MSc Social Policy (Research Methods)

The most important skill students should develop in graduate education is how to design research projects that withstand critical scrutiny. This module is designed to develop this skill at MSc level.

The class introduces students to the theoretical and practical issues they will need to address when designing and conducting research in social and public policy and related areas. During this module students will critically evaluate empirical research, develop an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of different research designs, and build a foundation for their research projects and master theses.

This course introduces students to the use of quantitative methods in social research. Like qualitative methods, quantitative methods are tools in the social scientist’s toolkit. Learning when and how to use them will make you a better social researcher, open new scope for Masters or doctoral dissertation work, and improve your job prospects.

This class introduces students to some of the most important concepts which have shaped our understanding of social policy as an academic discipline, including such concepts as need, citizenship and entitlement, equality and justice, and happiness and wellbeing.

It also looks at issues surrounding the governance and implementation of social policy and the variety of ways in which our needs for welfare provision can be addressed. We also look at some of the main theoretical perspectives which have informed the development of social policy, such as social democracy, liberalism, conservatism, feminism, environmentalism, Marxism and the New Right.

The final part of the class looks at some of the main challenges facing social policy-makers today.

This class investigates theories of the policy-making process. After taking this class you'll be able to describe, and perhaps even influence, real-world policy-making.

Explore the crucial ways in which social and health policies interact and the consequences that decisions about social policies have for health outcomes. This module uses intersectionality as a core social science concept.

The module uses the UK, which has particularly high health inequalities and a wide range of useful data sources, as a core case study. We focus on three exemplar inequalities:

• health
• place
• criminal justice

However, for each exemplar inequality, we'll also examine international examples and, where possible, adapt these examples to the geopolitical interests and experiences of those taking the module.

The aim of this module is for you to develop a critical understanding of the use, impacts and harms of imprisonment. It's designed to equip you with both the knowledge and the theoretical tools to engage in debates surrounding contemporary imprisonment. You'll learn about the diversity, complexity and international breadth of scholarship in the area of punishment and society scholarship. In particular, the module will draw from social theory, political science, critical gender studies, human rights and anthropological and narrative studies.

This module focuses on understanding how policy can be made in 'co-produced' ways that engage with external stakeholders and unequal publics. This will include some contextual consideration of traditional methods of influencing policymaking, such as consultation, advocacy and lobbying, before progressing to examine more innovative and participatory ways in which stakeholders and members of the public, or particular communities, can be brought into decision-making in health policy and practice.

This class provides an overview of the ever-expanding field of qualitative methods in social science. This includes the examination of a wide variety of approaches, including case studies, small-N comparisons, ethnographies, historical research, and discourse analysis.

It also includes the study of a range of data collection and data analysis techniques such as observation, document analysis, elite interviews, and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA).

The module explores welfare systems and policy developments across a range of countries, with an OECD focus. Gain a thorough comparative understanding of how and why different welfare systems have developed as they have and the consequences of this for key health and social outcomes. You will utilise comparative methods of inquiry to critically evaluate the performance of different welfare systems. This module is likely to appeal to students interested in learning from international comparisons.

The aim of this class is to provide students with the opportunity to undertake an individual research project in one of our specialist research areas. Our staff have a wide range of interests, including such topics as:

• the history of social policy in the UK
• the mixed economy of welfare
• long-term changes in health, welfare and the standard of living
• citizenship & welfare
• race, ethnicity & social policy
• welfare & migration
• child poverty
• technology and welfare

Students will have the opportunity to review the literature in their chosen area, formulate their own research questions, develop their presentational skills and prepare their own projects.

This class will provide a particularly useful foundation for those students who wish to undertake a dissertation or go on to more advanced research.

This class revolves around the different aims for conducting comparative policy analysis such as explaining the variation of policy output and outcome across different institutional, economic, social and cultural settings, generalising a given theory of policy process in different geographical contexts and by taking time into consideration, as well as capturing the interdependence of countries. Units of analysis include countries, states/regions, local governments, and international organisations. Students will be introduced to concepts, research design and methods.

International organisations (IOs), like the World Trade Organisation, the United Nations, NATO, or the European Union have become common place in how governments govern their international relations. IOs are often seen as the solution to international cooperation problems, be it in areas of conflict, trade, human rights, or the global environment. Whether IOs can live up to this promise and can indeed change national governments' behaviour to solve global cooperation problems will be the central question this course addresses. Specifically, we will examine why IOs differ in their rules and decision-making processes and how this variation translates into different policy outputs and outcomes. The first part of the class builds the theoretical and analytical foundation to address these key questions in a principled manner across different policy domains, while the second part applies these insights to specific IOs. We will discuss prominent IOs, such as the World Bank, IMF, or NATO together with newer forms of transnational governance as well as international courts.

This module considers pressing health policy challenges comparatively across a range of international health systems. Examples of key topics include debates around healthcare funding, and the tensions between calls to address acute healthcare concerns and pressure to do more to address commercial and social determinants of health. The module also considers how we can compare the performance of distinctive health systems, noting the limitations of some commonly used indicators.

This class is designed to provide students with relevant knowledge, understanding and skills to critically engage with theory, research and contemporary debates about penal responses to people who offend. This module seeks to encourage students to engage with critical debates in contemporary policies and practices and with more radical approaches to penal change.

This module introduces students to the subject of criminology, tracing some of the major themes and topical issues that arise within this discipline. It begins with an overview of the development of criminology and provides an in-depth critique of criminological theory. It follows with three sub-topics, allowing for more detailed focus on three contemporary issues over the course of one semester. These subtopics are:

• crime, criminal justice & the media
• punishment & the State
• gender, sexuality & justice

This course introduces students to the literature and research agendas related to conflict and cooperation in international relations studies. We will cover a wide array of approaches that relate to interstate and intrastate conflict, cooperation and other contemporary security topics such as peacekeeping operations, terrorism, and human rights violations.

By the end of this course, students should be able to answer questions such as why international (intrastate) conflicts occur, when cooperation between countries emerges, whether peacekeeping missions are effective in reducing violence against civilians and promoting post-conflict peace, how terrorist groups emerge, why some governments torture their citizens and how international institutions might prevent human rights violation.

While we will not have time to comprehensively cover all the important relevant work, we will sample a spectrum of the work from foundational studies to state-of-the-art approaches.

In order to complete the MSc, all students will be required to undertake a 15,000-word dissertation on a topic of their choice.

The dissertation will be supervised by a member of staff but is intended to provide students with the opportunity to develop their skills as independent researchers.