Enhancing Undergraduate Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences through Curriculum Change
Lead Research Organisation:
University of Southampton
Department Name: School of Social Sciences
Abstract
Quantitative methods are a vital tool for students in the social sciences to have in their armoury - it allows them to investigate the world around us using both small and large surveys. However, many students do not look favourably on these methods, with many feeling that part of the reason why they chose to study a social science was to avoid them. Yet statistics can help understand a topic and provide a good transferable skill that can be used in employment after university.
At the University of Southampton, quantitative methods are used within the Social Sciences, with all students taking a module in their first and second years on this topic. Even with this, there is resistance to the subject, with many complaining that it has no relevance to their subject area. Further complaints are that they find the topics either too difficult or too easy, depending on their background in quantitative subjects at school.
This project aims to revitalise the curriculum in Southampton with regards to the teaching of quantitative methods in the Social Sciences. This will be conducted through three linked elements. The first is to re-orientate the first year course that introduces the students to the study of quantitative methods. The content of the module will be kept, but more emphasis will be placed on the more advanced methods. A website containing examples and explanations of all aspects of the course, both basic and advanced, will be constructed, also containing the recorded lectures. This will also have test questions that students can take to assess understanding, before they move on to take a formal assessment. This will allow those who are struggling to revisit material a number of times, while those who already have the skills can pass through the explanations to the formal assessment directly. Due to this resource, more focus can be placed during the module on the harder elements.
The module described above is taken in the first year of the degree, and is followed by a second year course which extends the quantitative knowledge of the students. However, the students never actually use the methods taught 'in anger' - it is mostly presented theoretically. The next part of this project fills this gap. Two modules, in Criminology and Sociology, will have a separate quantitative computer workshop element designed, where students analyse a large social survey (either the British Crime Survey or the Labour Force Survey) to produce results which link directly back to the module topics. The methods used will have been covered in the quantitative courses, helping the students to understand them further, while the workshops will help the students see how quantitative methods can help in their subject.
The final element is to motivate the students and improve their employment prospects. Throughout the students' time at university employers will come to present employment seminars, highlighting the possibilities for using quantitative methods after university. This is designed to stress the benefits of a good grounding in quantitative methods for the students in their employment.
Overall the project hopes to remove some of the apathy that students feel towards quantitative methods and increase the numbers who use these methods in their final year projects and beyond. The resources produced, especially the web resource for first year, will be made available for students in other universities to use and hence the expertise generated in this project will have benefits outside of the University of Southampton.
At the University of Southampton, quantitative methods are used within the Social Sciences, with all students taking a module in their first and second years on this topic. Even with this, there is resistance to the subject, with many complaining that it has no relevance to their subject area. Further complaints are that they find the topics either too difficult or too easy, depending on their background in quantitative subjects at school.
This project aims to revitalise the curriculum in Southampton with regards to the teaching of quantitative methods in the Social Sciences. This will be conducted through three linked elements. The first is to re-orientate the first year course that introduces the students to the study of quantitative methods. The content of the module will be kept, but more emphasis will be placed on the more advanced methods. A website containing examples and explanations of all aspects of the course, both basic and advanced, will be constructed, also containing the recorded lectures. This will also have test questions that students can take to assess understanding, before they move on to take a formal assessment. This will allow those who are struggling to revisit material a number of times, while those who already have the skills can pass through the explanations to the formal assessment directly. Due to this resource, more focus can be placed during the module on the harder elements.
The module described above is taken in the first year of the degree, and is followed by a second year course which extends the quantitative knowledge of the students. However, the students never actually use the methods taught 'in anger' - it is mostly presented theoretically. The next part of this project fills this gap. Two modules, in Criminology and Sociology, will have a separate quantitative computer workshop element designed, where students analyse a large social survey (either the British Crime Survey or the Labour Force Survey) to produce results which link directly back to the module topics. The methods used will have been covered in the quantitative courses, helping the students to understand them further, while the workshops will help the students see how quantitative methods can help in their subject.
The final element is to motivate the students and improve their employment prospects. Throughout the students' time at university employers will come to present employment seminars, highlighting the possibilities for using quantitative methods after university. This is designed to stress the benefits of a good grounding in quantitative methods for the students in their employment.
