The university and college teachers among you may be interested in the following recent developments:
Malcolm first cut his teeth on quantitative methods as one of my undergraduate students (using SPSS on a compulsory module, “Data Management and Analysis”) on the Social Research pathway of the first (and only ever) undergraduate degree in social research in the UK (at the then Polytechnic of North London). The course was originally designed and headed up by me in 1976, but was closed down after I retired in 1992: first, because there was no-one to teach it; second, because, at four years including a one-year professional placement (internship) and with class sizes held at 16 for lab sessions rather than 120 for some lectures, it was too expensive to run; third, and not least, because power was briefly seized by the so-called “qualitative” camp.
A free-to-join mailing [hidden email] (a bit like the SPSS list-server) is run by Prof John McInnes, Edinburgh.
An announcement from the Nuffield Foundation is also relevant: http://www.nuffieldfoundation.org/quantitative-methods-undergraduate-social-scientists
Together with the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), we are launching a major new funding programme aimed at promoting a step-change in quantitative methods training for UK social science undergraduates.
I wonder if ESRC archives still have the letter Mark Abrams and I sent them in 1972 or thereabouts identifying the real cause of poor quality (academic) survey work, not as poorly trained academic staff and post-grad students (with a few honourable exceptions, they were mostly pretty appalling) but as the pitiful content of undergraduate research methods courses, especially in sociology, being more interested in Althusser, Cicourel etc. than acquiring technical skills and learning how to count.
Looks like we’ve now come full circle!
John F Hall (Mr)
Email: [hidden email]
Website: www.surveyresearch.weebly.com
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