Sociology and anthropology briefings (C-SAP collections project)

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SociologyandAnthropologyBriefingsforC‐SAP(HigherEducationAcademySubjectCentreforSociology,AnthropologyandPolitics)CollectionsProject

KateOrton‐Johnson(UniversityofEdinburgh)IanFairweatherApril2011


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SociologyandAnthropologyBriefingsbyCollectionsReviewers

This subject briefing is part of the C-SAP "Discovering Collections of Social Science Open

Educational Resources" project which runs from August 2010 - August 2011 as part of Phase 2 of the

HEFCE-funded Open Educational Resources (OER) programme. The programme focuses in

particular on issues related to the discovery and use of OER by academics and is managed jointly by

the Higher Education Academy [HEA] and Joint Information Systems Committee [JISC].

Sociologybriefing:KateOrton‐JohnsonFor all students across the subject areas of the school (Politics, Social Anthropology, Social Policy,

Sociology, Social Work, Canadian Studies, Science/Technology Studies, and South Asian Studies)

methods teaching is formally core from the second year (although substantive and methodological

teaching is not seen as a distinct or mutually exclusive as part of introductory first year teaching).

In the second year the required methods course is the interdisciplinary semester-length team-taught

course Social and Political Enquiry. This introduces students to a range of methods, examines the

potential and problems of these methods, and helps students to think about the interpretation and

analysis of data. It focuses on a series of exemplary studies conducted by social and political

scientists, both classic and contemporary and in each case considers how the research questions

were formulated, how these questions were addressed and answered, and how the evidence was

produced, interpreted and evaluated, including issues of objectivity, values and policy.

The core subject specific Sociology methods teaching is situated in the 3rd and 4th year of the degree

with 2 compulsory courses: ‘Designing and doing social research’ and ‘Doing survey research’. The

emphasis of these courses is on students learning to do social research and assessing how well

others have done it. ‘Designing & Doing Social Research’ offers an overview of the research process

and ends with a group project. It explores issues of qualitative data analysis and introduces students

to the principles of research design and research practicalities and ethics. ‘Doing Survey Research’

focuses on the analysis of survey data and includes basic statistics and the learning of a computer

package for the manipulation of numerical data. Analysis techniques are developed by looking at

datasets based on large-scale social surveys.

In addition the Sociology project and project preparation sessions in year 4 which students are

required to complete aim to provide a practical application of methodological skills and knowledge.


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Whatdoyoucurrentlyknowaboutonlinecollectionsofrelevancetoteachingresearchmethods?

Speaking to colleagues across the school there appears to be wide variation in knowledge and use of

online collections of teaching materials. Most colleagues I spoke with use searches of on-line

methods journals for current debates e.g.. on informed consent, ethics, research design, multi-level

models, although the BSA ESRC-linked Methods sites, SSRN, Soc Res Assoc (SRA) and SRU,

Surrey were also cited as potential sites for research methods teaching resources.

I personally also tend to use Google Scholar searcher to look for specific examples or resources in

my qualitative methods teaching and have draw on resources from the CAQDAS networking

project http://caqdas.soc.surrey.ac.uk/ but primarily the resources I use are journal articles rather than

online collections. Particularly in qualitative methods teaching colleagues have appear to have little

awareness of online collections and are not entirely sure what is meant by the term.

ESDS was cited as a useful source of support material particularly for the workbooks that introduce

students to SPSS for Windows (v15), Stata and NESSTAR, as well as guides for weighting, analysing

change over time and working with data files (including hierarchical data, matching files and pooling

data).

For colleagues teaching quantitative methods the following were listed as useful online resources for

teaching:

http://www.vts.intute.ac.uk/tutorial/socialstatistics

Intute web tutorial on using the web to locate social statistics, with a good page of links to sources

of social statistics, as well as general advice on sources of information for academic use on the

web.

http://databank.worldbank.org/ddp/home.do

The world bank’s databank. It permits online tabulation and analysis of time series data by country

on a number of development, economic and finance indicators.

https://oli.web.cmu.edu/openlearning/forstudents/freecourses/statistics

There are two courses in this suite of open access materials provided by Carnegie Mellon

University on Probability and Statistics and Statistical Reasoning. They are suitable for ‘absolute

beginners’ with excellent graphics, tutorials and self test exercises. However, while they use many

social science examples, they are not designed to be specific to any discipline, so that a

significant proportion of the material is from a non social science context. They are not linked to


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data analysis software packages (such as SPSS) although students can use excel or R for the

associated ‘statTutor’ exercises.

http://www.csupomona.edu/~jlkorey/POWERMUTT/faculty.html

The POWERMUTT (Politically-Oriented Web-Enhanced Research Methods for Undergraduates

— Topics and Tools) site is a suite of resources, based on SPSS for teaching introductory

quantitative research design and analysis aimed at political science undergraduates

http://onlinestatbook.com/

Introductory online statistics textbook with simulations and self tests. There is no social science

context, but the simulations are useful, for example, for demonstrating how the shape of

distributions change with different means and standard deviations or how sampling distributions

change with different sample sizes. There is also a Java applet allowing students to estimate

regression line by eye, and have the mean square error for their estimate calculated, and

compared to the minimum mean square error: useful in teaching regression.

