Using qualitative research to study social justice (online)

This one-day course will be offered via Zoom only. There will be a 1 hour lunch and (2) 10 minute breaks (1 in morning and 1 in afternoon). Attendance is required as it will not be recorded.

Course Summary:

This course will address how researchers can use qualitative research to draw attention to underlying mechanisms that define social problems. Once uncovered, deeper understanding of these mechanisms can guide large-scale surveys, direct responses to requests for proposals by private foundations and government agencies, inform policy briefs, and even influence new legislation. In this regard, it is important for qualitative researchers to think beyond simply highlighting problems in order to also develop skills that leverage our work in ways that more directly impact people’s everyday lives. We will discuss qualitative processes to better position course participants in their efforts to design and collect data specifically aimed at contributing directly to social justice. Timely issues, including racial disparities in policing, will be used as examples of how decision-making across the methodological life of a qualitative project can be leveraged to address social problems.

Instructor: Rashawn Ray, PhD

Rashawn Ray, PhD, is a Rubenstein Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Executive Director of the Lab for Applied Social Science Research (LASSR) at the University of Maryland, College Park. Ray is also one of the co-editors of Contexts Magazine: Sociology for the Public. Formerly, Ray was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health Policy Research Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley. He specializes in racial and social inequality with a particular focus on police-civilian relations and men’s treatment of women. His work also speaks to ways that inequality may be attenuated through social policy and racial uplift activism. Currently, Ray is working on a series of research projects creating innovative virtual reality experiments that focus on policing and other social outcomes.

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