Past Events
The below is just some of the events that have been run at Methods North West and our associated teams at our partner Universities.
You can find new events on our upcoming events page.
2020/2021
- Working with Twitter
- Methods Session on Critical Thinking
- Methods Session on Data Collection
- A toolkit for exploring musical memories and emotions
- Data Pre-processing
- 4 C’s of Passing: Creating a New Framework to Fit your Research
- Observational sketching as method
- Online Interviews & social media approaches for recruitment
- Making autoethnography
- Discourse Analysis: how and why should I do it?
- Introducing Corpus Approaches to Social Science
- 4th Methods X Conference
- NWSSDTP Workshop on conducting research within ethical boundaries
- Methods session on positionality in qualitative research
- Using Graphic Elicitation Data Gathering Methods with Ex-Offenders
- Flexible Re-design of Cognitive Psychology Research in Response to COVID-19
- Ethnography-informed case study: Practical considerations and tips
- Using archives and historical research in government research: pitfalls and prospects
- Research using social media: Facebook, mumsnet and blogs
- Using the FOI Act to Gather Data – Lessons from Socio-legal research
- Process Tracing Techniques: Innovations to systemetise qualitative research
- Using the FOI Act to Gather Data – Lessons from Socio-legal research
- MethodsX 2019/20 Stream Meeting – Quantitative Methods
- MethodsX 2019/20 Stream Meeting – New Forms of Data/Digital Methods
- MethodsX 2019/20 Stream Meeting – Ethnography
- MethodsX Conference 2020: Hold the Date!
- Methods Fair 2020: The Changing Face of Research
- MethodsX Twitter Take Over 2020
Working with Twitter
Twitter has recently been a fantastic source of data. Never before has an individually been able to so trivially access historic opinions and watch them develop over time. In this talk Joseph Allen (University of Manchester) will cover scraping historic and live data from Twitter and running real-time sentiment analysis. Programming will be using Python.
Register here
Methods Session on Critical Thinking
Do you know what ‘critical thinking’ really is and is not? Can you define it? Are you able to explain its importance within research and beyond? Critical thinking has been deemed the most important 21st century skill, sought-after not only in academia but also within the workplace and society. However, studies show that many students only marginally improve their critical thinking skills, complex reasoning and academic writing during their journeys through higher education. Moreover, employers often note that their workforce struggle to perform tasks that require reasoning, problem-solving and creativity, i.e., skills that are rooted in critical thinking.
This session will help you understand better what critical thinking is, its importance in research and personal life, and distinguish what tools are needed to develop the basic skill set and become a better critical thinker. You will also learn about the basis of argumentation. By the end of this session, you will be better able to:
- Explain what critical thinking is and it is not
- Describe its components
- Understand the importance of argumentation
- Apply the basic argument structure to your reading & writing
Register here
Methods Session on Data Collection
In this event, Julie Longson (Keele University) will give a talk on: ” Reflection on data collection via telephone/videoconferencing with older people”
Register here
A toolkit for exploring musical memories and emotions
In this session, Alexandra Lamont at Keele University will discuss “DIY Desert Island Discs: a toolkit for exploring musical memories and emotions”
Register here
Data Pre-processing
Data pre-processing is a data mining technique that involves transforming raw data into an understandable format. With the increasing amount of data available for research and analysis, real-world data is often incomplete or inconsistent and thus not ready to be used directly. Multiple spreadsheets, missing values, typos, numbers shown as text, unnecessary columns. Data without adequate preparation will deliver poor or misleading findings. This is exemplified by the pithy data scientist phrase ‘GIGO’, which stands for ‘Garbage In Garbage Out’. In this talk, Anran Zhao (University of Manchester) introduces data pre-processing and its workflow, including steps on data integration, data cleaning, data reduction and data transformation, as well as some of the issues people should be aware of in this process.
Register here
4 C’s of Passing: Creating a New Framework to Fit your Research
This session, Billie-Gina Thomason (University of Liverpool) will begin by sharing with you the case of a gender passing individual named William Seymour. William was a biological woman who lived and presented as a man in all aspects of their life. It will then explore the conceptual framework of the 4 C’s of Passing that I created to explore the life of William and other gender passing individuals like him. It will conclude by offering a working example of using this framework and consider how we can be creative in our research and use what is around us to develop new framework’s and alter older ones to fit our own research.
