In general, I think “read short descriptions of randomly sampled cases” might be an underrated way to learn about the world and notice issues with your assumptions/models.
A couple other examples:
I’ve been trying to develop a better understanding of various aspects of interstate conflict. The Correlates of War militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) dataset is, I think, somewhat useful for this. The project files include short descriptions of (supposedly) every case between 1993 and 2014 in which one state “threatened, displayed, or used force against another.” Here, for example, is the set of descriptions for 2011-2014. I’m not sure I’ve had any huge/concrete take-aways, but I think reading the cases: (a) made me aware of some international tensions I was oblivious to; (b) gave me a slightly better understanding of dynamics around ‘micro-aggressions’ (e.g. flying over someone’s airspace); and (c) helped me more strongly internalize the low base rate for crises boiling over into war (since I disproportionately read about historical disputes that turned into something larger).
Last year, I also spent a bit of time trying to improve my understanding of police killings in the US. I found this book unusually useful. It includes short descriptions of every single incident in which an unarmed person was killed by a police officer in 2015. I feel like reading a portion of it helped me to quickly notice and internalize different aspects of the problem (e.g. the fact that something like a third of the deaths are caused by tasers; the large role of untreated mental illness as a risk factor; the fact that nearly all fatal interactions are triggered by 911 calls, rather than stops; the fact that officers are trained to interact importantly differently with people they believe are on PCP; etc.). l assume I could have learned all the same things by just reading papers — but I think the case sampling approach was probably faster and better for retention.
I think it’s possible there might be value in creating “random case descriptions” collections for a broader range of phenomena. Academia really doesn’t emphasize these kinds of collections as tools for either research or teaching.
I’d actually say this is a variety of qualitative research. At least in the main academic areas I follow, though, it seems a lot more common to read and write up small numbers of detailed case studies (often selected for being especially interesting) than to read and write up large numbers of shallow case studies (selected close to randomly).
This seems to be true in international relations, for example. In a class on interstate war, it’s plausible people would be assigned a long analysis of the outbreak WW1, but very unlikely they’d be assigned short descriptions of the outbreaks of twenty random wars. (Quite possible there’s a lot of variation between fields, though.)
In general, I think “read short descriptions of randomly sampled cases” might be an underrated way to learn about the world and notice issues with your assumptions/models.
A couple other examples:
I’ve been trying to develop a better understanding of various aspects of interstate conflict. The Correlates of War militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) dataset is, I think, somewhat useful for this. The project files include short descriptions of (supposedly) every case between 1993 and 2014 in which one state “threatened, displayed, or used force against another.” Here, for example, is the set of descriptions for 2011-2014. I’m not sure I’ve had any huge/concrete take-aways, but I think reading the cases: (a) made me aware of some international tensions I was oblivious to; (b) gave me a slightly better understanding of dynamics around ‘micro-aggressions’ (e.g. flying over someone’s airspace); and (c) helped me more strongly internalize the low base rate for crises boiling over into war (since I disproportionately read about historical disputes that turned into something larger).
Last year, I also spent a bit of time trying to improve my understanding of police killings in the US. I found this book unusually useful. It includes short descriptions of every single incident in which an unarmed person was killed by a police officer in 2015. I feel like reading a portion of it helped me to quickly notice and internalize different aspects of the problem (e.g. the fact that something like a third of the deaths are caused by tasers; the large role of untreated mental illness as a risk factor; the fact that nearly all fatal interactions are triggered by 911 calls, rather than stops; the fact that officers are trained to interact importantly differently with people they believe are on PCP; etc.). l assume I could have learned all the same things by just reading papers — but I think the case sampling approach was probably faster and better for retention.
I think it’s possible there might be value in creating “random case descriptions” collections for a broader range of phenomena. Academia really doesn’t emphasize these kinds of collections as tools for either research or teaching.
EDIT: Another good example of this approach to learning is Rob Besinger’s recent post “thirty-three randomly selected bioethics papers.”
Interesting ideas. Some similarities with qualitative research, but also important differences, I think (if I understand you correctly).
I’d actually say this is a variety of qualitative research. At least in the main academic areas I follow, though, it seems a lot more common to read and write up small numbers of detailed case studies (often selected for being especially interesting) than to read and write up large numbers of shallow case studies (selected close to randomly).
This seems to be true in international relations, for example. In a class on interstate war, it’s plausible people would be assigned a long analysis of the outbreak WW1, but very unlikely they’d be assigned short descriptions of the outbreaks of twenty random wars. (Quite possible there’s a lot of variation between fields, though.)