If you keep encountering a pattern, response, or situation that you do not fully understand—and you would like a more structured way to figure out what may actually be happening—this program gives you a place to begin.
A habit returns. A familiar reaction appears. Something is easier in one situation than another. A change you intended to make does not last.
Very quickly, an explanation follows.
I am not motivated enough.
I always do this.
I know why this happens.
I have already tried everything.
Sometimes those explanations contain useful information.
Sometimes they do not.
And sometimes we begin trying to change something before we have looked closely enough to know what is actually happening.
Applying the Amateur Social Scientist Approach helps you slow that process down enough to investigate one real-life pattern, recurring situation, or question more deliberately.
Rather than immediately asking:
How do I fix this?
you begin with:
What is actually happening here?
The broader Amateur Social Scientist Approach encourages curiosity, observation, and some distance from the explanations we quickly form about ourselves and our lives.
This paid program has a more specific job.
It teaches you how to use the Amateur Social Scientist Investigation Method to take one real-life pattern, recurring situation, or question through a structured investigation.
The program helps you move from guessing about what may be happening toward gathering enough information to make a more informed decision about what may be worth trying, changing, continuing, or leaving alone.
The goal is not to prove yourself right.
It is to get better information.
If something you try does not produce the result you hoped for, that does not automatically mean that nothing works or that the pattern says something fixed about who you are.
It may simply mean that the explanation needs revising, another condition matters more, or you have learned enough to make a different decision.
The Investigation Method gives you a way to keep learning from what actually happens rather than relying only on the explanation you started with.
By the end of the program, you will have completed one real-life investigation of your own—looking more closely at what is happening, testing one manageable possibility, reviewing the evidence, and deciding what makes sense next.
The practical result is not a promise that the pattern will be solved.
You leave with better information about the question you investigated and a structured method you can use again when another pattern, response, or situation would benefit from closer examination.
One Real-Life Investigation
Throughout the program, you work with one reasonably contained pattern, recurring situation, or question from your own life.
“Reasonably contained” does not mean small or unimportant. It means specific enough to observe in ordinary life and investigate without trying to solve everything at once.
You might investigate:
You do not need to choose the biggest issue in your life.
The purpose is to learn a method you can use now and return to later when another question would benefit from closer examination.
The Cow Path Model of Change™ provides the larger framework for understanding familiar patterns, evidence, participation, identity, and change.
The Amateur Social Scientist Investigation Method provides a practical way to investigate what is happening within your own life.
You do not need to work through every part of the Cow Path Model during every investigation.
The evidence leads the investigation.
This is an educational, self-directed program.
It is not laboratory science, diagnosis, therapy, or a process for identifying one definitive cause for a pattern.
You remain in the decision-making position throughout the program.
You decide what is relevant, what is worth investigating, what the evidence supports, and whether continuing the investigation is useful.
There is no requirement to remain in permanent investigation mode.
Focus: Beginning with curiosity rather than certainty
Become familiar with the Amateur Social Scientist Approach, the Investigation Method, and how you will carry one real-life pattern, recurring situation, or question through the program.
Includes:
Focus: Looking at what is actually happening
Begin examining your chosen investigation and create more room between what you observe and what you currently think those observations mean.
Includes:
Focus: Moving from certainty to possibility
Develop one provisional explanation worth examining and identify a manageable place to begin testing what you think may be happening.
Includes:
Focus: Testing one possibility in ordinary life
Make one deliberate, manageable change and allow real life to provide information about what happens.
Includes:
Focus: Returning to the evidence before deciding what it means
Look at what happened, consider what the evidence suggests, and decide whether to continue, revise, investigate something else, make a practical decision, or pause.
Includes:
Focus: Keeping the Investigation Method as a reusable tool
Bring the investigation together and leave with a structured method you can return to when another real-life pattern, situation, or question would benefit from closer observation and better information.
Includes:
Applying the Amateur Social Scientist Approach will be available for $149 USD.
Created by Terri Lee Cooper, MSc, RSW, developer of the Cow Path Model of Change™.
The program is self-paced and has no fixed completion deadline. You can pause and return when you are ready.
The program includes six audio teachings, six corresponding transcripts, four downloadable participant workbooks, and a Participant Syllabus.
The audio teachings and workbooks can be downloaded for your personal use.
Because this self-directed digital program includes proprietary downloadable materials that cannot be returned, purchases are non-refundable. If you need clarification before purchasing, please use the contact form.
When the program is available, purchase and access will be handled through Podia.