Dr Alasdair Jones COL8.12

This course is compulsory on the MSc in Applied Social Data Science and MSc in Social Research Methods. This course is available on the MPhil/PhD in Demography/Population Studies, MPhil/PhD in Social Policy, MPhil/PhD in Social Research Methods, MPhil/PhD in Sociology, MSc in Applied Social Data Science, MSc in Gender (Research), MSc in Human Geography and Urban Studies (Research), MSc in International Migration and Public Policy, MSc in International Migration and Public Policy (LSE and Sciences Po) and MSc in Statistics (Research). This course is available as an outside option to students on other programmes where regulations permit.

This course is not controlled access. If you register for a place and meet the prerequisites, if any, you are likely to be given a place.

Research students please see MY500.

Research design necessitates trade-offs between the strengths and weaknesses of different feasible options.  This course aims to introduce the broad range of design options and to foster an appreciation of these alternatives for particular research objectives.  Drawing on a variety of examples from the social scientific literature, this course will explore design considerations and options across quantitative, qualitative and mixed-methods research. At the end of the course, students will be able to read a wide variety of empirical social science with a critical and balanced perspective and will be better equipped to implement and make arguments defending the methods they use in their dissertations.

This course is delivered through a combination of lectures and seminars totalling a minimum of 20 hours across Michaelmas Term. This year, some or all of this teaching will be delivered through a combination of in-person and online seminars and lectures delivered as short recorded videos.

This course has a Reading Week in Week 6 of MT.

For the formative coursework, students will be expected to articulate and set-up (via recourse to the literature) a research question or set of interlinked research questions that they would like to answer for a topic of their choosing. Assignments should be 1-2 pages long (including in-text citations and reference list).

Robson, Colin and McCartan, Kieran (2015, 4th edition). Real World Research. London: John Wiley.

Research proposal (30%) and other (10%) in the MT.
Research design (60%) in the ST.

(MT: Research proposal 1500 words, 30%; seminar participation (including online seminar participation), 10%; ST: Research design: 4000 words, 60%)

Some departments have produced short videos to introduce their courses. Please refer to the course selection videos index page for further information.