PIR-40095 - Module Specification
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

Programme/Approved Electives for 2025/26

Available as a Free Standing Elective

Co-requisites

None

Prerequisites

None

Barred Combinations

N/A

Description for 2025/26

How is advanced research in the social sciences designed and conducted? How do researchers make up their minds about what research designs to select and what evidence gathering methods to use? How do they deal with potential ethical issues that may arise? How do they overcome the many obstacles that beset practical research? And after all that, how do they learn from and build on their experiences of conducting empirical research?
This module seeks to address these questions by providing an in-depth and hands-on advanced introduction to research design and evidence gathering in the social sciences. It first explores how to select and narrow down a research topic, and how to formulate a good research question. It then examines the range of research designs used in the social sciences, before going on to consider a variety of evidence gathering approaches, including interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, documents and texts. Each approach is explained and discussed by academic members of staff who are engaged in research that makes use of these different methods. Staff therefore explain the key issues involved in using these different evidence-gathering techniques, offer advice to students contemplating adopting these techniques in their own research, and share their experiences of good practice. Alongside this, the module explores the ethical issues involved in undertaking social research, and examines what steps researchers should take to ensure that their research is conducted ethically.
The module offers students the opportunity to further develop a whole range of employability skills, including their communication skills, their research skills, and their problem-solving skills. It is therefore aimed both at students intending to go on to further academic study and at those wishing to embark on professional careers in which research skills (including the collection and understanding of data) are crucial.

This module aims to provide an in-depth and hands-on advanced introduction to research design and evidence-gathering methods in the social sciences. It considers the importance of research questions, explores the purpose of research design, provides an overview of different types of research design, examines a variety of evidence-gathering techniques, and reflects on ethical issues involved in conducting social research. It then offers students an opportunity to design and propose their own small-scale practical research task and to reflect upon their choices of research design and methods, and their experiences of hands-on research.
Through the conduct of this task, the module also aims to enable students to develop a whole range of skills, including their communication skills, their information-handling skills, their research skills, and their problem-solving skills.

Intended Learning Outcomes

Identify a suitable research topic and research question for a small-scale but advanced research task: 1
Critically reflect on ethical issues involved in conducting social research: 1
Communicate appropriately through use of higher level writing skills, with appropriate use of academic referencing: 1

Study hours

Active Learning Hours:
- 11 x 2-hour seminars: 22 hours
Independent Study Hours:
- Preparation for seminars: 50 hours
- Preparation for and writing of report: 78 hours

School Rules

None

Description of Module Assessment