Register here
Observational sketching as method
In this session, Sue Heath at the University of Manchester will present on “Observational sketching as method”
Register here
Online Interviews & social media approaches for recruitment
In this session, Noureen Shivji (Keele University) will present on “Online Interviews / Delphi / social media approaches for recruitment”
Register here
Making autoethnography
In this session, Clare Holdsworth (Keele University) will present on “Making autoethnography”
Register here
Discourse Analysis: how and why should I do it?
In this session, Alexandra Krendel (Lancaster University) will showcase several methods currently used to analyse discourse. Discourse is defined as language above the level of the sentence. A discourse analysis approach is a qualitative one, which takes into account both the specific linguistic features of interest in a given text, as well as the context in which texts are created. He also discusses discourse analysis which is undertaken from a ‘critical’ perspective, and thus focuses on how ideology and power relations are expressed through language. He then demonstrates that discourse analysis methods can be applied in a wide range of contexts which may be of interest to social science scholars. These include conversations, political discourse, the language of the news, healthcare, business, as well as online contexts.
Register here
Introducing Corpus Approaches to Social Science
In this session, Luke Collins (Lancaster University) will introduce the basic principles of corpus linguistics: a set of computational approaches to studying language in large datasets. Corpus linguistics supports researchers in uncovering patterns in language on the basis of quantitative measures and is informed by linguistic theory. This helps us to gather evidence on how language is used according to various contexts and in pursuit of different communicative goals, making it a highly flexible tool for research across the social sciences. This seminar will cover the fundamental concepts and introduce the tools used in corpus linguistics, demonstrating how attendees can benefit from existing resources as well as how they might go about using corpus linguistics to analyse their own data.
Register here
4th Methods X Conference
We are thrilled to invite you for the 4th MethodsX conference. Consider submitting proposals and abstracts to links@keele.ac.uk by 13th JUNE 2021. Check out the registration link for submission guidelines, programme details and deadlines.
Theme: Helping social science researchers to understand information on social media
NB: Please note the submissions should not be limited to social media research only and we encourage submissions on other topics.
This year’s conference will focus on methodological approaches to understanding social media information. The relevance of social media research has naturally become more pronounced during the Covid 19 pandemic but equally, it has always played an important role in social science research as representations of a topic in social media shape what we think or do about that topic and how we engage with it. Our key note speakers will therefore explore qualitative and quantitative approaches to researching social media information, focusing on how research topics are problematised in social media and how to critically engage with social media problematisations of these topics.
Submission deadlines: 13th June 2021
Conference Date: 18th June 2021
Register here
NWSSDTP Workshop on conducting research within ethical boundaries
In this NWSSDTP workshop led by Dr Catherine Easton and Dr Gary Potter of Lancaster University, we will:
- Introduce the main issues covered by research ethics committees
- Provide examples and hands on experience of resolving ethical dilemmas and demonstrate typical howlers!
- Equip you to complete your own institution’s research ethics committee application form.
REGISTER here
Methods session on positionality in qualitative research
Qualitative method texts often discuss the importance of understanding positionality as a researcher during research design, yet its importance for participants during data collection is often neglected. In this seminar, Rosie Harrison (Lancaster University – Management School ), using personal experiences of conducting ethnographic fieldwork with paid carers will explore how notions of positionality matter for participants and will provide a space for you to reflect on the potential implications for your own research.
Register here
You will be sent the Zoom link and password after registration.
Using Graphic Elicitation Data Gathering Methods with Ex-Offenders
In this talk, Lee Wainwright (University of Liverpool – Management School) will draw personal research into how entrepreneuring in prison helps to change the lived experience under conditions of extreme restriction, to discuss what graphic elicitation methods are, how to use them and how to analyse the qualitative data.
Register here
Flexible Re-design of Cognitive Psychology Research in Response to COVID-19
In this seminar, Tamer Said (University of Cambridge) will discuss how ongoing research methodology and methods has been modified and re-designed to adapt to, and as a response to COVID-19 Challenges.
Register here
Ethnography-informed case study: Practical considerations and tips
This presentation aims to provide some practical considerations and tips for applying this research design to doctoral study. Beginning with a critical discussion of the prevailing terms used in contemporary literature, such as ‘ethnographic case study’, ‘mini-ethnographic case study’, and ‘micro-ethnography’,Dr Sihui Wang (School of Social, Political and Global Studies, Keele University) will then discuss ways in which these principles can be applied to case study work, with reference to the selection of cases, and ‘nested’ approaches to understanding cases in context. The talk will conclude with practical tips for data collection and analysis as well as some potential questions you may come across during academic conferences, or even your viva.
