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Living Research One: Why are we doing this? Public sociology and public life This short section is a conversation between an activist involved in the project 1 and a member of the research team. Each reflects candidly on the value of the MIC project to civil society and on social research (and socially engaged research) in general as a ‘public good
This chapter explores opportunities for publics to participate in the research process (as researchers rather than as the subjects of research or in the governance of research). The chapter examines the growing field of what is sometimes described as citizen science, but also called crowd-sourced research, amongst other terms. Because the terms citizen science and DIY science have become current, they are used here, but the approaches should not be seen as exclusive to the natural sciences (see, for example, Dufau et al. , 2011 and Dunn and Hedges
Internationally, public engagement and communication has become an important aspect of research and policymaking, allowing research establishments, and their researchers, to explore public perspectives on their work as well as providing access to research findings to wider publics. Alongside this, a considerable research communication and public engagement community has emerged, who are interested not only in the design, techniques and methods for research communication and engagement but also approaches to communicating creatively and evaluating the
Living Research Three: Migration research and the media One of the motivations for our project was to use research to intervene in public debates on immigration by providing alternative perspectives on what is often a polarised and entrenched debate where the perspectives of migrants and racially minoritised communities barely feature (Conlan, 2014 ; Migrant Voice, 2014 ) and where, as we found
Living Research Six: Collaborations Our research on Operation Vaken was rooted in several different forms of engagement, with the hope not only of intervening in social injustices (see Passy, 2001 ) but also of producing knowledge differently; a less elitist and collaborative knowledge. The root of the word collaboration, from the Latin collaborare – to work together – carries ambivalence. To collaborate can also suggest betrayal, even
Living Research Five: Public anger in research (and social media) At our end-of-project conference, one participant said that the event had made her think that ‘when outraged by something’ she would try to research it; ‘combine activism with academia and your sociological imagination’. Strikingly, this comment captured much of what brought us together to develop the research discussed in this book. In this section, we
As mentioned in the introduction, the empirical analyses presented in this book are based on the material gathered in my research conducted in 2014–2015 within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellowship SAST. In total, 80 individual in-depth interviews and questionnaires were undertaken with 40 post-accession Polish migrants in the UK and 40 post-2004 Ukrainian migrants to Poland legally residing there (see the Appendix, Tables 1 and 2 ). The participants needed to meet a selection criterion of not having a local spouse or life partner, to
Principles of Ethical Research Owen Price and Lauren Walker Chapter overview By definition, research seeks to explore something that is unknown. This uncertainty means there is always the possibility of harm arising from research. There are many examples in both near and distant history of serious harm to participants as a consequence of research, including permanent disability and death. This is why it is of great importance that research projects are informed by sound ethics, properly planned, approved by an independent ethical board and rigorously monitored
3 Condoms and sex research What are the consequences of getting adolescents to speak about the condom and their sexual experiences in the public arena? What impact has sex research had in producing knowledge of adolescent sexuality? In answering these questions this chapter seeks to provide a history of sex research on the condom. The object of my analysis is government-funded sex research on adolescence. Focusing on HIV/AIDS research conducted within university departments throughout the 1990s, I address the role social scientists have played in constructing
• 5 • Formulating research questions This chapter will suggest how to identify and formulate achievable research questions. It will offer advice on how to identify an approach which both engages with your own interests and acknowledges and draws on work already undertaken in the field. The research question you design is closely related to the kind of research you will be undertaking and the approach that you will follow. There are a number of ways in which you can begin to formulate your research question. One of the best ways to begin is to consider what