David Giles

Using examples from online forums such as MumsNet and Instagram, I'll take participants through two alternative approaches to content analysis that will enable students to appreciate the strengths and limitations of qualitative and quantitative research methods. We will discuss the kinds of research questions that are suitable for use with each approach, the claims we can make based on the data and the analytic method and consider some basic techniques for reducing and coding the data.

We will explore the differences between content analysis and other qualitative and quantitative methods as well as considering ways of reporting and representing the results obtained from the different procedures. We will also explore the challenges of working with online data for answering psychological questions. The session is designed to leave you feeling confident and competent to conduct ethical and credible projects with your own students on topics that fit with your A level curricula, e.g. addiction, relationships, gender and stress.