In this course we introduce you to social research methods and strategies, and the supporting theories and philosophies. You can also develop areas of specialist interests and integrate these into your methodological training. On a number of the modules, you meet and discuss research issues with students from our other MRes courses and doctoral level researchers. This course is for you if you have a first degree in any discipline within social sciences and plan to: work in areas of social policy and sociology; carry out research in these and related subject areas such as health, crime and policing, leisure and education policy, town planning or environmental studies. If you are already working in the field, you and your current employer may see this course as a professional development opportunity, giving you the skills to further your career and current practice. You study a range of research methodologies throughout the course including: interview-based narrative and biographical research; case study and ethnography; media analysis; surveying and sampling; statistical analysis of large data sets. You critique current developments in research methodology then design and conduct your own pieces of original research. The MRes includes a research-based dissertation, which may become a pilot study towards a PhD. Several recent MRes students have gone onto doctoral level study, in fields such as education and inequality, and activism and sport.