

The course has five objectives:

1. to examine the scientific criteria of vignette method and teach you how to develop vignettes suitable for interpretive or qualitative research questions
2. to expose you to issues of conceptualisation, theory, research design, strategies of framing vignettes, and selecting the attributes and wording of a vignette’s profile description
3. to help you organise and process vignettes through data collection, analysis and conclusion drawing
4. to teach you how to choose the best vignette method for a particular research question
5. to enable you to draw conclusions from vignette analyses.

I will cover basic techniques for collecting, interpreting, and presenting analyses of vignettes. We will operate on two interrelated dimensions, one focused on the theoretical approaches to various types of vignette method, the other focused on practical techniques of formulating, developing and validating the vignettes used in the interpretive or qualitative research design.

Theoretically, the course considers questions such as:

• What is a vignette and what is vignette method?
• What questions is it best suited for?
• By what criteria does it meet or fail to meet the standards of scientific evidence?
• What is the role of causality in interpretive or qualitative research?
• Can vignette methods be used to verify hypotheses, or only generate them?
• Can vignettes support the making and analysing of thematic connections?
• Do vignette analyses have a small-N problem?
• In what ways is vignette research ‘grounded’?

Practically, the course considers questions such as:

• What scientific criteria apply for vignette method?
• How do researchers construct the ‘right’ vignette for the ‘right’ research question?
• What collection techniques can be used to enhance the quality of vignette analyses?
• What scientific positions ground the vignette analyses?
• What is the unit of analysis?
• How do researchers organise the vignettes and how do they use them in practice?
• How can researchers make sense of their interpretations of vignette analyses in a transparent, authentic and inclusive way?
• How can researchers draw conclusions from their vignettes analyses?

I will take a realist approach to causal explanation, focusing on two techniques in vignette method: profiling versus manipulation. I chose these as examples of methods which use vignette method to put rather different weight on causal explanation. This will strengthen your general knowledge of vignette methods, and give you a solid basis to choose the right strategy of vignette analysis in your own research.

By the end of the course, you will know how to choose between vignette methods, and have insight into hands-on vignette tools that can be used during the research process.

The knowledge gained in this course will enable you to follow advanced courses in interpretive or qualitative methods with a more specialised focus on, for example, ethnographic method, grounded theory, narrative method, discourse analysis or process tracing.

After the course, you should have a basic understanding of:

1. The scientific criteria of vignette method and how to develop vignettes suitable for interpretive or qualitative research questions,
2. issues of conceptualisation, theory, research design, and strategies of framing vignettes and selecting attributes and wording of the vignette’s profile description, 
3. how to organise and process vignettes through the research phases of data collection, analysis and conclusion drawing,
4. how to choose the best strategy of vignette method for the research question and,
5. how to draw conclusions from vignette analyses.

None: this is an introduction to qualitative courses.