Social Research

In this module you'll reflect on your current level of skills development. You'll be able to attend a range of sessions through workshops or online via the Research Student Skills Development Programme within the Graduate School, from provision offered by faculties or events attended externally.  

In this module, we aim to provide you with an appreciation, and experience of, the theoretical underpinnings and practical application of the range of common quantitative tools and techniques that can be used as part of the research process. You'll gain an overview of the foundational concepts and practice of quantitative research.

In this module, we'll introduce you to a variety of qualitative research approaches for the investigation of human and more-than-human worlds. You'll develop an appreciation of how qualitative methods are used to create knowledge. We aim to familiarise you with a full range of qualitative research methods and analyses in common use in social science. You'll debate current theoretical, methodological and ethical concerns. You'll learn how to use and evaluate the tools, techniques and processes of qualitative research, as well as applying them to your own research projects. We'll provide the basis for more subject-specific and advanced training in this field.

In this module, we'll introduce you to key principles and debates in relation to the design and practice of research, including a consideration of the key philosophical positions in western thought that have informed existing research traditions. You'll cover three broad areas of content that underpin the pursuit of research:

• philosophical and theoretical frameworks within which research is conducted
• strategies and approaches to designing, conducting, evaluating and analysing research
• critical reflections on the position of the researcher in the research process

In this module, you'll explore how more expansive understandings of issues in social science research are developed through cross-, inter- and trans-disciplinary working. As the demands on research to take account of ever more complex issues increase, you'll will examine ways you're able to respond more fully to the challenges faced in an increasingly mixed-up, boundary-blurring, heterogeneous, interdependent and ethically confronting more-than-human world. 

In this module, you'll conduct individual research on a topic appropriate to your course. We've ensured a flexible approach to the module so that it may encompass a range of methods to enable you to achieve your learning outcomes. 

Through this module, you'll gain the skills needed to engage critically with contemporary theoretical trends in qualitative research in the social sciences, and you'll relate these to research and practice. We aim to extend your knowledge and skills in qualitative research for investigating human and more-than-human worlds, developing an appreciation of how qualitative methods are used to create knowledge. 

In this module, we'll introduce you to further quantitative social science research methodology and design. You'll examine survey based research and working with primary data. This may include, sampling or selecting cases or subjects dealing with non-response and missing data, and random and systematic measurement error. You'll look at how it should be mitigated through instrument design and corrected for during analysis, inductive and deductive methods, hypothesis testing, exploratory and inferential methods, and measuring causality. You may also cover, population inference from cross-sectional and longitudinal sample surveys and inference from research using experimental designs, inferential statistical tests for parametric and non-parametric data, and linear and non-linear forms of multivariate regression, data reduction and grouping methods, such as factor and cluster analysis.