Overall the project hopes to remove some of the apathy that students feel towards quantitative methods and increase the numbers who use these methods in their final year projects and beyond. The resources produced, especially the web resource for first year, will be made available for students in other universities to use and hence the expertise generated in this project will have benefits outside of the University of Southampton.
Planned Impact
There a many groups that will benefit from this research, either directly or indirectly.
Those who will benefit from this research directly will be:
- The students who experience the changes to the curriculum. Through improving the resources available to the students in the first year and ensuring that the techniques learnt in the methods courses are embedded in the substantive topics the students will obtain a deeper level of understanding of quantitative methods. The employability seminars and related elements will provide clear benefits for the future careers of the students - both to highlight what careers are available and what jobs the individuals do not want to enter into. Overall the students will have a greater range of research methods available to them, understand the links between their substantive topic and quantitative methods and appreciate the role that quantitative methods has in the wider world. This will occur initially at the University of Southampton and, if successful, be rolled out to other university establishments.
- The potential employers of graduates - both within the research community and outside of academia. The increased abilities of students to conduct quantitative research will aid in increasing the quality of UK research as well as helping UK businesses recruit high quality students who can cope with the quantitative projects immediately after employment. Students who progress onto Masters or PhD research will be able to progress further into quantitative methodologies due to the grounding given, further expanding the possibilities of the research community.
- Other teachers of quantitative methods in other universities will directly benefit through the knowledge generated by the project about the success of these initiatives. Through the dissemination activities the elements of the project that are evaluated to be of most benefit will be highlighted to the quantitative social science community, who will then be able to implement these elements if required, further building up the quantitative research base. This will be strengthened by the availability of the first year resource website, which could be used by other universities as a key resource in their own quantitative courses.
Indirectly, those that will benefit from this project include:
- Future undergraduate students at the University of Southampton and beyond - with an increased level of quantitative knowledge amongst undergraduate, some will go on to conduct further research and become instructors themselves who will be able to lead future undergraduates in these methodologies. This will have a compound effect on the quantitative research base within the UK.
- The UK economy will benefit - the lack of skilled quantitative employees is said to cost the UK economy in lost opportunities. This project will raise the standards of quantitative expertise in a group of students who will then contribute to the UK economy. Although this will not have a large effect on the dearth of quantitative skills on a national level, through rolling out these techniques elsewhere there is the possibility of multiplier effects to aid in the reduction of the skills gap.
Those who will benefit from this research directly will be:
- The students who experience the changes to the curriculum. Through improving the resources available to the students in the first year and ensuring that the techniques learnt in the methods courses are embedded in the substantive topics the students will obtain a deeper level of understanding of quantitative methods. The employability seminars and related elements will provide clear benefits for the future careers of the students - both to highlight what careers are available and what jobs the individuals do not want to enter into. Overall the students will have a greater range of research methods available to them, understand the links between their substantive topic and quantitative methods and appreciate the role that quantitative methods has in the wider world. This will occur initially at the University of Southampton and, if successful, be rolled out to other university establishments.
- The potential employers of graduates - both within the research community and outside of academia. The increased abilities of students to conduct quantitative research will aid in increasing the quality of UK research as well as helping UK businesses recruit high quality students who can cope with the quantitative projects immediately after employment. Students who progress onto Masters or PhD research will be able to progress further into quantitative methodologies due to the grounding given, further expanding the possibilities of the research community.
- Other teachers of quantitative methods in other universities will directly benefit through the knowledge generated by the project about the success of these initiatives. Through the dissemination activities the elements of the project that are evaluated to be of most benefit will be highlighted to the quantitative social science community, who will then be able to implement these elements if required, further building up the quantitative research base. This will be strengthened by the availability of the first year resource website, which could be used by other universities as a key resource in their own quantitative courses.
Indirectly, those that will benefit from this project include:
- Future undergraduate students at the University of Southampton and beyond - with an increased level of quantitative knowledge amongst undergraduate, some will go on to conduct further research and become instructors themselves who will be able to lead future undergraduates in these methodologies. This will have a compound effect on the quantitative research base within the UK.
- The UK economy will benefit - the lack of skilled quantitative employees is said to cost the UK economy in lost opportunities. This project will raise the standards of quantitative expertise in a group of students who will then contribute to the UK economy. Although this will not have a large effect on the dearth of quantitative skills on a national level, through rolling out these techniques elsewhere there is the possibility of multiplier effects to aid in the reduction of the skills gap.
