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Consistent with good research design this module is organised in the frame of the research data cycle and takes a mixed approach to quantitative and qualitative research methods. Quantitative analysis is one of a wide menu of approaches to social science research. This module introduces you to the fundamentals of quantitative data analysis, with a particular emphasis on visualisation, interpretation, and critical appraisal. Working with real-world data, and with few assumptions of prior knowledge, it will equip students with a range of techniques to perform independent analyses, present your results intuitively, and ultimately design your own theoretically informed studies. The course will involve working with cross-sectional, longitudinal, and a mix of micro and macro-data, enabling study patterns of social change over space and time, whilst gently exposing students to the practice of multivariate data analysis.
This course also offers students a theoretical and practical guide to a broad range of innovative qualitative research methods. It locates these methods within an interpretivist tradition, which explores the meanings people attach to human behaviour and the subject’s perspective. The course explores human behaviour through methods such as participant observation, interviewing and focus groups, discourse analysis and visual methods. The course offers practical experience to students in these methods as well as on analysis and writing of qualitative research.
Students should be able to understand the epistemological foundations behind qualitative research, assess which qualitative methods are the most appropriate to answer particular research questions, demonstrate a knowledge of various qualitative research methods, demonstrate a competence in MAXQDA and understand how qualitative data is generated, analysed, and written up.
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QUANTITATIVE & QUALITATIVE METHODS
Semester 1
