Credit: AS Art media / Adobe

Jon Swain

Many social science undergraduate programmes include modules where students are asked to carry out a small piece of qualitative research. This usually takes the form of interviews with real people. Although sample sizes are usually quite small (2-5 people), getting to grips with the resulting data can nevertheless be daunting for a novice researcher.

This blog post outlines the guidance I use with my own BA students, which, they tell me, is a clear and an effective method of showing them how to organise and begin to analyse interview data. The beauty is in its simplicity. (more…)

Credit: Mary Hinkley for UCL.

Peter Moss.

In a contemporary context of profound transitions and converging crises, it seems time to reconsider and reprioritise the role that social research can play in creating public policies, including services, that are relevant to rebuilding a world that is more just, more democratic, more sustainable and more caring. In this scenario, strategic social research, including an element of experimentation, may have a major part to play in what has been described by one commentator, Geoff Mulgan, as ‘expand[ing] our shared possibility space, the options for our societies… to populate our fuzzy pictures of the future with complex, rich, plausible [i]deas, pictures of the possible’.

Such concerns and such an approach are not new; they were founding principles of the Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU). They have, though, not always been easy to sustain. As TCRU marks its 50^th anniversary, it is an important moment to reiterate that broader (more…)

Litter picking. Credit: lovelyday12 via Adobe Stock.

by Lisa Fridkin, Neil Kaye, Katie Quy.

Much media attention is given to climate change denial and arguments over the impacts of human-driven climate change, as well as the actions of protest groups such as Extinction Rebellion and Just Stop Oil. Meanwhile, the latest scientific reports offer a further stark warning on climate change, and call for top-down leadership to tackle the climate crisis with greater urgency. Data indicate that, in a broad sense, the British public is on board, with three-in-four Britons now saying they are worried about climate change, and many reporting they feel the UK government is failing in its duty to act. (more…)