Research Methods and Professional Skills (012L2)

15 credits, Level 7 (Masters)

Spring teaching

On this module, you’ll explore social science research methods and develop skills for your future career.

You’ll gain knowledge and guidance on:

• effective research design
• writing a literature review
• data analysis
• how to write a dissertation and proposal.

The module runs as a series of half-day workshops, including an ethics workshop if your project needs ethical approval. You’ll also choose two extra workshops to match your specific research needs. Your choice will depend on your discipline, previous experience, future employment plans and personal interests.

You’ll cover:

• qualitative methods
• surveys
• discourse analysis
• stakeholder analysis
• climate data analysis
• audio-visual methods.

Contact hours and workload

This module is approximately 150 hours of work. This breaks down into about 12 hours of contact time and about 138 hours of independent study. The University may make minor variations to the contact hours for operational reasons, including timetabling requirements.

We regularly review our modules to incorporate student feedback, staff expertise, as well as the latest research and teaching methodology. We’re planning to run these modules in the academic year 2025/26. However, there may be changes to these modules in response to feedback, staff availability, student demand or updates to our curriculum.

We’ll make sure to let you know of any material changes to modules at the earliest opportunity.