This course is closed, registration is no longer possible.
Process tracing is a research method designed to learn about how things work within real-world cases. Increasingly used across the social sciences and in applied policy evaluation, PT involves unpacking causal processes and tracing them empirically, enabling within-case causal inferences about the processes that link causes and outcomes together.
The aim of this five-day course is to provide you using PT methods with tools to improve your usage of the core elements of the method. The three core components of process tracing are explored during the week, using a combination of published examples and your own research. You are encouraged to use your own research in exercises throughout the course.
The course starts by exploring the theory-side of what you are actually 'tracing' (i.e. theorized causal processes or mechanisms), and how you can theorize better causal process theories that both shed light on the generative processes whereby causes contribute to produce outcomes, while at the same time not being excessively complex. The course will focus on improving your process theories.
Days 3 and 4 focus on how causal processes can be traced empirically using 'mechanistic evidence’. You will work with published examples and your own work to practice evaluating what empirical material can act as evidence of.
The final session deals with case selection and how process tracing can be combined with other methods, focusing on the combination of QCA and PT.
