Social Sciences Research Methods Programme course timetable

This course will introduce students to the general philosophical debates concerning scientific methodology, assessing their ramifications for the conduct of qualitative social research. It will enable students to critically evaluate major programmes in the philosophy of sciences, considering whether there are important analytic differences between the social and natural sciences; and whether qualitative methods themselves comprise a unified approach to the study of social reality.

This module is shared with Psychology. Students from the Department of Psychology MUST book places on this course via the Department; any bookings made by Psychology students via the SSRMP portal will be cancelled.

The course focuses on practical hands-on variable handling and programming implementation using rather than on theory. This course is intended for those who have never programmed before, including those who only call/run Matlab scripts but are not familiar with how code works and how matrices are handled in Matlab. (Note that calling a couple of scripts is not 'real' programming.)

MATLAB (C) is a powerful scientific programming environment optimal for data analysis and engineering solutions. More information on the programme and its uses can be found here

More information on the course can be found here

This module is shared with Psychology. Students from the Department of Psychology MUST book places on this course via the Department; any bookings made by Psychology students via the SSRMP portal will be cancelled.

The course focuses on practical hands-on variable handling and programming implementation using rather than on theory. This course is intended for those who have never programmed before, including those who only call/run Matlab scripts but are not familiar with how code works and how matrices are handled in Matlab. (Note that calling a couple of scripts is not 'real' programming.)

MATLAB (C) is a powerful scientific programming environment optimal for data analysis and engineering solutions. More information on the programme and its uses can be found here

More information on the course can be found here

Ethics is becoming an increasingly important issue for all researchers, particularly in the covid-19 era. The aim of this session is twofold: (I) to demonstrate the practical value of thinking seriously and systematically about what constitutes ethical conduct in social science research; (II) to discuss the new valences of research in the pandemic era and develop new practices to tackle the insecurity it has created.

This three-hour session will be delivered via Zoom, and involve mini-lectures, small group work, and group discussions.

With such a large variety of qualitative research methods to choose from, creating a research design can be confusing and difficult without a sufficiently informed overview. This module aims to provide an overview by introducing qualitative data collection and analysis methods commonly used in social science research. The module provides a foundation for other SSRMP qualitative methods modules such as ethnography, discourse analysis, interviews, or diary research. Knowing what is ‘out there’ will help a researcher purposefully select further modules to study on, provide readings to deepen knowledge on specific methods, and will facilitate a more informed research design that contributes to successful empirical research.

NB. This module has video content that needs watching prior to the advertised start date, which can be found on the Moodle page.

Open Source Investigation for Academics is methodology course run by Cambridge’s Digital Verification Corps, in partnership with Cambridge’s Centre of Governance and Human Rights, Social Sciences Research Methods Programme and Cambridge Digital Humanities, as well as with the Citizen Evidence Lab at Amnesty International.

NB. Places on this module are extremely limited, so please only make a booking if you are able to attend all of the sessions.

Ethics is becoming an increasingly important issue for all researchers, particularly in the covid-19 era. The aim of this session is twofold: (I) to demonstrate the practical value of thinking seriously and systematically about what constitutes ethical conduct in social science research; (II) to discuss the new valences of research in the pandemic era and develop new practices to tackle the insecurity it has created.

This three-hour session will be delivered via Zoom, and involve mini-lectures, small group work, and group discussions.

This course will introduce students to the general philosophical debates concerning scientific methodology, assessing their ramifications for the conduct of qualitative social research. It will enable students to critically evaluate major programmes in the philosophy of sciences, considering whether there are important analytic differences between the social and natural sciences; and whether qualitative methods themselves comprise a unified approach to the study of social reality.

This is an introductory course for students who have little or no prior training in statistics.

The module is divided between pre-recorded mini-lectures, in which you'll learn the relevant theory, and hands-on live practical sessions in Zoom, in which you will learn how to analyse real data using the statistical package, Stata.

