Research Methods
As well as discipline-specific research methods training that may be provided at School level, the GS DRDP offers a range of research methods workshops.
UNDERTAKING DATA COLLECTION/FIELDWORK – AN INTERCULTURAL PERSPECTIVE
24th April 2025, Online
When undertaking data collection/fieldwork through, for example, interviews or questionnaires, we are interacting with our informants. These interactions could be on-site or on-line. The willingness of our informants to contribute, the way in which they will interpret our questions and answer them, as well as a myriad of ethical aspects will be influenced by their cultural background. You might be doing fieldwork in a culture you are very familiar with or one that you know only from a distance. At the same time, the way you are framing and phrasing your questions or request for information is influenced by your own cultural background (and that of your supervisory team). This workshop is designed to help you reflect on these important aspects, in order to fully consider cultural perspectives and their implications for your fieldwork. The workshop is open to all doctoral students preparing for their data collection who have already submitted or are about to submit their ethics application.
ORGANISING YOUR RESEARCH DATA AND MATERIALS
TBC February 2025, Online
Do you have a plan for how will you curate and store all of the research materials and research data you will create during the course of your doctoral project? Do you have a plan to digitise or catalogue all of the physical artefacts you may create? Would you know what to do if a journal’s editor asked you to publish your research data alongside an article you’ve written? Would you know what a ‘data management plan’ is, if you are asked to write one as part of a future funding application?
This session provides an introduction for doctoral researchers to managing their research data: how to keep your materials and data well-organised and documented, so that it is easy for you to find the files you need, and so that it is easier to share your research data materials with other researchers and the public. After setting ‘research data management’ in the context of the wider field of ‘open research’ in academia, the session will cover some research data management basics, such as using file naming conventions and folder structures to organise your digital data. We will then take a look at two key scenarios you will encounter in your future career as a researcher, where you will need good research data management knowledge: publishing your data alongside a journal article, and writing a ‘data management plan’ as part of a funding application.
Recorded ‘Introduction to Research Data Management’ presentation:
Link to Panopto recording
Transcript_Introduction to Research Data Management
NVIVO – INTERMEDIATE LEVEL WORKSHOPS
The GS is pleased to offer this opportunity for doctoral researchers to benefit from tailored training. The series of 3 workshops will be offered twice in the academic year. The workshops will be delivered online (via Zoom).
Learning objectives
By the end of the course, participants will be able to:
1. Move beyond simple coding to understand how to generate codes, the logic of coding scheme structures and retrieve, review and reorganise coding
2. understand the importance of planning and how to effectively implement analytical strategies and software tactics
3. identify and interrogate patterns and relationships
4. visualise data through maps and charts and understand how to visually represent relationships and links
5. understand both the technical and human aspects of team working within NVivo projects.
Who is this course for?
This course is intended to people who have already been using and experience of NVivo and are looking to make sure they are most effectively using the software to its full potential.
Due to the limit on places, priority will be given to those doctoral researchers who are further along in their studies.
Format and documentation
The workshops are hands-on, delivered thorough a blend of demonstration, discussion, and practical exercises.
Participants are provided with slide decks, reading lists and a range of resources to accompany the course and to support consolidation of the topics covered.
Places are limited and allocated through an application process.
This sequential series of three workshops will take place on:
21st, 22nd and 23rd October 2024
Applications Open: 13th September 2024
Application Deadline Extended To: 5pm, 7th October 2024
APPLICATION FORM
and
31st March, 1st April and 2nd April 2025
Applications Open: TBC
Application Deadline: TBC
To familiarise yourself with NVIVO, we suggest viewing this AELD recorded session: Introduction to NVIVO
ETHNOGRAPHY AS A RESEARCH METHOD
TBC February or March 2025, Regent Street
In this specially curated workshop for the GS, Professor of Digital Anthropology Miriyam Aouragh introduces Ethnography with a special focus on the changing infrastructural realities. Ethnography has itself gone through different stages, but whether as classical anthropology or digital anthropology, the key pillars remain fieldwork, participant observation and in-depth interviews. How best to explore digital communities, online prosumers, internet activist, citizen journalists, visual archives, transnational art collectives or architectural virtual sites dealers within their wider context?
A basic principle for social scientists is to study social phenomena or events through a holistic approach. But what does this mean, and how best to do it in a non-reductive and a critical way? One crucial condition is to understand our research audiences and interlocutors as part and parcel of the cultures around them. Another key feature is challenging binary or culturalist thinking as it allows us to grasp the differences and similarities between cultures and communities. In other words, Ethnography is a research approach to learn first-hand about the behavior, interactions, dreams and dilemmas of collectives. Ethnographers immerse themselves in a social environment and observe the kind of unseen, authentic or spontaneous dynamics that we do not get from a survey or data analysis.
