The seminar addresses central issues within research methodology in the social sciences and especially in education. The focus is on analytic and contextual qualities of research methods. By analytic qualities is meant clear distinctions between and separation of units and relations in research. Contextual qualities concern that units, wholes and parts, are delimited in relation to and as dependent on a context. Most research methods are found to lack in both analytic and contextual qualities. What is often called analysis is rather synthesis. To improve the analytic and contextual qualities of research methods in relation to phenomena investigated, the methods have to become both more analytic and more contextual at the same time. Why this is so will be the main topic in the seminar.