Wouldyoutendtoapproachthesearchinganddiscoveryofrelevantonlinematerials(definedasOERorotherwise)fromastrictsubjectdisciplineapproach?

Most colleagues do not adhere to a strict disciplinary search for materials although sociologically

informed methods were prioritised. As a research driven institution there is a tendency for examples

to be drawn from lecturers own research interests and for data examples to be drawn from ongoing

research projects (suitably anonymised etc for teaching purposes). At 1st and 2ndyear undergraduate

level, as well as postgraduate level, there is the ongoing tension of teaching students from a range of

disciplinary backgrounds and trying to find a balance between examples that are not so generic that

they are not of interest to students and examples that are relevant to 1 particular subject area and not

another.

Subject specific example can be extremely useful if they happen to suit the course and the teaching

you are doing on that course but sometimes generic resources can be better precisely because they

are not so limited (or limiting) in scope.

Haveyoutakenresearchmethodsresourcesfromonlinesourcesandincorporatedthemintoyourownmaterials?Wouldyoutendtodevelopallofyourownmaterials‘in‐house’?Ifso,why?

Obviously the preference to not to re-invent the wheel with resources but the difficultly of integrating

some resources into an existing course structure, and to ensure that students perceive them as

central and relevant in order to increase engagement with these resources, is often more work, or as


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much work as developing individual course examples or exercises ‘in house’. The key issues here are

of granularity and adaptability – generic and subject specific resources found online are not often

adaptable enough to be incorporated into teaching (particularly undergraduate teaching) easily or

logically and this is often the key problem or reason for lecturers not using online materials.

Doyouusemultimediaresourcesintheteachingofresearchmethods?

Multimedia examples are use in teaching – my own use come particularly with postgraduate teaching

of qualitative data analysis software and the need to code and analysis visual, video and web data.

Doyouregularlyseekfeedbackfromstudentsaboutmaterialsusedtosupportyourteachingofresearchmethods?

The main feedback mechanism is via formal course feedback evaluations questionnaires, of which

feedback on course materials and resources used is a part.

AnthropologyBriefing

What(briefly)isthestateofteachingresearchmethodscoursesinyourinstitution/yourdiscipline?Howisitsituatedinyourprogrammes

Research methods courses have an ambiguous position in anthropology. Most social sciences are

defined by their subject matter and research questions and they have developed an array of methods

in order to pursue them effectively. First year anthropology students, however, are taught that

anthropology is a discipline defined by its method. The method in question being ‘participant

observation’ carried out through long term ethnographic fieldwork. This often creates the impression

that anthropology is a discipline with only one method. Of course that would be an over-simplification

as fieldwork itself might involve the anthropologist in using a variety of techniques from surveys and

interviews to archival research the rich qualitative data generated by long-term participant observation

has to be sorted and analyzed. In fact, there is considerable discussion among anthropologists about

fieldwork, ethnography and the writing process, but this is rarely signposted as specifically a

discussion about methods. As a result much methods teaching tends to be incorporated into courses

and where students are given specific methods teaching it is usually in courses about ‘doing fieldwork’

or ‘ethnographic methods’.

On the other hand, anthropology students are often required to take general social science methods

courses in order to familiarize themselves with a wider variety of social science methods, but these


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are sometimes experienced as disconnected and are seen to have little relevance. Part of the

problem is that discussions about methods in anthropology often don’t make use of the same

terminology as the wider social sciences. A further complication is that anthropology is a broad field of

study with a number of distinct sub-disciplines. Areas such as visual anthropology, material culture

studies, biological anthropology and forensic anthropology have developed specialist research

methods that are very different from those used in other areas. For that reason these methods tend to

be incorporated into specialist courses and course-givers rely on their own expertise or on the

literature specific to the sub-disciplines

At Manchester anthropology is located in the School of Social Sciences alongside sociology, politics,

philosophy, economics and social statistics. The school sits within the broader faculty of humanities.

