Researching Society

This module provides students with the knowledge and practical skills necessary to pursue a wide range of social research. It serves both as a free-standing module and as preparation for students to conduct original research and complete a research dissertation in their Senior Sophister year.

Part I of the module builds on the broad introduction to social research in second year, which explored the range of techniques employed in qualitative methods, overviewed basic methods of qualitative analysis and began the process of developing written arguments. In particular the module will focus on designing and formulating a research project with corresponding sampling, data collection and analysis methods. This part of the module will also particularly focus on research proposal requirements.

Part II of the module continues on from the introduction to quantitative methods in second year, which covered survey design, sampling, data collection techniques and basic descriptive analysis methods. The various stages of designing a quantitative research project are examined with particular focus on data analysis. As generalisations from the sample to the population are of key importance in quantitative research, statistical inference is introduced and inferential statistics are applied. This is accompanied by instruction in using SPSS software to analyse numerical data.