ESRC Society Today

For immediate release

In social research, the answer that you get depends not only on the question that you ask but how you ask it.  The complexity of the social world poses extraordinary challenges for social sciences who want to understand the process and impacts of social change.

More than 1,000 social scientists will gather at the second Research Methods Festival to grapple with some of the deeper problems of social research methodology.  The four-day event, sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC), is being held in Oxford from 17-20 July.  It brings together highly experienced researchers - not just from academia - with PhD students and early career researchers, across a wide range of disciplines.  

The ethos of the Research Methods Festival is one of opening up issues to debate and discussion, highlighting cutting edge developments and breaking down the traditional disciplinary divisions within the social sciences.

The Festival also represents a major investment by the ESRC in supporting and promoting methodological innovation and advancement.  The organiser of the event, Professor Angela Dale said: "The Festival has a vital role to play in ensuring that the UK retains its international reputation with respect to the quality of its social research and that, particularly in the area of quantitative methods and statistics, new generations of researchers develop their skills to the highest level."

A total of 60 half-day sessions, comprising presentations, debates and discussion, will tackle such questions as: 

• How can we disentangle the role of genetics versus family process when understanding children's social and emotional development?
• How can we identify the role of locality in disadvantaging residents when people make choices over where they live?
• How can new developments in e-science provide urban planners with useful scenarios of different environmental impacts?
• What are the most appropriate methods for understanding ethnic differences? 

For further information:

• See the festival website at www.ccsr.ac.uk/methods/festival; or
• Contact Professor Angela Dale, University of Manchester on 0161 275 4876 or 07971509963 or e-mail: methods@manchester.ac.uk
• Or Alexandra Saxon or Annika Howard at ESRC on 01793 413032/413119  

Notes for editors

1. The ESRC is the UK's largest funding agency for research and postgraduate training relating to social and economic issues. It provides independent, high quality, relevant research to business, the public sector and Government. The ESRC total expenditure in 2005/6 is £135million.  At any one time the ESRC supports over 4,000 researchers and postgraduate students in academic institutions and research policy institutes. More at http://www.esrcsocietytoday.ac.uk/.