Register here
The Event will take place on MS Teams and the link to the event will be sent to registered participants one day before the event. If you have any questions, please email the event organiser, Dr Aneta Hayes (a.m.hayes@keele.ac.uk).
Using archives and historical research in government research: pitfalls and prospects
Speaker: Michael Lambert, Lancaster University
This seminar draws on personal experience of engaging with government inquiries using archival sources and historical research as well as undertaking commissioned investigations. It offers a consideration of the form, function and purpose of inquiries and their processes, the nature of different types of archives, records and sources – as well as tracing linkages across them; and some of the opportunities and challenges presented in such research.
Register here
Research using social media: Facebook, mumsnet and blogs
Speaker: Nadia von Benzon, Lancaster University
Social media provides a vast and incredibly accessible repository of qualitative data. Its potential for supporting efficient and incisive research across all levels of academia is huge. However, social media-based research is also replete with ethical and methodological challenges. In this talk I will explore some of the opportunities and the concerns of using social media as both a primary and secondary data source, focusing on my own recent research across Facebook, Mumsnet and ‘Mummy’ blogs.
Register here
Using the FOI Act to Gather Data – Lessons from Socio-legal research
In this talk, Siobhan Weare and Tom Webb (Lancaster University Law School) will discuss the approach of using the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act to gather data based on practical application in Socio-legal research.
Register here
Process Tracing Techniques: Innovations to systemetise qualitative
research
Chelsea Johnson (University of Liverpool)
Process tracing is often invoked in small-n case studies as a way of systematising qualitative research, but there is little agreement about best practices for using the method. In this talk, I discuss my work applying a recent innovation in process tracing techniques to a large-N sample of cases.
Register here
Using the FOI Act to Gather Data – Lessons from Socio-legal research
In this talk, Siobhan Weare and Tom Webb (Lancaster University Law School) will discuss the approach of using the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act to gather data based on practical application in Socio-legal research.
Register here
MethodsX 2019/20 Stream Meeting – Quantitative Methods
Quantitative Methods: Tuesday 21st January 2020, 09.30-13.30 (to include lunch), School of Arts Library, University of Liverpool (19 Abercromby Square)
All new ESRC-funded NWSSDTP postgraduate students are expected to attend one of these meetings and will be sent an email asking which stream they wish to join, with further details of the event to follow. Students who signed up to a stream last year will hear shortly from the stream coordinator with further details.
MethodsX 2019/20 Stream Meeting – New Forms of Data/Digital Methods
New Forms of Data/Digital Methods: Tuesday 21st January 2020, 12.30-16.30 (to include lunch), School of Arts Library, University of Liverpool (19 Abercromby Square)
All new ESRC-funded NWSSDTP postgraduate students are expected to attend one of these meetings and will be sent an email asking which stream they wish to join, with further details of the event to follow. Students who signed up to a stream last year will hear shortly from the stream coordinator with further details.
MethodsX 2019/20 Stream Meeting – Ethnography
Ethnography: Friday 31st January 2020, 11.00 – 15.00 (to include lunch), University Place 5.206, University of Manchester
All new ESRC-funded NWSSDTP postgraduate students are expected to attend one of these meetings and will be sent an email asking which stream they wish to join, with further details of the event to follow. Students who signed up to a stream last year will hear shortly from the stream coordinator with further details.
MethodsX Conference 2020: Hold the Date!
We are pleased to announce that the 2020 MethodsX Conference will be held at Keele University on Friday 15 May 2020.
Methods Fair 2020: The Changing Face of Research
November 30, 2020
methods@manchester is pleased to announce this year’s Methods Fair. See below for details of the call for abstracts.
This one-day, online event will emphasise innovative developments in research methods through talks, workshops, and networking opportunities centered around the changing face of research that 2020 has brought. Alongside the programme of talks and workshops will be networking opportunities in “meet the experts” sessions, and a chance to win prizes with lightning talks about your own research experiences.
Talks will reflect how the academic and research landscape has changed over 2020 across social science and the humanities.
Workshops will cover the following topics:
- Introduction to digital methods
- Research in times of crisis
- Developing effective research funding proposals
- Open and reproducible research
Meet the experts sessions will provide 1-2-1 networking and discussion opportunities between attendees and experts in topics such as open science, reproducibility, writing papers for publication, applying for research funding, AI/Machine Learning, text analysis, spatial analysis, data visualisation, creative methods, and more.
