Research Methods and Professional Skills (012L2)

15 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring teaching

This module will develop your understanding of social science research methods as well as give you skills that prepare you for a career.

The module is run as a series of half-day workshops. You must attend the core workshops that provide knowledge and guidance on effective research design, writing a literature review, data analysis and how to write a dissertation and proposal. In addition, a workshop on ethics will be mandatory if your dissertation requires ethical approval.

You'll also select two optional workshops to match your specific research needs, depending on disciplinary orientation, previous training and experience, future employment plans and personal interests.

The workshops will cover a wide range of research methods and professional skills, such as:

• qualitative methods
• surveys
• discourse analysis
• stakeholder analysis
• climate data analysis
• audio-visual methods.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 12 hours of contact time and about 138 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2024/25. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.