Practicum: Qualitative Research in Urban Transportation

Undergraduate / Graduate

This one-quarter practicum in qualitative methods aims to develop interview and observational research skills, including instrument design, questioning, transcription, ethnographic note-taking, thematic analysis, and write-up, in the context of a mini-BA thesis trial run. The topic of this version of the practicum is urban transportation. Students will engage in interviews with informants in different roles in transportation, potentially including public servants, activists, policymakers, and users of multiple modes of urban transportation. This class will include field trips within the city of Chicago. Meant to prepare Public Policy Studies students for the BA thesis process, each student, using interviews/observations conducted by themselves and their classmates, will formulate a question related to urban transportation and construct the component parts of their own research paper, which they will submit at the end of the quarter.