RT 510: Research Methodology & Quantitative Techniques for Rural Development

Introduction to research; Qualitative and quantitative research; research problem formulation; hypothesis, exploratory and field data collection and sampling techniques; analytical tools for Qualitative research, search engine optimization technique for internet based data search, basic statistics-it’s use in social research; descriptive & inferential statistics- types of data, collection of data, tabulation of data, diagrammatic representation of data Summarization of data: frequency table, diagrammatic representation of a frequency distribution – column diagram, frequency polygon, histogram. Cumulative frequency diagram; Measures of central tendency; Measures of dispersion; Correlation. Application of regression analysis in trend fitting. Clustering of data & factorial analysis, Statistical Design of Experiment, Mathematical modelling & data fitting for empirical or statistical modelling. Concept of optimization; gradient based and evolutionary optimization techniques. Practical examples of statistical analysis and statistical modelling using a software platform.

Field visit and hands on experience of planning, execution, and analysis of a field based research problem. The students are required to visit nearby villages to identify a challenge of rural community appealing to them. The identified challenge may be from, but not limited to, the area of rural livelihood, rural entrepreneurship, education and healthcare, energy, water supply and sanitation, agriculture, etc. Upon identifying such a challenge, the students are required to interact with the rural community to document its history, its impact on their day-to-day life, application of traditional knowhow to tackle it, improvements/developments made in the past, identifying bottle-necks to define scope for further improvements/developments. Students have to design experimental models on such issues and have to carry out parametric analyses. The students have to submit reports and make periodical presentations as part of evaluation.

Texts Books:
1. S. Taylor, R. Bogdan, M. DeVault, Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods: A Guidebook and Resource, John Wiley & Sons, 2015.
2. Hanneman, R. A., Kposowa, A. J., & Riddle, M. D. (2012). Basic statistics for social research (Vol. 38). John Wiley & Sons.

References:
1. R. B. Burns, Introduction to Research Methods, SAGE Publications, 2000.
2.E. Perecman, S. R. Curran, A Handbook of social sciences field research, SEGA Publications, California, 2006.
3. R. K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods, SAGE Publications, 2009.