Introduction

This session will start at the beginning! The setting of research aims, objectives and objectives and how these might be reshaped and refined by working with existing knowledge in the form of a literature review. Defining research questions may sound easy, but people often really struggle to do so in a way that truly guides the research process.

The Lecture

Powerpoint slides are here.

The class video is here.

Introduction

The previous session explained why it is necessary to locate your project - your research questions - in existing knowledge. This is what differentiates your 'interests' from an academic research project. In essence this helps you to 'make a contribution' by producing some new or original insight.

This session shows you how to conduct literature searches using the University's information systems. Caroline Ball - the University of Derby's library professional attached to social sciences - will guide you through this. Alex will then offer some advice based on experience of using these tools to undertake literature searches. Finally, you will be asked to conduct and save some searches using the university system and Google Scholar.

Preparation

There are two preparatory tasks that may be useful in getting yourself up to speed in this session. First - and most important - you might want to view this demonstration by Caroline of using the library's information systems and conducting searches. Its an hour and a quarter long, so leave enough time.

Video is here (this is based on search resources used in UK Universities. If you do not have access to these... don't worry - see below where we draw on freely available tools like Google Scholar.

In addition to this, you might want to read the relevant chapter in the Bryman textbook. There are loads of different editions of this and they are slightly different but in my version, the most recent, the relevant chapter is Chapter 5.

The Online Class

In the online class, Caroline will be available for the first part of the class to answer any questions or help with problems.

Then Alex will give some examples of how to conduct literature searches as part of a literature review, some tips and tricks for knowing what to read, how to build up a picture of the relevant literature, and how to get hold of those tricky books and articles.

Slides used in class are here.

Then I will encourage you to start a few initial searches linked to your research questions, using both the University system and Google Scholar.

Work after the class

After the watching the class I would encourage you to continue with the searches started in class. Use the screening mechanism I cover in class and start to build up an understanding of your own research area. I will ask you to submit a document demonstrating your initial searches and screening. This is not assessed - its just to get you moving along with your project.

The template (fine to amend) for documenting initial searches and screening is here.

This masterclass will introduce you to the basics and practical elements of data collection from human participants using interviews and focus groups. These are some of the most commonly used ways of collecting qualitative data in social research. However, they can also be quite daunting for the uninitiated and also like forgetting some initial ingredient in baking a cake - mistakes at this stage can be costly later! So some good quality preparation, thinking through the approach to be used can be beneficial in ensuring that the data collected meets the requirements of the project.

The session will define different sorts of interviews and focus groups and when you may employ them. It will also cover insights from actually having done literally thousands of these, som practical tips and tricks. Finally, it will ask you to undertake some practice interviews with your classmates.

Preparation

There is no specific preparation absolutely required for this session, but it would be useful to think how this data collection method might be useful in your own project before coming to the session. This will help you to make the most of the advice offered and to ask specific as opposed to general questions (these are fine too). You might also want to have a look at the relevant chapters of the Bryman textbook.

The Lecture

The slides used in class are here.

The class video is here.

The topic guides I used for demonstration are here:

Topic Guide A

Topic Guide B

Topic Guide C

Topic Guide D

Introduction

This session will introduce you to the principles and practice of observation-based research techniques.

Learning Outcomes

At the end of the session you should be able to:

- Understand how observational data collection techniques fit with different research philosophies.

- Be able to identify what sort of observational techniques might fit with your own research ideas.

- Be able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of observational techniques for different research tasks.

Materials

The slides used in class are here.

The class video is here.

Introduction

This class will provide an overview of the principles and practice underpinning the data coding and analysis process. It will introduce some of the ways that decisions over research philosophy and epistomology guide the methods to be used in data coding. The class will then move on to practical issues of data coding, using data from a live project.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this session students will:

- Have a better understanding of the coding process.

- Understand hat different philosophical approaches to research (see Intro to Research Philosophy and Methodology) lead to different approaches to coding data.

- Have some practical experience of undertaking manual coding.

- Understand the principles of coding which underpin popular software packages.

In class exercises

The class video is here.

The lecture slides from the class are here.

The other documents I talked about in the class are here:

The transcript/coding exercise is here.

The blank coding frame is here.

The example completed coding frame is here.

