MA Social Research Methods

The MA Social Research Methods offers a one year training programme in social  research, knowledge and skills that are valuable for any career that involves collecting and interpreting information, including consultancy, journalism, or policy advice. It is also suitable as the methods training for PhD students.

This programme offers a core training in a wide range of methods, combined with a strong theoretical grounding in your choice of Social Policy, Sociology or Criminology. Advanced methods are available as electives drawn from several Departments so that you can tailor the programme to suit your interests.

What makes our programme unique is the diversity of methods. All postgraduate research methods programmes cover well established qualitative and quantitative research methods such as interviews and surveys. At Durham, our programme also covers newer methods such as agent-based modelling and qualitative comparative analysis (in the core Computational Social Science module). These methods help researchers to engage with the complexity of social problems by recognising the social and physical environment as key influences. Another module that offers something very different is the Participatory Action Research elective. This method has community organisations and people affected by an issue as collaborators in the research, working together on everything from research design to putting the findings into practice.