The Research Methodologies label

Semester 1 

• Fundamentals of quantitative research in the social sciences - Credits : 2; Coeff.: 2; 18h
• Qualitative analysis of social science research data - Credits : 2; Coeff.: 2; 18h
• Research Seminar - Credits : 2 ; Coeff. : 2 ; 24h
• Introduction to the use of macro-social and political data - 6h 

TOTAL = Credits : 6 ; Coeff. : 6 ; Number of hours: 60

Semester 1 

• Research design - Credits : 2 ; Coeff. : 2 ; 24h
• Research Seminar - Credits : 2 ; Coeff. : 2 ; 24h

• One methods seminar (to be chosen from the following 2 options) - Credits : 2; Coeff.: 2; 18h

  - Quantitative methods - Major international surveys

  - Web and social network data analysis

Semester 2

• Personal work - Credits : 30; Coeff.: 10 
• Dissertation and defense - Credits : 30; Coeff.: 10 

TOTAL = Credits : 36 ; Coeff. : 16 ; Number of hours: 64

The main aim of the seminar is to help students undertake what is, for most of them, their first research project. The aim is to provide students with the epistemological and methodological tools they need to develop their own research approach. Teaching is provided by inviting students to read and reflect on the research process, and by providing regular, individual, personalized supervision. This follow-up enables students to construct the object of their future research in all its components (concepts, relevant literature, drafting of hypotheses, choice of "field" and methodological approach).

The seminar aims to introduce students to the practice of research by discussing work in progress and inviting researchers to present questions, data, methods and results of their research. The seminar also informs students about opportunities for research grants, in France and elsewhere, with guests from funding bodies. Finally, it provides an opportunity to debate with researchers from Sciences Po Grenoble - UGA on their general approach to the social sciences.

Whether the researcher uses qualitative or quantitative methods, knowledge and practice of major international surveys in political science and sociology is an essential resource. These surveys provide a better understanding of the state and evolution of attitudes and behaviors in fields as varied as inequality, citizenship, the environment, family, religion and work. They also enable us to reflect on the links between theory and empiricism, while inviting us to decentralize through comparisons in time and space. Following a review of the major models explaining the mechanisms by which individual opinions are formed, the module will present the main international social survey programs in concrete terms, along with their contributions and limitations.

The aim of this course is twofold. Firstly, to familiarize students with quantitative research in the social sciences. The main principles of quantitative surveys, data management and variable coding will be reviewed. The basics of uni, bi and multivariate analysis will also be presented, as well as statistical association tests and the key elements of linear and logistic modeling. Data sets from official statistics and international socio-political surveys will be used to illustrate the presentations.

The second objective is to support each student in carrying out a series of personalized analyses, around a theme corresponding to his or her research interests, while raising awareness of the issues involved in formatting and visualizing results. These practical applications will be carried out using the free R software and the associated Jamovi utility. The final output can take a variety of forms (4-page synthesis, mini-research article, popularization article, computer graphics, etc.) to best suit the expectations and skills of each participant.

The aim of the course is to help students better understand the digital shift in the social sciences over the last ten years: from the point of view of the new data sources made available to researchers by the digitization of increasing swathes of social activity (web, social networks, digitization of cultural heritage, quantified self...), the new methods used to collect them (crawling, use of APIs, scraping...) and those useful for analyzing them (structural analysis of networks and text mining in particular). The course also looks at the ethical, methodological and political issues involved in using web data in the social sciences.

The aim of this course is to raise awareness of the availability of data that can be used by social science researchers.

This interactive course will provide a practical introduction to researching and collecting data of various kinds (qualitative and quantitative) covering a wide range of themes (data from national public statistics, INED & INSEE, and international statistics (OECD, Eurostat), different types of political opinion surveys at national and international level, as well as databases providing access to media content (Europresse, INA)). Students will be made aware of the precautions to be taken when mobilizing existing data, their limitations and good practices in their use.