National Centre for Research Methods
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Hard to teach: inclusive pedagogy in social science research methods education
Get PDFAmidst major new initiatives in research that are beginning to address the pedagogic dimension of building capacity in social science research methods, this paper makes the first move to apply the lens of inclusive pedagogy to research methods pedagogy. The paper explores the ways in which learning social science research methods is hard and may be anxiety-provoking, which has sometimes led to a deficit discourse in which learners are positioned as ill-prepared and fearful. Learners can then be blamed for being hard to teach when an inclusive pedagogical lens would support a more asset-based discourse. Nonetheless, the authors argue that without traditional deficit-based solutions of the remedial class, special needs label or special teacher within the methods learning environment, methods teachers have developed their own responses. These pedagogic responses, elicited from the authors’ research using methods of expert interviews, focus groups and video-stimulated dialogue, address challenges associated with the learner, the learning material and the teacher’s context. The paper differentiates between practical solution-focused strategies and more holistic approaches. The authors illustrate how methods teachers reach out to diverse learners and they conclude that data and standpoints are used in inclusive teaching to make connections and to support learning
Participatory Theatre and Walking as Social Research Methods - A Toolkit
Get PDFThe ‘Participatory Arts and Social Action in Research’ (2016-2017) (PASAR) project explores how participatory theatre and walking methods help to understand the ways in which migrant families, some of whom with limited English language knowledge, construct their sense of belonging and social participation as a citizenship practice. It is not within the scope of the toolkit to report back in detail on this research project, but rather we use the toolkit to provide examples and give a detailed idea of how these methods can be used for research.
The PASAR project originated out of the need for the U.K. social science community to gain a better understanding of how participatory action approaches can engage marginalised groups in research that co-produces knowledge.
Funded by the National Centre for Research Methods / Economic and Social Research Council, the PASAR project (http://fass.open.ac.uk/research/projects/pasar) explores how walking methods and participatory theatre creates a space for exploring, sharing and documenting processes of belonging and place-making that are crucial to understanding and enacting citizenship.
Participatory Action Research, based on the principles of inclusion, valuing all voices and action-oriented interventions (O’Neill and Webster 2005) allows for engaging marginalised groups in research as a citizenship practice.
We are, in the U.K., experiencing a widening of inequalities. This includes material inequalities, but also of inequalities of social recognition and access to decision making. It is in this context that participatory action research (PAR) is particularly needed to more effectively engage, recognise and include marginalised groups in the research process (Luff et al. 2015).
The benefits of a PAR approach include contesting existing ways of knowing, producing new knowledge with marginalised groups, and connecting to new publics, such as academics, policy makers and practitioners. PAR serves to raise awareness, challenge stereotypes and produce better knowledge and understanding and contribute to developing action, practice and policy for social justice (O’Neill and Webster 2005; O’Neill 2017; Erel at el 2017; Reynolds et al 2017; Kaptani 2018). Moreover, using participatory arts methods in research enables participants to express themselves through creative means, beyond language. This contributes to developing action, practice and policy for social justice
Do interviewers moderate the effect of monetary incentives on response rates in household interview surveys?
Get PDFAs citizens around the world become ever more reluctant to respond to survey interview requests, incentives are playing an increasingly important role in maintaining response rates. In face-to-face surveys, interviewers are the key conduit of information about the existence and level of any incentive offered and, therefore, potentially moderate the effectiveness with which an incentive translates non-productive addresses into interviews. Yet, while the existing literature on the effects of incentives on response rates is substantial, little is currently known about the role of interviewers in determining whether or not incentives are effective. In this paper, we apply multilevel models to three different face-to-face interview surveys from the UK, which vary in their sample designs and incentive levels, to assess whether some interviewers are more successful than others in using incentives to leverage cooperation. Additionally, we link the response outcome data to measures of interviewer characteristics to investigate whether interviewer variability on this dimension is systematically related to level of experience and demographic characteristics. Our results show significant and substantial variability between interviewers in the effectiveness of monetary incentives on the probability of cooperation across all three surveys. However, none of the interviewer characteristics considered are significantly associated with more or less successful interviewers
