SO102      One Unit
Data in Society: Researching Social Life

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This course explores how numbers are deployed in social settings, and how they are used in sociology to construct and challenge our understanding of the social world. The first part of the course introduces students to the importance of quantification in modern societies, familiarizes them with the main instruments for the collection of quantitative data, and provides them with an overview of the methods used to treat such data in contemporary sociology. We cover both descriptive and explanatory methods, and we reflect on the vision of the social world implicitly associated with each of the methods we encounter. In the second part students start learning basic descriptive skills of quantitative data analysis, notably how to download large data sets, how to manipulate variables and carry out descriptive statistical analyses with statistical software Stata, and how to present statistical information in tabular and graphical form. The quantitative analysis is done in the context of a sociological observation or hypothesis, and emphasis is given on the interpretation of the results and their comparison to the findings of key readings.

This course has a reading week in Week 6 of Autumn and Winter Term.

This course is usually delivered through a combination of lectures, online materials and classes. There will be two hours or more of teaching each week across AT and WT.

Essay (2000 words)

Project (1500 words)

The first formative, a 2000-word essay, is due in AT. The project (1500-word report that includes a review of key readings, data processing and descriptive statistical analysis using Stata, interpretation of results, and conclusion), is due in WT.

Desrosières, Alain. 2002. The Politics of Large Numbers: A History of Statistical Reasoning. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Savage, Mike, and Roger Burrows. 2007. “The Coming Crisis of Empirical Sociology”, Sociology 41: 885-898.
Rowntree, D. (2018). Statistics without tears: an introduction for non-mathematicians (Updated edition.). Penguin Books.
Field, A. P. (Ed.). (2018). Introduction. In Discovering statistics using IBM SPSS statistics (Fifth edition). Sage Publications. Wheelan, C. (2013). Chapter 11: Regression Analysis- The miracle elixir. In Naked Statistics: Stripping the dread from the data. (p. 29).
Jackson, M., & Cox, D. R. (2013). The Principles of Experimental Design and Their Application in Sociology. Annual Review of Sociology, 39(1), 27–49. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-soc-071811-145443
Osborne, T., & Rose, N. (1999). Do the social sciences create phenomena?: The example of public opinion research. The British Journal of Sociology, 50(3), 367–396. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-4446.1999.00367.x
Catherine Marsh and Jane Elliot (2008): Exploring Data (2nd ed.)

Project (50%, 3000 words) in May

Data analysis (50%) in January

The data analysis assignment takes the form of a take home exam in which students engage with data analysis and the understanding of how methods are used in relation to social analysis.  The take home exam occurs in the January exam period and is to be completed within a specified five-day time period.

Attendance at all classes and submission of all set coursework is required.