BSSn4495:
Qualitative
research in
security
studies
Questions, answers,
theory
February 22, 2022
Miriam Matejova, PhD
Introductions
1. What methodological
background do you have?
2. Why are you interested in
qualitative methods?
3. What are you hoping to get
out of this course?
Agenda
• What is a good research
question?
• What is theory?
• What is a good theory?
The features of science
• Transparent procedures
• Systematic use of evidence
– Guided by clear rules/principles
• Testing our hunch against alternatives
• Acknowledging uncertainty
Descriptive, prescriptive, and causal
questions
• Prescriptive/normative questions:
– How should the world look?
• Descriptive questions
– How does the world look?
• Causal questions
– Why does the world look the way it does? What is the
cause of this particular outcome?
Normative/prescriptive questions in
politics
• Should the rich be paying more taxes?
• Is the intervention of Western countries in
the affairs of sovereign nations justified?
• Other?
Descriptive questions in politics
• What proportion of tax collection comes
from the rich?
• How many times in the last century have
Western countries intervened in the affairs
of sovereign nations?
• Other?
Causal questions in politics
• Does increasing taxes for rich people help
or hurt economic growth?
• Why do Western governments choose to
intervene in sovereign states?
• Other?
Types of claims
• Normative/prescriptive claim: Iran should not be
allowed to have nuclear weapons.
• Other?
• Descriptive claim: Five countries countries today
are known to have nuclear weapons.
• Other?
• Causal claim: Countries located in volatile regions
are more likely to develop nuclear weapons.
• Other?
Causal questions and claims
• Why something happens – or doesn’t happen
• The conditions under which something happens
• The effect of something on something else
• The process through which one thing affects
another
Types of claims: summing up
• Descriptive
– No explicit statement about one thing influencing
another
– Correlation between two things ≠ causal
• Causal
– Explicit statement about one thing exerting influence on
another
– “Does the claim directly imply that, if I could manipulate
one factor, I should see a change in the other?”
• Prescriptive/normative
– Requires placing some value on outcomes
Theory
• What is theory?
– An explanation of some aspect of the world based
on reasoning, observation, and/or
experimentation.
• What is a good theory?
– Describe, explain, predict, prescribe
– Accuracy, generality, parsimony, causality
Accuracy
• Explain as much as possible and predict as
accurately as possible;
• The higher the accuracy, the lower the
generality and parsimony.
Generality
• Refers to a range of social phenomena to
which the theory is applicable.
• The greater the theory’s generality, the
greater the range of phenomena the theory
can explain.
Parsimony
• “The smaller the number of factors providing
for a complete explanation of a given class of
events, the more parsimonious the theory”
(Przeworski 1970).
• Occam’s razor
– The simplest explanation is usually the correct one
Theory, hypothesis, law
• Law = observed regular relationship between
two phenomena
• Hypothesis = a speculated relationship
between two phenomena
– Can be causal or noncausal/correlational
• Theory = causal law or causal hypothesis +
explanation about how A causes B
– Explanation shows how the causation occurs