Submit your abstract to give a lightning talk at the event about your research for the chance to win prizes. Details can be found here. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 5pm on 20th November.
Register now for free on Eventbrite.
MethodsX Twitter Take Over 2020
MethodsX Twitter Take Over 2020
Conference Programme
Wednesday 16th December
10.00-11.30: Interviews and Ethnography
10.15-10.35: Olivia Fletcher, Healthy lifestyles or ‘dangerous competition’? – self-tracking and the geographies of surveillance in the lives of young people.
10.35-10.55: Lee Wainwright, How the process of entrepreneuring can help people overcome oppression, with focus upon ex-offenders who have made a new positive life transition
10.55-11.15: Rosie Harrison: Exploring the emotional work of carers
1.00-2.00: Live! Tips and hints: success in your PhD
Over this 60 minute session, @MethodsNW will share the following questions for current and past PhD students to crowdsource the best tips for success in your PhD. These will be tweeted over the course of the session, but you can start thinking of your answers now. If you are a second year or above, you may have tips to share. If you are a first year, follow and retweet #MethodsX2020 for ideas!
- What is the best advice you received during your PhD?
- Top tips for motivation during your PhD?
- What is the best advice you can give for someone starting their PhD?
- What was the most useful experience you gained during your PhD (besides writing a thesis)?
- How did you develop a good working relationship with your PhD supervisors?
- What do you know now as a PhD graduate that you wish you knew then?
Thursday 17th December
10.00-11.30: Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences (I)
10.15-10.35: James Watson, Dementia Care Pathways and GP data: Survival Analysis, Logistic Regression, Sequence Analysis
10.35-10.55: Amardeep Legha, Longitudinal trajectories of work absence: bridging the gap between health and work
10.55-11.15: Jingwen Zhang, Modelling the longitudinal dynamics or rural-urban disparity in later life in China
11.15-11.35: Chloe Brennan, Impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of health and social care staff- a longitudinal study
11.35-11.55: Niall Newsham, Analysing population decline trajectories in regional Europe: sequence analysis
1.45-3.00: Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences (II)
1.55-2.15: Patrick Ballantyne, American Retail Centre Geographies: An approach to retail centre delineation based on graph structures and ‘H3’ geometries
2.15-2.35: Ellen Schwaller, Quantifying impacts of urban food environment policies: A hybrid model approach
2.35-2.55: Cillian Berragan, Using Pre-Trained Transformer Architectures for Geographic Entity Recognition
4.00-5.00: Live! Best resources for…
Over this 60 minute session, @MethodsNW will share the following questions for current and past PhD students to crowdsource the best methodological resources for success in your PhD. These will be tweeted over the course of the session, but you can start thinking of your answers now. If you are a second year or above, you may have tips to share. If you are a first year, follow and retweet #MethodsX2020 for ideas! This may include websites, books, training courses and more.
- Where is your go to forum for methods-based support?
- Who are your favourite methodological bloggers?
- Can you recommend any free/affordable methods-based training courses?
- What is your go to book for methodological support?
- What is the computer software you wish you had known about from the start?
Friday 18th December
10.00-11.30: Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences (III)
10.15-10.35: Hannah Sawyer, Investigating the underlying causes of the verb-marking deficit in English-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder
10.35-10.55: Emma Thornton, Inequalities in vocabulary: examining the predictive value of SES measures over developmental and historical time
10.55-11.15: Alexandra Welsh, Statistics for Public Health: Using Joint Longitudinal-Survival Models to Estimate Quality-Adjusted Life Years
12.00-1.30: Quantitative Methods in Social Sciences (IV)
12.15-12.35: Vincy Huang, Health Impact of Nicotine & Tobacco (HINT): a microsimulation decision-support tool for local and national tobacco control policies
12.35-12.55: Rebecca Gregson, Using smartphone-based experience sampling to investigate whether social support enhances the efficacy of meat-free pledging
12.55-1.15: Sam Rawsthorne, Does (Mandated) Annual Report Discourse on Strategy Provide Meaningful Insights about Value Creation
2.00-3.00: Live! Amplify their voice!
