Course in the Methodological Week within the Module "Socio-legal Research and Thesis Seminar II (1,5 ECTS)"
Welcome to Quantitative Approaches to Research, a graduate-level course designed to strengthen your understanding of methodological reasoning in the sociology of law and socio-legal studies, while equipping you with the conceptual and practical tools to design and carry out rigorous quantitative research.
As the second part of the Module on Socio-Legal Research and Thesis Seminar, this course builds the foundation for the research journey you will undertake throughout the Master’s. Our focus will be on the core elements of research design, guided by questions such as:
- What makes a research question “quantitative”?
- How can we translate abstract socio-legal concepts into variables that can be observed and measured?
- What logics and assumptions underlie different research designs and sampling strategies?
- How do concerns about validity, reliability, and causality shape our analyses?
- In what ways do our positionalities and biases influence the questions we ask and the answers we produce?
We will explore a range of approaches to quantitative research—from surveys to the use of secondary data—always paying attention to how these methods are applied in socio-legal contexts. Special emphasis will be placed on developing the ability to critically assess existing research, design methodologically sound studies, and present findings in clear and compelling ways.
This course is not simply about learning techniques. It is about cultivating a quantitative mindset: a way of thinking about evidence, inference, and explanation that values clarity, precision, and transparency, while remaining attentive to the social and political dimensions of knowledge production. You will have multiple opportunities to put theory into practice, and to connect the lessons learned here directly to your own thesis projects.
