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Crossing disciplinary boundaries

Crossing disciplinary boundaries. Angela Dale University of Manchester. Experiences from RMP. RMP brought together cross-disciplinary teams that developed methods to answer difficult research questions:

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Crossing disciplinary boundaries

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  1. Crossing disciplinary boundaries Angela Dale University of Manchester

  2. Experiences from RMP • RMP brought together cross-disciplinary teams that developed methods to answer difficult research questions: • What is the impact of locality on an individual’s likelihood of voting, being poor, being unemployed? • Are cohabiting couples more likely to marry if they plan to have a child? Or does being pregnant precipitate marriage?

  3. Methods that cross disciplines • Borrowing methods from other disciplines: • Optimal matching analysis, used to analyse sequences (eg job histories) has borrowed from DNA sequencing • Sharing methods across disciplines • Social Network Analysis, used in many disciplines, but also similar methods in transport studies, ecology …

  4. Inter-disciplinarity to answer big questions Evaluation of a policy pilot • Typically a policy intervention will have many different aspects and may need different types of evaluation • Not just ‘does it work?’ but also how, why, and what are the other (unintended) consequences? • educational maintenance payment to 16-18s who stayed in FT education • Large survey and also qualitative work • To establish causality one needs to build up evidence and usually need different approaches (Cox and Wermuth, 2001)

  5. Concepts and theory: debating across disciplines • Benefits and challenges from taking a topic and exploring how to research it with colleagues from different disciplines • Requires you to think a lot harder about your own disciplinary beliefs • May help to remove stereotypes about another discipline • May raise some unexpected and valuable issues • Will definitely broaden one’s thinking

  6. Conclusion • Good social science requires crossing boundaries • Extends horizons • Challenges preconceptions • May give more certainty of explanation • May lead to innovation • And new friends!

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