NCRM What is? series

Martyn Hammersley gives an introduction to analytic induction as a social scientific method. Analytic induction claims to specify what is required if we are to archieve reliably sound conclusions about the causes of some type of outcome, and it is aimed at identifying the necessary and jointly sufficient conditions that must be met for the type of outcome concerned to occur.

Jane Elliott gives an introduction to cohort studies. She talks about the content and design of the British Birth Cohort studies at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies, the distinction between a cohort study and a panel study, and examples of research using cohort data.

Graham Crow gives an introduction to community studies. He talks about the tradition of community studies, definitions, methodological issues and examples of such studies.

Stephanie Taylor gives an introduction to discourse analysis. She talks about the definitions of discourse analysis, what kind of data is used and for what purpose.

Bansi Malde gives an introduction to electronic data collection methods. She talks specifically about collecting data electronically in developing countries, which is driven by growing demand for evaluation of interventions and policies, lack of suitable existing data and the desire to collect high quality data at low cost.

Fiona Steele gives an introduction of event history analysis (EHA). She talks about the applications of EHA, data and methods of analysis. EHA is also known as survival analysis, duration analysis and hazard modelling.

Mark Birkin gives an introduction to geosimulation, which aims to improve our understanding of how spatial social systems such as cities work and what their most important features are.

Kelvyn Jones gives an introduction to multilevel modelling. He talks about what sort of problems can be tackled by multilevel models; modelling differences, progress and change; and he also gives some examples.

Carey Jewitt and Jeff Bezemer give an introduction to multimodality, which is an inter-disciplinary approach that understands communication and representation to be more than about language.

Molly Andrews gives an introduction to narrative interviewing. Stories are an important means through which we communicate with one another and with ourselves; one way of eliciting stories is through interviews.

Tristram Hooley gives an introduction to online research. He talks about the breadth of online research across disciplines, including online interviews, focus groups, surveys, ethnographies and experiments.

Barbara Sianesi gives an introduction to propensity score matching, which is a method/device to make two groups look the same.

Rose Wiles gives an introduction to qualitative research ethics. She talks about what is meant by ethics and outlines ethical frameworks for helping the consideration of ethical dilemmas.

Mike Brewer gives an introduction to regression discontinuity approach, which is a way of undertaking causal inference, usually of some policy intervention.

John Scott gives an introduction to social network analysis, which is a general structural and relational method looking at social interaction at micro or macro level.