Social Research MSc (PG)

Plymouth University

Taught by a team of nationally and internationally renowned researchers, the MSc Social Research combines the philosophical and methodological foundations for social research with advanced methods training. This combination will enable you to become part of a new generation of social researchers integrating creative and imaginative critical thinking with the qualitative and quantitative tools necessary for addressing current interdisciplinary global challenges.

The applied focus of the MSc will enable you to work in a variety of professional research settings in the public and private sectors as well as prepare those of you who wish to advance further and undertake PhD studies in social scientific, media and policy-oriented subjects. Some of the specialty topics and modes of research that you will experience include: interviewing; focus groups; social media analysis; discourse analysis; ethnography; oral histories; auto/biography and auto-ethnography; visual methods; systematic review; surveys and statistical modelling; as well as opportunities to conduct fieldwork and participate in work-based learning drawn from a network of regional and national organisations.

You will enjoy flexible learning through our blended approach that combines face-to-face workshops with online interactive delivery and have the opportunity of writing up research work carried out in an applied research setting. As a MSc Social Research student, you will benefit from and contribute to the University’s vibrant, supportive and forward-thinking community of postgraduate students within the School of Law, Criminology and Government as well as more widely at the University of Plymouth, nestled between rural Dartmoor to the north and the historic coastal Hoe and Barbican to the south.

Recognised by the Royal Society of Biology for the purpose of associate membership.