Workshop On Interdisciplinary Standards For Systematic Qualitative Research: Cultural Anthropology, Law And Social Science, Political Science, And Sociology Programs

On May 19-20, 2005, a workshop on Interdisciplinary Standards for Systematic Qualitative Research was held at the National Science Foundation (NSF) in Arlington, Virginia. The workshop was co-funded by a grant from four NSF Programs—Cultural Anthropology, Law and Social Science, Political Science, and Sociology—to Dr. Michèle Lamont, Harvard University. Professor Lamont was assisted in organizing the workshop by representatives from each discipline who coordinated group reports. The Cultural Anthropology group was co-chaired by Drs. Ted Bestor (Harvard) and Gery Ryan (RAND); Law and Social Science by Dr. John Bowen, (Washington University, in St. Louis); Political Science by Andrew Bennett (George Washington University); and Sociology by Dr. Kathleen Blee (University of Pittsburg).It is well recognized that each of the four disciplines have different research design and evaluation cultures as well as considerable variability in the emphasis on interpretation and explanation, commitment to constructivist and positivist epistemologies, and the degree of perceived consensus about the value and prominence of qualitative research methods. Within this multidisciplinary and multimethods context, twenty-four scholars from the four disciplines were charged to (1) articulate the standards used in their particular field to ensure rigor across the range of qualitative methodological approaches;1* (2) identify common criteria shared across the four disciplines for designing and evaluating research proposals and fostering multidisciplinary collaborations; and (3) develop an agenda for strengthening the tools, training, data, research design, and infrastructure for research using qualitative approaches.