SP401      Half Unit
Understanding Policy Research

This information is for the 2025/26 session.

Course Convenor

Availability

This course aims to provide an understanding of issues associated with the research process, in the context of the MSc in International Social & Public Policy. The course includes an examination of philosophical issues underpinning research methods in social & public policy; the place of different research methods (qualitative and quantitative) in international social & public policy; the use of research; and the role of evidence in informing social & public policy.

This is not a ‘how to’ methods course. Instead, students will be equipped to become critical readers and users of research. Students will gain an understanding of the role of research in the policy process, and of the philosophical underpinnings of different approaches to ISPP research, both quantitative and qualitative; they will scrutinise which research designs are appropriate for different kinds of policy investigation; and learn to critique the validity of the implications for policy drawn by researchers, given the methods they have used.

Please note: MSc ISPP (Research) students MUST pass SP401 AS WELL AS the Dissertation (SP499) to graduate. This applies to students commencing the Programme from Academic year 2025/26 onwards.

15 hours of lectures and 15 hours of classes in the Autumn Term.

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

All teaching will be in accordance with the LSE Academic Code which specifies a minimum of two hours taught contact time per week when the course is running in the Autumn Term (AT) and/or Winter Term (WT). Social Policy courses are predominantly taught through a combination of in-person lectures and In person classes/seminars. Further information will be provided by the Course Convenor in the first lecture of the course.

Continuous assessment

Students will be expected to answer a set of broad questions every week, which will be similar to the exam questions and related to the lecture and seminar material covered in that week. 

• Alan Bryman (2012) Social Research Methods, 4th edition Oxford University Press;
• C Robson & K McCartan (2015) Real world research: A resource for social scientists and practitioner-researchers, 4th edition. Oxford University Press;
• Justin Parkhurst (2016) The Politics of Evidence: From Evidence-Based Policy to the Good Governance of Evidence, Routledge.

Exam (100%), duration: 180 Minutes in the Spring exam period

The course is intended to inform the student’s dissertation in terms of underpinning issues, concepts, methodological choices and the role of research in social and public policy implementation. Assessment is a 3-hour in-person ST exam comprising questions requiring relatively shorter answers, which aims to test the skills outlined above and reflects the breadth of issues covered throughout the course (100%).