Teaching research methods takes place in all disciplines for undergraduates from 1st year onwards

and the majority is delivered within disciplines. The situation is slightly different for students taking

cross disciplinary degree programmes. The largest of these is the BA (Economic and Social Studies)

degree run by the School of Social Sciences and Manchester Business School. This programme

offers 29 different combinations covering Accounting, Business Studies, Development Studies,

Finance, Economic and Social History, Economic Studies, Politics, Social Anthropology, Criminology

and Sociology. In the first year of the degree all students follow a general and broad programme of

study which includes Economics, Politics, the Social Sciences and either Quantitative Methods or

Social Research Methods, depending on intended area of specialization. First year anthropology

undergraduates take the social research methods course.

For postgraduates there is a combination of disciplinary methods teaching and cross school or cross

faculty provision. As well as discipline specific methods courses PGR students are required to choose

3 introductory 5-credit methods modules from a list that includes both qualitative and quantitative

methods. An important development in the last few years has been the cross faculty research

methods centre methods@manchester to provide methods training and promote interdisciplinary and

innovative methodological developments. As well as promoting and facilitating methods-related

events across the university methods@manchester offers an annual competition to fund methods-

related activities that promote interdisciplinary, innovation.

http://www.methods.manchester.ac.uk/

Whatdoyoucurrentlyknowaboutonlinecollectionsofrelevancetoteachingresearchmethods?

Most of what I know about online methods collections comes from working with C-SAP or

methods@manchester and would not necessarily have been obvious to lecturers in anthropology. My

sense is that there is a wide variation in colleagues’ awareness of and use of online methods


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resources. In particular, those colleagues who are involved ion teaching cross disciplinary methods

courses, or courses devoted to ethnographic methods are more likely to use online collections whilst

those who incorporate methods discussion into otherwise theoretical courses are more likely to use

published material from the anthropological literature, especially journals and textbooks. Anthropology

is largely qualitative and anthropology student’s exposure to quantitative methods is most likely to

take place in cross-disciplinary courses.

The Association of Social Anthropologists web site http://www.theasa.org/links.shtml provides a

statement on ethics and links to databases and journals which colleagues might use to search for

discipline specific methods resources. Similarly the Royal Anthropological Institute

website http://www.therai.org.uk/ hosts ‘Anthropological Index Online’, an online bibliography of

anthropology-related journals held in the Centre for Anthropology at the British Museum, London. The

American Anthropological Association website http://www.aaanet.org/index.cfm hosts ‘AnthroNotes’ A

biannual, free, 20-page publication providing lead articles on current anthropological research,

teaching activities and strategies, and reviews of teaching resources. Most colleagues would also use

Google Scholar to search for resources and many are aware of the C-SAP website and the Intute

database as a source for methods teaching resources, especially those looking for resources that are

not anthropology specific. Colleagues are more likely to be aware of resources centrally developed

within their institution such as the methods@manchester resource.

Wouldyoutendtoapproachthesearchinganddiscoveryofrelevantonlinematerials(definedasOERorotherwise)fromastrictsubjectdisciplineapproach?

As I teach two explicitly cross-disciplinary methods courses it is necessary to use either generic

resources or resources from a number of different disciplines so I am often looking for non discipline

specific, or non anthropology methods resources and I find searching for online resources to be a

particularly useful way to do this because I can search by topic or keyword rather than having to wade

through unfamiliar journals or rely on textbooks. My sense, however, is that colleagues incorporating

methods teaching into anthropology course are more likely to look for specifically anthropology

resources or use examples from their own work. Students seeking methods resources for themselves

are also likely to look for discipline specific resources. I think part of the reason for this is the different

terminologies used so that students and teachers feel more comfortable with resources from their own

discipline.


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Haveyoutakenresearchmethodsresourcesfromonlinesourcesandincorporatedthemintoyourownmaterials?

When I first began teaching methods I relied more on textbook, but I am increasingly looking for ways

to incorporate online material. I am moving towards a more enquiry-based learning approach to

methods teaching and online resources are more engaging and accessible to students than

textbooks. However the advantage of developing resources in-house is greater control over what

students are using. Just pointing students to online resources is often insufficient as they need

contextual information in order to perceive the resources as relevant.

Doyouusemultimediaresourcesintheteachingofresearchmethods?

Increasingly so. Student engagement with methods teaching is notoriously low and in order to

improve this I think it is necessary to provide students with opportunities for a variety of ‘hands on’

experience of methods. Multimedia resources help to achieve this.

Doyouregularlyseekfeedbackfromstudentsaboutmaterialsusedtosupportyourteachingofresearchmethods?

Feedback is through formal student evaluation procedures at the end of the course and informal

questionnaires halfway through. I hope to incorporate a more reflective element into my courses

which would provide more ongoing feedback

Sociology and anthropology briefings (C-SAP collections project)

Education

Transcript of Sociology and anthropology briefings (C-SAP collections project)