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POLIS: The Centre for Social Policy Research · ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences
This course will provide students with a detailed understanding of the main techniques for the collection of social science data that is relevant to policy, business and service delivery decisions. Students will be well placed to design and undertaken their own research and to commission others to undertake design, fieldwork and analysis. Content will cover quantitative surveys (questionnaire design, fieldwork techniques (CATI, online, f2f), cognitive testing) and qualitative methods (in-depth interviews, focus groups, observational techniques), sampling, weighting and assessing representativeness of data, total survey error, creation of data sets for analysis using administrative data, cross-sectional versus longitudinal data.
Class participation
Learning outcomes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Assignment 1 - Development and testing of a survey instrument, with justification (1,500 words)
Learning outcomes 1, 2
Assignment 2 - Development of an empirical strategy for qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods data (3,500 words)
Learning outcomes 1, 3, 4
Oral presentation - Discussion of an empirical strategy (10 minutes)
Learning outcomes 3, 4, 5
Class test (2 hours)
Learning outcomes 2, 5
130 hours of total student learning time made up from: a) 36 hours of contact over 12 weeks: made up of face-to-face lectures, tutorials and online activities; and b) 94 hours of independent student research, reading and writing.
To be provided on the course Wattle site. Preliminary Reading Selected chapters from: - Bryman, A. (2012). Social research methods. Oxford university press. - Groves, R. M., Fowler Jr, F. J., Couper, M. P., Lepkowski, J. M., Singer, E., & Tourangeau, R. (2011). Survey methodology. John Wiley & Sons.