I’ll be offering an introductory course on process tracing methodology at the upcoming ECPR Winter School in Methods and Techniques, February 14-21, at the University of Bamberg. For more information and a full course outline: ECPR website. Or, for more on my process tracing activities; see here.
… and the course is booked out! With 25 students we will have a full house. Luckily, I could recruit an excellent Teaching Assistant: Ivan Bakalov.
| WB104 – Introduction to Process Tracing |
| Process Tracing (PT) is a within-case method that focuses on tracing causal mechanisms – the actual ‘link’ between a trigger (conventionally called the x) and an outcome (y). This course will introduce you to the essentials of this method, its main underlying assumptions and its applicability.
We will discuss what causal mechanisms are, how we can ‘trace’ them and what kind of causal inferences we can draw on the bases of a process-tracing study. Moreover, to position PT in the broader methodological field we will look at how PT relates to, but differs from, other (larger- and small-N) case study methods and discuss what understanding of causality underlies process-tracing. This introduction to PT will take a hands-on approach, applying the new insights to concrete examples and, when possible, to participants’ own research projects (more…). |
Hilde van Meegdenburg 