Course description
Content
The course consists of two modules which are common to all of the pathways, and which introduce you to the broad field of social science research. The modules are Research Practice and Research Methods.
These are taught by researchers drawn from across the university and provide an opportunity for contact with students from other social science disciplines at UWE. The content of the Built Environment routeway is underpinned by the research and consultancy undertaken by the Faculty's research centres.
Research Practice
This module consists of taught sessions and practical workshops, and provides an introduction to the methodological and epistemological base of social science research, its relationship to social theory and its socio-economic contexts. It explores the way in which the construction of knowledges (epistemologies) are both the products of methodological approaches to social research, and also the rich contexts within which research takes place. The module emphasises the need for reflexivity within the research process. It recognises that research depends not only on intellectual skills but also on the practical and professional skills essential to the proper and ethical conduct of research. These practical sessions include the development and design of research proposals, management of the research process, approaches to writing and dissemination.
Research Methods
This workshop-based module concentrates on the practical issues surrounding the process of social science research. It aims to sharpen awareness of the quality of evidence deployed in academic debates, to increase understanding of the issues involved in adopting qualitative and quantitative methods of research and to provide students with practical skills of data generation and analysis. Specific analytical workshops deal, for example, with large secondary datasets, multivariate statistical analysis, and computer-based qualitative analysis.
Health and Social Care pathway
Policy and Practice: Research in Context
This 30 credit (Level M) module includes exploration of current policy initiatives in, for example, the delivery of public services and investigates such areas as the roles and expectations, and relationships between the state and its internal structures and practices, including the changing local-central relationships, non-profit private and community or informal sectors; the role of service users and their organisations; processes of power and authority within public service organisations. In addition the module offers exploratory frameworks for example for understanding the experience of health, illness and use of services amongst individuals, groups and communities: from sick role to social model and sociology of the body.
The Practice of Health and Social Care Research
The specific content of this 30 credit (Level M) module will be determined by a learning contract negotiated between the student and an academic member of the Faculty's staff who will be an active researcher. The focus of the learning contract will reflect the learner's developmental needs in relation to the knowledge and skills needed in the practice of health and social care research. It is intended that the work undertaken in this module should lead the individual into the dissertation.
Dissertation
This 60 credit (Level M) module provides the opportunity to engage in an extended research project. Each student is allocated a research supervisor who in most cases will be the personal tutor who has supported the student throughout the programme. Research skills acquired in previous modules are practised and applied to individual research interests. Students are supported in conducting their research in a way consistent with both professional practice and research ethics, and to communicate their research findings in written form to both academic and non-academic audiences. Students wishing to apply for future PhD study may wish to use the dissertation to carry out a pilot study, or to explore a specific related area of interest.