You will learn:

• The key features of quantitative analysis, and how it differs from other types of empirical analysis
• The basics of formal hypothesis testing
• Basic concepts: what is a variable? what is the distribution of a variable? and how can we best represent a distribution graphically?
• Features of statistical distributions: measures of central tendency and dispersion
• The normal distribution
• Why statistical testing works
• Statistical methods used to test simple hypotheses
• How to use Stata

This module is for students who don’t plan to use quantitative methods in their own research, but who need to be able to read and understand published research using quantitative methods. You will learn how to interpret graphs, frequency tables and multivariate regression results, and to ask intelligent questions about sampling, methods and statistical inference. The module is aimed at complete beginners, with no prior knowledge of statistics or quantitative methods.

This module is shared with Psychology. Students from the Department of Psychology MUST book places on this course via the Department; any bookings made by Psychology students via the SSRMP portal will be cancelled.

The course focuses on practical hands-on variable handling and programming implementation using rather than on theory. This course is intended for those who have never programmed before, including those who only call/run Matlab scripts but are not familiar with how code works and how matrices are handled in Matlab. (Note that calling a couple of scripts is not 'real' programming.)

MATLAB (C) is a powerful scientific programming environment optimal for data analysis and engineering solutions. More information on the programme and its uses can be found here

More information on the course can be found here

This is an introductory course for students who have little or no prior training in statistics.

The module is divided between pre-recorded mini-lectures, in which you'll learn the relevant theory, and hands-on live practical sessions in Zoom, in which you will learn how to analyse real data using the statistical package, Stata.

You will learn:

• The key features of quantitative analysis, and how it differs from other types of empirical analysis
• The basics of formal hypothesis testing
• Basic concepts: what is a variable? what is the distribution of a variable? and how can we best represent a distribution graphically?
• Features of statistical distributions: measures of central tendency and dispersion
• The normal distribution
• Why statistical testing works
• Statistical methods used to test simple hypotheses
• How to use Stata

With such a large variety of qualitative research methods to choose from, creating a research design can be confusing and difficult without a sufficiently informed overview. This module aims to provide an overview by introducing qualitative data collection and analysis methods commonly used in social science research. The module provides a foundation for other SSRMP qualitative methods modules such as ethnography, discourse analysis, interviews, or diary research. Knowing what is ‘out there’ will help a researcher purposefully select further modules to study on, provide readings to deepen knowledge on specific methods, and will facilitate a more informed research design that contributes to successful empirical research.

NB. This module has video content that needs watching prior to the advertised start date, which can be found on the Moodle page.

Open Source Investigation for Academics is methodology course run by Cambridge’s Digital Verification Corps, in partnership with Cambridge’s Centre of Governance and Human Rights, Social Sciences Research Methods Programme and Cambridge Digital Humanities, as well as with the Citizen Evidence Lab at Amnesty International.

NB. Places on this module are extremely limited, so please only make a booking if you are able to attend all of the sessions.

The course offers an introduction to critical approaches to discourse analysis with a focus on linking theory with method. Students will be equipped with the conceptual and practical knowledge to analyse a broad range of issues based on text documents. The topic of the course will be approached from a broadly Foucauldian angle, considering discourse as social practices that create reality rather than merely reflect it. The emphasis of the three lectures will thus be less upon what is known as ‘conversation analysis’ or ‘content analysis’ and more on text and speech as gateways to understand the making of social phenomena and corresponding power relations.

In the first session, we will discuss the theoretical ideas and origins behind discourse analysis. In the second lecture, we will dive into methodological discussions around doing discourse analysis. In the third session, we will apply the method of discourse analysis with support of a qualitative text analysis software.

Session 1: The origins of critical discourse analysis (especially Foucault but also the Frankfurt School, Feminism, etc.); discussion of how theoretical backgrounds shape research designs

Session 2: The methodology of discourse analysis: introduction to different approaches

Session 3: Doing discourse analysis with the assistance of a qualitative text analysis software

This is an introductory course for students who have little or no prior training in statistics.

