Visiting scholar, Professor Winfred Avogo of Illinois State University in the United States, conducted a workshop at UKZN examining integrating theory and mixed methods in family demography.
Visiting
scholar, Professor Winfred Avogo of Illinois State University in the
United States, conducted a workshop at UKZN examining integrating theory
and mixed methods in family demography.
Speaking at the workshop hosted by the School of Built Environment and Development Studies
, Avogo said: ‘The 21st century has seen overall, a remarkable number
of studies that identify as mixed-methods. Even demographers, who
generally shun annthropological methods such as participant observation
and ethnography have embraced and collaborated with interviewers. But
this is also an area of research still in its formation and fraught with
ambiguities and challenges.’
The seminar looked to build a
working definition of a mixed-methods study, the motivations for using
such an approach and the challenges that emerge. The second part of the
workshop discussed practical ways to integrate theory and mix-methods in
social demography, especially research on gender socialisation and
demographic outcomes.
PhD student Ms Reesha Kara says through
the workshop she developed a greater understanding of how the mixed
methods approach could be applied to research, allowing her to think
more about the theoretical aspect of the approach and the manner in
which she planned to incorporate it in her own study.
‘I plan on
adopting a mixed methods approach with my PhD research. Attending the
workshop provided me with some insight of the philosophical and
theoretical ideas associated with the two methods and a perspective on
how these two approaches can be used together,’ she said.
Kara
believes that workshops of this nature provide students with a more
in-depth look at specific topics in the research arena. ‘It also helps
to keep abreast with new research methods being employed by social
science researchers and it is always refreshing to be exposed to a
different method of teaching and gaining an expert's perspective on the
subject matter.’