Teaching resources on Digital Methods

The digital landscape is constantly changing. To help you and your students keep up with the field, and to make preparation for your teaching as quick and easy as possible, below you’ll find a range of just some of the free resources available in our textbooks and on their accompanying websites

Selection of online resources

Please note: you’ll need to have an approved instructor account to access some of these materials

Suggested syllabus for teaching online methods in the context of qualitative research methodologies (from Salmons’ Doing Qualitative Research Online)

PowerPoint teaching slides, covering everything from “Why Digital Tools?” to Writing and Representing Findings, from each chapter of Paulus et al’s Digital Tools for Qualitative Research (last link on each chapter page)

Podcasts on online methods in the context of qualitative research methodologies (from Salmons’ Doing Qualitative Research Online)

A checklist and project on digital social research (from Gilbert & Stoneman’s Researching Social Life, Fourth Edition)

Suggested web resources for digital methods when researching with visual materials (from Rose’s Visual Methodologies, Fourth Edition)

Exercises for Doing Surveys Online

These exercise questions, from Toepoel’s Doing Surveys Online, can be used to promote discussion and get your students thinking about possible strategies to make the best use of online surveys

Developing the survey

Name different types of questions and give examples.
What type of answer categories can be distinguished? When do you use which type?
Discuss five possible response effects.
What order should questions take?
What is the difference between bottom-up and top-down question writing?
To what standards should a question be written?
How can you pretest your questionnaire?

Selecting Survey Software

Discuss what differences you can expect when comparing low-budget, mid-budget and high-budget software.
What do you need to take into account if you use a mixed-mode survey?
What do you need to take into account if you want to use a panel study (multiple waves)?
What do you need to take into account if you have respondents with disabilities?
Discuss the importance of: customizability, control, paradata.
What is the problem with ad-supported software or software where links to own paid products are displayed?

Processing & Cleaning the Data

Discuss the steps you need to take when cleaning data.
Why is it important to identify outliers? Discuss ways to identify them and treat them.
What is a bivariate outlier?
Discuss different ways to treat incomplete cases (drop outs).
Name three different forms of paradata that can be useful to add to your dataset and discuss why.

Reporting Survey Results

What are the essential parts of a written report?
Discuss how you would make a PowerPoint presentation interesting, and what the difference is between a presentation for an audience of primary school children and one for experts in the field.
Give arguments for what you think is the most important thing to take into account when making a poster.
In what case is it appropriate to use a histogram for describing ordinal data?
What types of graphs are available for continuous data?