What I Really Learnt about Social Research Methods

For those who have been following my twitter feed or Facebook status, you will have noticed that I have just passed the Post Graduate Diploma in Social Research Methods with a distinction. Thank you to all of you who have sent kind wishes. So I have another qualification to my name and a few more letters. But what does this say about me as a researcher and about my research?

Well, I do know more about research methods – or at least the questions I should be reflecting on when deciding the methods. A lot of the programme was less about saying how particular methods work and much more about reflecting on how to define the most appropriate methods. Each module made us ask a different question:

- What statistics are needed – and what do they really show?
- How important is the individual researcher in qualitative research?
- What are the philosophical and ethical underpinnings to the research?
- Is the research design possible, reasonable and related to the questions posed?
- What responsibilities does the researcher have to the discipline and the research community?

These are universal questions to do with research but require far more self-awareness than I had originally thought. When undertaking arts/humanities research (in France and the UK) the importance of the individual was hardly evident other than in our (academically worded) ‘opinions’ on the products of human endeavour. When looking at journalism research (as part of the MA), the aim was to remove the individual researcher from the reporting but being reflective of their practice is a fundamental skill.

Some of this has changed my opinions, other elements have reinforced what I feel. At times I have felt lost when trying to position myself in all of these debates. I am more of a numbers person but the programme (and my tutor) are more words and qualitative people. Both my research area and questions require a more nuanced way of looking at things. One of the causes of the current economic situation is an over-reliance on false-statistics and only metrics which are measurable. Life is more complicated than that and requires us to examine a variety of numeric and non-numeric data to understand it. That said, as I tried to argue in the philosophy essay, just because I am not using pure numeric data, doesn’t mean that my research should not have the same rigour as quantitative research.

So, ultimately, what did I learn from my Post Graduate Diploma in Research Methods? Perhaps that social research – by which I mean research looking at society or its members – is about reflecting about my own role and the impact of my research. This means making sure that the questions posed and researched are created and answered in a reflective, self-aware way. Research may not produce as concrete answers due to this but given the trouble that ‘absolute’ answers gets us into – perhaps that is no bad thing, either.