In this workshop we explore how Ethnography helps us understand the way people interact with the world around them; what the main tools of Ethnography are; how to consider Ethnography through intersectional lenses.
FOCUS GROUPS AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH
21st May 2025, 10.00am-3.00pm, Regent Street
Book in Inkpath
In this one day course (with Part 1 in the morning and Part 2 in the afternoon), students will be introduced to both the basics and new thinking in qualitative research. The course is suitable for the beginner and those looking to refresh their knowledge.
Part 1 – Building a project
defining your objective
developing a sample
writing a screener
devising a methodology
writing a discussion guide
PART 2 – Delivering a project
focus group best practice
behavioural economics and the focus group
projective techniques
effective reporting
‘ZINE-ING IS BELIEVING: EXPLORING ZINES FOR RESEARCH PURPOSES
2nd July 2025, 1.00pm-4.00pm, Regent Street
Zines – are typically non-commercial self-published print works produced in small batches. Their content can vary, and its origins are said to be traced back to American science fiction fans in the 1930s, the term zine, is said to be short for ‘fan magazine’.
Since its creation, it has become a medium that has been used by many to explore many different topics and interests. It is a great creative outlet and has also become a rich source for understanding social historical contexts and it provides an ‘alternative’ voice to mainstream media and allows marginalised voices to also present their worldview.
This session run by Ka-Ming from the AELD team is a unique opportunity to engage with a zine collection, explore more creative ways to research and reflect on research.
It includes:
· Opportunity to explore a small selection of zines to get a sense of the variety and variation within the medium
· Introductory talk on how zines can potentially be used to reflect on the research process or as a research method.
· Hands-on zine making with materials provided by the facilitator.
QUANTITATIVE METHODS AND ANALYSIS TRAINING
Applications will open in Autumn 2024.
Stats Workshops 2024-25 Application Form
Please submit your application form to:
The following two workshops build on one another, guiding you through the process of designing an empirical study and analysing the findings with basic statistics as well as more advanced statistics. Doctoral researchers need to make an application for attendance on these workshops.
Workshop 1 – Design of Empirical Research Studies with Human Participants
TBC February/March 2025
This workshop aims to give a broad overview of designing empirical research studies with human participants, covering research questions, sampling and required sample size (power analysis), choice of variables and measurement techniques, as well as design of experimental and correlational studies. It also provides a theoretical basis for techniques which may be practised during practical exercises.
- Introduction to the design of empirical research studies: experimental and correlational studies; experimental controls; selection and recruitment of subjects; piloting; ethical considerations
- Measurement through observation of behaviour: direct and indirect observation; recording techniques; measurement of behaviour; activity sampling
- Measurement through questionnaires and interviews: ranking methods, rating scales, application in interviews and questionnaires
- Good practice in research methods – an overview: ethics, avoiding questionable research practices, open science, preregistration
Workshop 2 – The Basics of Statistical Analysis
TBC February/March 2025
This workshop aims to provide an introduction to basic methods used to analyse data from empirical studies with human participants, describing the key features of the data in a study with scientific language. It explains how to compute descriptive statistics and create graphs to visualise quantitative data as well as how to test hypotheses, covering the most commonly used types of inferential statistics and their assumptions. This workshop will be run with the software package SPSS. This workshop will be run in a modular fashion, where some of those aspects shown in parentheses will be covered, depending on PhD students’ needs and wishes in this teaching year.
- Descriptive statistics
- Types of data and data management
- Distributions, esp. normal distribution
- Central Tendency and Variability
- Measures of central tendency (mean, median, mode)
- Measures of variability (range, variance, and standard deviation)
- The importance of variability
- (Tables and graphs)
- Testing Hypotheses
- Probability
- Null and Alternative Hypothesis
- Sampling distribution and statistical decision making
- Statistical significance and confidence intervals
- Inferential statistics
- (Non-parametric tests)
- (Chi Square)
- t-test, ANOVA (ANCOVA, MANOVA)
- Correlation and Multiple Linear Regression
RESEARCH METHODS MODULES AT MASTERS LEVEL
Doctoral research can sometimes mean that you will need some training in new research methods. The university runs a large number of research methods modules across its many masters programmes and it may be that joining some or all of the seminars of one of these modules will be useful to you. If you think that sitting in on one of these would be useful for your research, please discuss it with your Director of Studies. If you decide together that it would be helpful, then you should contact the Module Leader to ask if they would be happy for you to sit in on the class.
You can find the lists of research methods modules on the link below:
INFORMATION TO FOLLOW