The Interpretive Methodologies and Methods (IMM) Related Group provides a forum for the discussion of methodologies and methods related to empirical interpretive research, as well as issues arising from their location within contemporary political science.

IMM is considered a Related Group in the American Political Science Association. APSA members are invited to join Related Groups that align with their interests and field of study.

Interpretive methodologies and methods are informed by philosophical traditions such as hermeneutics, phenomenology, pragmatism, symbolic interaction, and critical theory. Notwithstanding their differences, these traditions presuppose that the meaningfulness and historical contingency of human life sets the social realm apart from the natural and physical worlds, when it comes to research. Although diverse in their modes of generating and analyzing data, research processes in the interpretive tradition are typically characterized by an empirical and normative prioritizing of the lived experience of people in research settings, including the documentary and visual tracings and heritage of these (what Clifford Geertz referred to as “experience-near” research), a focus on the meaning(s) of acts, events, interactions, language, and physical artifacts to multiple stakeholders, and a sensitivity to the historically contingent, often contested character of such meanings.