As part of its national strategic remit, NCRM undertakes periodic assessments of national provision and need in methodological research and training through consultation with stakeholders. In November of 2014 NCRM carried out a third consultation on the views of the UK social science research community about current and future methodological research needs. The report 'Consultation on Methodological Research Needs in UK Social Sciences' is now available.
The target population for this consultation was social science researchers and commissioners, both academic and non-academic, across sectors and at all levels of seniority and experience. The approach taken to eliciting submissions was to invite and encourage responses from potentially interested individuals and research organisations by sharing an open invitation to submit responses via an online form widely on relevant email lists and websites.
The consultation received 295 responses from researchers and research groups in universities, central government, the private sector, local government, and the voluntary or not-for-profit and across all career stages. The majority of responses were submitted by senior academics. Responses were made representing all major social science disciplines. The largest disciplinary areas were sociology (28%), statistics, methodology, and computing (22%), and psychology (17%). Half of respondents to the consultation were currently, or had in the past been, a Principal Investigator on an ESRC funded grant. Of the 295 suggestions received, 119 (40%) were self-categorised as primarily quantitative, 69 (23%) primarily qualitative, and 95 (32%) were defined as mixed/multi-methods. The remaining 12 (4%) were defined as falling under none of these three headings and categorised as ‘other’.
Analysis of the fixed and open responses to the consultation generated fourteen high-level thematic areas which represent the perceived priority areas of methodological research need identified by respondents to the consultation. These were:
- Digital devices and mobile technologies for data collection
- Participatory approaches
- Methods for assessing and enhancing survey data quality
- Narrative methods
- Analysis of longitudinal data
- Analysis of online digital and ‘Big Data’
- Analysis of administrative data and methods for data Linkage
- Innovation in ethnographic approaches
- Small Area Estimation
- Bio-social data analysis
- Experimental and observational methods for policy evaluation
- Bayesian Data Analysis
- Visual and arts-based approaches
- Multi-modal methods