Introduction to systematic reviewing - a one-day workshop
12 March 2008
Queens University, Belfast

How can we translate evidence for policy and practice? This workshop will introduce the principles, methods and critiques of systematic reviews.

On completion participants will:

• have a basic understanding of the purposes of systematic research synthesis and its relevance to evidence-informed policy and practice
• will have discussed a variety of systematic review models
• have a general overview of the standard stages of a systematic review

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Real Life Methods Workshops: Analysing Real Life Mixed Methods Data
18 April 2008
Open University, Milton Keynes

This workshop will outline and explore different approaches to analysing data generated using ‘real life methods’, by which we mean methods that try to get close to people's lived experience and to resonate with ‘real life’. Such data are often, although not always, qualitative and unstructured in nature, and can take a range of forms including textual, auditory, observational and visual.

In the morning, the workshop will provide a series of ‘taster’ sessions of different approaches, all using data from our Living Resemblances project. There will be a chance to relate these different approaches to participants’ own research projects in small group sessions at the end of the morning, facilitated by members of the team.

In the afternoon, the workshop will focus first on ways of linking ‘numerical’ and ‘qualitative’ data, and then on ways of writing with or from different forms of data. The workshop will conclude with a plenary discussion session

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Research Methods Festival 2008
30 June - 3 July 2008
St Catherine's College, Oxford

The next ESRC Research Methods Festival will take place between Monday 30 June and Thursday 3 July 2008. It will once again be held at St Catherine's College, Oxford (the location of the 2004 and 2006 Festivals).

The organization has been handed from Angela Dale and the Research Methods Programme team to a team from the National Centre for Research Methods headed by Graham Crow. Once again it will aim to provide a forum for the discussion of the latest developments in research methods across the social sciences that is open to researchers from all disciplines, sectors, and career stages.

Booking will be open for speakers from January 2008 and for other participants from March 2008. Enquiries about the 2008 Festival should be addressed to Graham Crow at the NCRM.

Vital Signs: Researching Real Life
9-11 September 2008
University of Manchester

Vital Signs is an international and interdisciplinary conference organised by Real Life Methods. It will provide a major forum for the discussion of approaches to researching real lives in complex worlds.

We are using the concept of ‘real lives’ in an open way to stimulate debate about how research methodologies and methods in the social sciences and beyond can rise to the challenge of producing knowledge and understandings that are 'vital' and that resonate with complex and multi-dimensional lived realities.

Call for papers now open >>>>>>>>