Introduction

There are a variety of software packages on the market that enable you to code larger amounts or more complex data. The big advantage of these software packages is that they allow you to search, sort and reorganise your coding in multiple ways at the click of a button and therefore promise more detailed and perhaps more revealing analysis. The downside is definitely the investment of time in learning how to use the software. Which is what this session is for.

If you have access to Nvivo you may want to download it before watching the video.

Learning resources

You can follow the lecture / instructional videos by opening the powepoint file and use the screen icon links to open the videos. You may need to download the slides to your desktop to be able to open the video links. In these I use Nvivo 12 the Mac version which may not be exactly like the Windows one. In most cases the Windows interface is actually easier to follow than the Mac one - the software is made for Windows and the Mac version has slightly reduced functionality and useability. You should be able to follow using Windows.

The slides are here.

Don't Despair!

If you want to use computer software for coding but do not have access to Nvivo then do not despair! I may be able to get you a short-term license or there are free versions of similar software available. Contact Alex and we can discuss how to go about this!

Introduction

This session will outline some basics of secondary data analysis. It will explain what this is, what sort of data is available and how to access it. We will also look at how to prepare data for analysis, and some basic first steps in undertaking data analysis with secondary data.

Learning Resources

The class video is here.

The slides used are here.

Introduction

This class will introduce you to the basics of quantitative data collection. It will provide you with an introduction to questionnaire strategies and dos and don'ts of individual question design.

Learning Outcomes

On successful completion of this session, students will be able to:

- Understand when it is appropriate to collect quantitative data

- Understand the principles of quantitative data collection.

- Successfully identify robust and problematic question types in quantitative data collection.

- Design a short questionnaire.

Learning resources

Watch the class video here.

The slides used are here.

Introduction

The last two topics have introduced you to accessing secondary datasets and to collecting your own quantitative data via a survey. This topic focuses on developing your capacity for basic analysis of data collected via these means using SPSS. The topic will show you how to navigate the SPSS interface, how to enter data, create variables, recode and compute variables and how to perform very basic analysis to produce descriptive statistics, frequencies and cross-tabulations. You will be able to do this on data that you create to simulate survey data on data you download to simulate accessing secondary datasets.

Should you require further reading, the data used comes from the Bryman and Cramer (2011), Quantitative Data Analysis with IBM SPSS: A Guide for Social Scientists, London: Routledge.

I also suggest this website for guiding re what sort of statistical tests can be performed with different combination of variable types: https://stats.idre.ucla.edu/other/mult-pkg/whatstat/

Learning Resources

Like with Nvivo, the resources here are videos embedded into a set of Powerpoint slides. Use the icons to access the short videos. You may need to download the slides to your desktop to be able to open the links to the videos. Again, like Nvivo it is perhaps easier to do this if you are able to download SPSS before you start watching the video.

The slides are here.

Don't despair

Again, as with Nvivo, if you are struggling to access the license for SPSS, I maybe able to help with that or suggest an alternative. Let me know if this is the case.

This video introduces you to using Reference Management software. The example used is with freely available open access software - Zotero. There are other similar software packages such as Endnote, Mendeley, Papers etc. I am showing you Zotero because it is free and because it is what I use. I used to use Endnote but didnt like being tied into my Institution's software licenses and preferred a free open access version. In my limited experience, even if you want to go and use Endnote, you will get something out of the video as the two interfaces are quite similar.

I also demonstrate Zotero using Microsoft Word. It also works with other software packages such as Google Docs, though in my experience, not quite so well.

I reccomend downloading Zotero to your desktop, though there is also a web-version available and you can subscribe to an account which will give you a small ammount of cloud storage. If you do this, you can use the software and your library across multiple devices. I don't do this because I pay for separate cloud storage and didn't want multiple subscriptions. I therefore keep my Zotero source files in a folder on my hard drive which is linked to my cloud storage - just so that I have a back up.

I also reccomend downloading the 'plug-ins' for both your web browser and for your word processor. I demonstrate both of these in the video.

Finally, I made this video earlier this year for my Under Graduate students so I refer to reading etc and discussions we had in class that week - obviously you can ignore that. The reading I used is though relevant to our WARIA programme! The video has auto-generated captions on it - beware that the computer isn't brilliant with my regional accent, so some of the captions are quite funny!