methods@manchester: research methods in the social sciences


Workshops

These events focus on particular methods or resources and provide an opportunity for discussion and exchange.

June 2013

Manchester Methods Summer School

Monday 17 June - Friday 21 June, 2013

University of Manchester, Oxford Road Campus

NB: Fees apply

More details

The inaugural Manchester Methods Summer School will be held at the University of Manchester from June 17 -21, 2013.

The school will offer a range of specialised courses covering a variety of topics that are relevant to postgraduate research in humanities and social sciences. The selection on offer will include software training, qualitative and quantitative analysis, area studies, and research design. The course content will be based on approaches from across the various schools in the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester.

In its first year, the school will run for one week, and courses will be offered at a competitive rate. Participants will select a single course for the duration of the school. Each course will deliver four days of content to a five-day timetable (Monday afternoon to Friday lunch-time), building on successful methods@manchester and CCSR short-courses given throughout the year.

 

July 2013

Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA): an interdisciplinary introduction

Tuesday 2 July 2013, 2.00pm - 5.30pm

Cordingley Lecture Theatre, Ground Floor, Humanities Bridgeford Street, University of Manchester

More details

Registration via: ipa2013mcr@gmail.com

In this interdisciplinary seminar we will try to provide 'hands-on insights' into what IPA is and can do, offer methodological reflections on the basis of case studies, and point to tensions between, for instance, rigorous micro-analysis, the 'phenomenological attitude' and the critical analytical basis from which many social scientists operate. There will be three presentations and enough time for questions and discussion. Attendance is free, but places might be limited (please register).

Speakers

Michael Larkin, University of Birmingham

Kate Doran, University of Sheffield

Dieuwertje Dyi Huijg, University of Manchester

 

October 2013

Methods Fair 2013

Wednesday 9 October 2013, 1 - 6pm

University of Manchester

More information about this year's Methods Fair will be available soon, including details of the poster competition. Please put the date in your diary.

 

Upcoming

Missing data imputation. A simple, practical guide to multiple imputation using R

NB: This workshop has been postponed until further notice, date and room TBA.

Booking form

Datasets with missing values are ubiquitous in the social sciences. Although it is common to just ignore these missing data points and use 'techniques' such as list-wise deletion that eliminate entire observations, this is not a particularly good strategy for analysis as it results in the loss of valuable information at best and severe selection bias at worst. The simple removal of cases that include missing data is, however, not the only option available to analysts as individual data points may be replaced using a range of different techniques; for example, replacement by random values (within certain parameters), mean values, values predicted from regression models, or values imputed using a dedicated imputation procedure.

This session provides an introduction to data imputation and demonstrates multiple imputation using the R library Amelia, a simple to use and powerful package for multiple imputation. Although this session uses the R and Rcmdr packages, the content is designed be of interest to a general audience.

References
Missing Data: data replacement and imputation. The Journal of Modelling in management, Volume 7, issue 2, 2012.

Honaker, J., King, G. and Blackwell, M. (2012), Amelia II: A Program for Missing Data (version 1.6.1).

 


Details of past workshops can be found on the Past Events web page.

See also artsmethods@manchester events