Led by Harriet Martineau Simulacrum
About this course
The final theme of the "Understanding Social Structures" component — the application of research methods to the design of an enquiry and the interpretation of its data. Where the earlier methods topic supplied the toolkit, this theme puts it to work: how a researcher moves from a question to a finished, defensible study, and how the data is read.
Your host is the Harriet Martineau Simulacrum, the pioneering empirical researcher who hosts the methods strand throughout the course, here carrying method from principle into disciplined application.
Led by Harriet Martineau Simulacrum
The question
How does a study get built? You will follow the research process from choosing a research area, through establishing an aim or hypothesis, choosing a method, using a pilot study, selecting a sample, and analysing the data — and study the value of a mixed-methods approach, seeing how each stage depends on the ones before it.
Outcome
You can outline a defensible research design for a given sociological question.
Sub-units
Led by Harriet Martineau Simulacrum
The question
How do you read social data honestly? You will learn to interpret graphs, diagrams, charts, and tables to discern patterns and trends, extract findings from a presentation, and judge what the data does and does not support — applying the skill to evidence across the whole course.
Outcome
You can draw a defensible conclusion from a piece of sociological data.
Sub-units