The module is divided between pre-recorded mini-lectures, in which you'll learn the relevant theory, and hands-on live practical sessions in Zoom, in which you will learn how to analyse real data using the statistical package, Stata.

You will learn:

• The key features of quantitative analysis, and how it differs from other types of empirical analysis
• The basics of formal hypothesis testing
• Basic concepts: what is a variable? what is the distribution of a variable? and how can we best represent a distribution graphically?
• Features of statistical distributions: measures of central tendency and dispersion
• The normal distribution
• Why statistical testing works
• Statistical methods used to test simple hypotheses
• How to use Stata

This is an introductory course for students who have little or no prior training in statistics.

The module is divided between pre-recorded mini-lectures, in which you'll learn the relevant theory, and hands-on live practical sessions in Zoom, in which you will learn how to analyse real data using the statistical package, Stata.

You will learn:

• The key features of quantitative analysis, and how it differs from other types of empirical analysis
• The basics of formal hypothesis testing
• Basic concepts: what is a variable? what is the distribution of a variable? and how can we best represent a distribution graphically?
• Features of statistical distributions: measures of central tendency and dispersion
• The normal distribution
• Why statistical testing works
• Statistical methods used to test simple hypotheses
• How to use Stata

The aim of this course is to introduce students to comparative historical research methods and encourage them to engage with practical exercises, to distinguish between different approaches in comparative historical research methods in social sciences.

Through the reading and seminars students will learn how to distinguish between different texts, theorists and approaches and learn how to apply these approaches to their own research and writing.

Comparative historical sociology studies major social transformations over periods of time and across different states, societies, and regions.

This is an introductory course for students who have little or no prior training in statistics.

The module is divided between pre-recorded mini-lectures, in which you'll learn the relevant theory, and hands-on live practical sessions in Zoom, in which you will learn how to analyse real data using the statistical package, Stata.

You will learn:

• The key features of quantitative analysis, and how it differs from other types of empirical analysis
• The basics of formal hypothesis testing
• Basic concepts: what is a variable? what is the distribution of a variable? and how can we best represent a distribution graphically?
• Features of statistical distributions: measures of central tendency and dispersion
• The normal distribution
• Why statistical testing works
• Statistical methods used to test simple hypotheses
• How to use Stata

This module is for students who don’t plan to use quantitative methods in their own research, but who need to be able to read and understand published research using quantitative methods. You will learn how to interpret graphs, frequency tables and multivariate regression results, and to ask intelligent questions about sampling, methods and statistical inference. The module is aimed at complete beginners, with no prior knowledge of statistics or quantitative methods.

This is an introductory course for students who have little or no prior training in statistics.

The module is divided between pre-recorded mini-lectures, in which you'll learn the relevant theory, and hands-on live practical sessions in Zoom, in which you will learn how to analyse real data using the statistical package, Stata.

You will learn:

• The key features of quantitative analysis, and how it differs from other types of empirical analysis
• The basics of formal hypothesis testing
• Basic concepts: what is a variable? what is the distribution of a variable? and how can we best represent a distribution graphically?
• Features of statistical distributions: measures of central tendency and dispersion
• The normal distribution
• Why statistical testing works
• Statistical methods used to test simple hypotheses
• How to use Stata

This is an introductory course for students who have little or no prior training in statistics.

The module is divided between pre-recorded mini-lectures, in which you'll learn the relevant theory, and hands-on live practical sessions in Zoom, in which you will learn how to analyse real data using the statistical package, Stata.

You will learn:

• The key features of quantitative analysis, and how it differs from other types of empirical analysis
• The basics of formal hypothesis testing
• Basic concepts: what is a variable? what is the distribution of a variable? and how can we best represent a distribution graphically?
• Features of statistical distributions: measures of central tendency and dispersion
• The normal distribution
• Why statistical testing works
• Statistical methods used to test simple hypotheses
• How to use Stata