Over this 60 minute session, we will be asking current and past PhD students working within and outside of academia who to follow and whose voice they want to amplify. Follow #MethodsX2020 to build your twitter network. These will be tweeted over the course of the session, but you can start thinking of your answers now.
- Who do you recommend following for their research?
- Who do you recommend following for their innovative methods?
- Whose voice do you want to amplify in the academic community?
Presenters
| Ballantyne, Patrick | @pj_ballantyne | University of Liverpool |
| Berragan, Cillian | @cjberragan | University of Liverpool |
| Brennan, Chloe | @chloejbrennan | University of Liverpool |
| Fletcher, Olivia | @livAfletcher | University of Liverpool |
| Gregson, Rebecca | @rebecca_gregson | Lancaster University |
| Harrison, Rosie | @PrimaryRosie | Lancaster University |
| Huang, Vincy | @vincyhuangwj | University of Liverpool |
| Legha, Amardeep | @AmardeepLegha | Keele University |
| Newsham, Niall | @nnewsh_ | University of Liverpool |
| Rawsthorne, Sam | @rawsthorne_sam | Lancaster University |
| Sawyer, Hannah | @HSawyer01 | University of Liverpool |
| Schwaller, Ellen | @etc_ellen | University of Liverpool |
| Thornton, Emma | @emma_thornton95 | University of Liverpool |
| Wainwright, Lee | @lee1wainwright | University of Liverpool |
| Watson, James | @JmsWats | University of Liverpool |
| Welsh, Alexandra | @AlexWelsh_stats | Lancaster University |
| Zhang, Jingwen | @lily_zjw | University of Manchester |
Abstracts
Ballantyne, Patrick: American Retail Centre Geographies: An approach to retail centre delineation based on graph structures and ‘H3’ geometries
Concentrations of individual retail units and their associated activities, formally defined as ‘retail centres’, are important tools for understanding the distribution and evolution of the retail sector at varying geographical scales. The aim of this paper is to provide a comprehensive account of retail centre geographies in the US, through delineation of their scale, extent and catchments, and classification based on their salient characteristics. This presentation will focus on the methods used to delineate the extent of centres, which utilises Uber’s hexagonal spatial index ‘H3’ and graph structures, to provide a comprehensible and replicable approach to the delineation of retail centres, based on the connectivity of retailer locations and surrounding urban morphology. Preliminary results are presented for two contrasting American cities, to illustrate its effectiveness, and feedback on the approach and its methodological and theoretical rigour would be much appreciated.
University of Liverpool: @pj_ballantyne
Berragan, Cillian: Using Pre-Trained Transformer Architectures for Geographic Entity Recognition
Place names in natural language contribute an additional geographic dimension to much of the existing online textual information. Despite this, many methods for the extraction of place names from text use pre-trained models that were not explicitly designed for this task.
This research aims to present a method for the accurate task-specific extraction of place names from any text, using new developments in natural language processing. The focus is on the use of the pre-trained transformer architecture which has achieved popularity for many recent NLP tasks. These models have several benefits for this research;
- They are relatively easy to implement and typically require the addition of a single output layer to achieve task specific results.
- They are easily fine-tuned, meaning models that were pre-trained on large amounts of text data may be made task-specific with a relatively small amount of additional labelled data.
- Pre-trained transformers have achieved state of the art results on many tasks, including named entity recognition.
This model identifies place names that are not present within formal administrative datasets, hoping to assist with their completeness, and the inclusion of vernacular names.
Demo: https://share.streamlit.io/cjber/ger_wiki/ger_streamlit.py
University of Liverpool: @cjberragan
Brennan, Chloe: Impact of COVID-19 on the mental health of health and social care staff – a longitudinal study
My study is investigating whether a number of risk and protective factors can predict whether health and social care workers employed during the COVID-19 pandemic will develop two mental health conditions – post-traumatic embitterment disorder (PTED) and moral injury. I have collected data on 400 health and social care workers and will re-collect data in one year. I will use modelling techniques e.g. SEM or path analysis to model my findings. Analysis of the initial round of data collection shows the prevalence of PTED in this sample is 7.8 times higher than in the general population (Linden, 2009).
University of Liverpool: @chloejbrennan
Fletcher, Olivia: Healthy lifestyles or ‘dangerous competition’? – self-tracking and the geographies of surveillance in the lives of young people
My research aims to explore how young people incorporate self-tracking in their everyday life through exploring how embodiment is reconstituted between online and offline spaces, whilst exploring how the different modes of surveillance are incorporated and the role of social capital in relation to health in a neoliberal context. This research will use a variety of methods, including digital semi-structured interviews, netnography and content analysis. Digital methodologies are invaluable for exploring and uncovering everyday lived experience for young people.