Organisations
| Description | This project embedded quantitative research methods into undergraduate social science modules, using computer workshops to build experience and encourage confidence in using statistical methods and SPSS to answer practical questions in sociology and criminology. After the workshops, students in both modules were offered the opportunity to complete a module assessment using quantitative methods. In Winter 2013, computer workshops were offered to students enrolled in a sociology module. In Winter 2014, computer workshops were offered to students enrolled in both a sociology module and a criminology module. In the sociology courses in both 2013 and 2014, the full class participated in one computer workshop, focusing on the use of linear regression to analyse data from the Longitudinal Survey of Young People in England. A second, optional computer workshop was held for those students interested in the optional quantitative methods assessment. In Winter 2013, of the forty-two undergraduates enrolled in the sociology module, seven chose to complete the quantitative methods assignment. In Winter 2014, of the twenty-two undergraduates enrolled in the sociology module, four chose to complete the quantitative methods assignment. Upon completion of the sociology computer workshop, a survey was given to the students in an effort to assess their experience with quantitative methods and their plans to continue using such techniques in their research. In Winter 2014, four optional computer workshops were offered to students enrolled in an undergraduate criminology course. These workshops covered data access and download, descriptive statistics, linear regression, and logistic regression, respectively. Of the twenty-two undergraduates enrolled in this module, on average, fourteen students attended each workshop. At the end of the module, five students chose to complete the quantitative assessment. Before the start of the first criminology computer workshop, students were asked to complete a questionnaire about their experience with quantitative methods and their desire to continue using such methods in research. At the end of the four weeks of statistics workshops, the students were given a second survey to assess the impact of the workshops on their feelings about quantitative methods. This project found that computer workshops routed in the practical application of statistics, and the individual instruction provided at such workshops, helped to increase not only student confidence in the use of quantitative methods and SPSS, but also the perceived relevance of quantitative methods to the students' fields of study. A full fifty percent of the sociology students who attended the workshops felt that statistics were more relevant to their degree programme than they'd previously thought. Fifty percent of these same sociology students reported that they were more confident in the use of quantitative methods after participating in the workshops. Prior to participating in the workshops, every criminology student surveyed reported that they felt quantitative methods were relevant to their degree programme. However, more than half of these students were not confident in their quantitative methods abilities. Fifty percent of these students reported being more confident in statistical analyses after completing the computer workshops. |
| Exploitation Route | The materials that have been developed for this project are freely available and can be adapted and used in other academic contexts. It is hoped that these worksheets will therefore be used in different educational establishments. As a project to encourage the use of quantitative methods within academia the application to other contexts is difficult. However the aim of pushing the students to use data and methods that they have not used before is sound and could be taken elsewhere. It is important that ideas are introduced at an early stage - full understanding can be developed over a longer period. Impact will be felt when those students who have learnt about the techniques due to the curriculum change develop these further and use them during the rest of their academic careers and afterwards in industry. The skills that have been learnt - methodological, data manipulation, the ability to understand the world through quantitative investigation - will have a long term impact throughout their working lives. |
| Sectors | Education |
| Description | The development of the curriculum to embed quantitative topics within substantive modules has been successful, although by its very nature the impact has been felt more within the university than at an economic and societal level. Two modules have quantitative elements added to them, including computer practicals and information embedded throughout the modules. The impact of these changes have included a greater number of criminology and sociology students who a better versed in quantitative methods and are able to apply these methods to societal issues. Furthermore many students now understand how quantitative investigation can be a crucial method in exploring research questions. As a direct result of this project there has been over 40 students who have undertaken a quantitative dissertation, enhancing the quantitative capabilities of UK social science graduates, which was one of the aims of the project. A further impact of this project has been to highlight how embedding quantitative methods can be completed successfully within the University. Due to this further modules have been identified that can undergo the same transformation in order to gain a balance between methods and substantive knowledge throughout the degree programmes. These modules will form the basis for the BSc in Quantitative Social Science, scheduled to start in 2018, again enhancing the quantitative capacity of UK graduates. A challenge of this project is to measure accurately the impact it is making economically and societally. Enhanced employability talks to students about the benefits of quantitative methods knowledge are still ongoing and are ensuring that students are understanding the long term benefits of a good quantitative knowledge. |
| First Year Of Impact | 2016 |
| Sector | Education |
| Impact Types | Societal |