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Social Research Design: Principles and Methods

duration Duration: 1 Teaching Period

unit code Unit Code: SOC30011

contact hours Contact Hours: Recommended 8 hours of study per week

About this unit

Students develop a mastery of the principles and skills required in designing and planning for a quantitative social research project. These include basic mastery of a range of quantitative research techniques, competent evaluation of other researchers’ work, and the design and interpretation of students’ own work.

Content

The content of this unit is designed to support the project process, and may vary according to the projects students are actually doing. Topics are likely to include:

  • Objectivity and social research
  • The problem statement and literature review
  • The research question and research design
  • Political and ethical issues in social research
  • Problems of measurement
  • Questionnaires and structured interview schedules
  • Sampling
  • Effective and ethical research administration
  • Finding and using secondary data
  • Content analysis
  • Analysing quantitative data using SPSS
  • Writing research proposals and research reports.

This unit is found in Bachelor of Social Science with a Major in Criminology.