Simple Liars, Damned Liars and Experts: the use of empirical research in social science

Learning Outcomes

Knowledge and Understanding

Having successfully completed this module, you will be able to demonstrate knowledge and understanding of:

• Identify critical questions to ask about research outputs seen in academic research and in the media.
• Recognise the need for structured enquiry to collect and analyse empirical data in order to form evidence and knowledge about the world around us
• Describe how expert analysis has been used to influence policy and opinion
• Conduct basic descriptive analyses of quantitative data using Excel and qualitative data, understanding the limitations of the approach taken.
• Demonstrate basic methods in qualitative and quantitative data collection and discuss the implications of collecting data in certain ways.

This module will develop qualitative and quantitative research methodologies, going into depth about specific techniques. The methods will be taught around examples of interest across the participant programmes, highlighting examples of good and bad practice. These examples will include key studies that have been instrumental in our understanding of the world (e.g. link between smoking and cancer, environmental change, standards of replacement school meals) and those that have been seen be egregious in the misapplication of basic scientific rigour (e.g. link between MMR and autism, Covid deniers including the Great Barrington declaration, political polls before 2015 UK election).

The underlying topics included are:

• Quantitative:

oCollecting data – sampling, structured interviewing and questionnaires

oSecondary analysis considerations, including the reason for data collection, the quality of the data and missing data

oVisualising data – simple graphics in order not to misrepresent data

oProducing simple statistics from complex data – using Excel and large data to apply basic statistical methods to answer research questions.

• Qualitative

oSampling

oEthnography and participant observation

oInterviewing and focus groups

oQualitative data analysis

18 whole group lectures

9 pre-recorded bite-sized lectures on specific methods to feed into lectures.

5 computer workshops using Excel

3 tutorials focusing on qualitative interviewing methods

Summative

This is how we’ll formally assess what you have learned in this module.

Referral

This is how we’ll assess you if you don’t meet the criteria to pass this module.

Repeat

An internal repeat is where you take all of your modules again, including any you passed. An external repeat is where you only re-take the modules you failed.