PP 349F - Special Topics in Public Policy: Inequality

Different, and many times similar, social problems have been addressed by a great variety of sciences from their own idiosyncrasies. Research on birth control pharmacology is mostly conducted in non-white, non-American women; anthropologists heavily rely on ethnographic fieldwork deployed in poor nations among non-urban, indigenous communities; and social workers use focus groups and in-depth interviews to unearth patient dissatisfaction, family abuse, and guilt in self-confessed alcoholics. The present course titled “Inequality Transdisciplinary Research” is an attempt to integrate—via student-student/instructor collaborative interactions—such diversity of theories and methodologies into hands-on research projects. The course will focus on how the scientific method can be effectively implemented to answer research questions, even when theories and methods from disparate traditions collide. Accordingly, students will be asked from day one to work in groups and negotiate a research topic they will work on. Together with the instructor, research teams comprised by students from different disciplines, will propose a research question; develop a rigorous research design; and search, download, clean, and analyze data. Students will be exposed to the intense, yet rewarding pace of scientific research from a transdisciplinary approach. Students will write reports, present their findings and project advancements, and both receive and provide constructive feedback (including a blind peer review process). The theories used to frame the social problem under observation as well as the methods used to test the proposed hypotheses will be from different scientific backgrounds. Students will communicate and share their difficulties and their proposed solutions while being exposed to the difficulties and solutions found by other teams of research. Lectures will be purposely assembled to address the specific theoretical frameworks, methods, and analytic approaches implemented by the teams of research.
Units: 4
Course Type: Seminar