University of Liverpool: @livAfletcher
Gregson, Rebecca: Using smartphone-based experience sampling to investigate whether social support enhances the efficacy of meat-free pledging.
Meat consumption brings an amass of negative consequences: harming human health, damaging the environment and exacerbating social justice issues. For these reasons, scholars and NGO’s are calling for a global shift towards more plant-based eating. However, efforts to promote meat reduction are often met with reluctance. A commonly quoted barrier to more plant-based eating is an anticipated lack of social support; the perception that our friends and family won’t support such a transition and so we would have to go it alone. There is growing debate in the literature around whether this reflects a true barrier, or a rationalisation used to support continued consumption. Using smartphone-based experience-sampling, we invite participants to take part in 14-day meat-free pledge, completed either alone or as part of a small group. Comparing pledge success and long-term attitude and behaviour change between these two conditions, we intend to answer this question: does social support enhance the efficacy of meat-free pledging?
Lancaster University: @rebecca_gregson
Harrison, Rosie: Exploring the emotional work of carers
The overall aim of the research was to explore how domiciliary carers managed the emotional aspects of care within client’s homes. Ethnographic methods were used, which focussed on what carers did and how their sense-making of their actions. Data consisted primarily of observations and interviews carried out over 5 months in a UK Domiciliary Care company. Ethnographic methods were chosen for two main reasons. Firstly, domiciliary care is an under-researched care setting, and so ethnography was chosen as it provides rich data on the lived experiences of participants. Also, as ways of managing emotions are primarily unthought-of and embodied, observations were necessary to capture this data. Preliminary results show the complexity of emotional management within the care setting and highlight the skills necessary for such work. Analysis shows that there are some common themes amongst the participants, including the use of space, the importance of relationships and the embodied nature of emotional work.
Lancaster University: @PrimaryRosie
Huang, Vincy: Health Impact of Nicotine & Tobacco (HINT): a microsimulation decision-support tool for local and national tobacco control policies in England
Tobacco pandemic, a top public health priority, kills more than 8 million people worldwide annually. Over several decades, various actions have been taking to end it, targeting the accessibility, acceptability and affordability of tobacco products. Modelling has been used to shape such policies before real-world implementation and to quantify their impact post-implementation.
In this project, I will develop a microsimulation decision support tool to aid tobacco control policy makers at the local and national levels. This tool will synthesise a close-to-reality English population, including the trends of the cumulative exposure to smoking, second-hand smoking, and electronic cigarettes. I will use this tool to quantify the health outcome and cost-effectiveness of tobacco policies, and visualise this information in a user-friendly web-based user-interface.
University of Liverpool: @vincyhuangwj
Legha, Amardeep: Longitudinal trajectories of work absence: bridging the gap between health and work
Absence from work due to ill-health is one of the biggest causes of productivity loss across the UK, particularly absenteeism due to musculoskeletal pain and mental health conditions. Early intervention to support return-to-work can be highly beneficial to patients and wider society. In the UK, General Practitioners (GPs) administer fit notes to patients which are subsequently recorded in the electronic health records (EHRs), but it is currently unknown at GP consultation who is at risk of longer-term absence.
Thus the overall aim of this PhD is to use Primary Care EHRs to compare statistical methods to model common patterns (trajectories) of work absence; and determine health and sociodemographic characteristics associated with the resultant longitudinal trajectories. Trajectories will be modelled using simple statistical approaches such as cumulative duration of absence, and more complex longitudinal approaches such as latent class growth analysis and growth mixture modelling.
Keele University: @AmardeepLegha
Newsham, Niall: Analysing Population Decline Trajectories in Regional Europe: A Sequence Analysis
Latest population projections expect the continental population of Europe to reverse its longstanding trajectory of growth into one of decline within the next five years. Population decline is not, however, expected to occur uniformly across the continent as significant differences in the rate and direction of population change are set to persist, further exacerbating regional and country demographic imbalances. Despite the immediacy of continental population decline, the subject remains under researched and our understanding insufficient. Particular deficiencies stem from a lack of both cross-national and temporal considerations of depopulation. This study seeks to address this through the novel application of sequence and cluster analysis techniques to examine variations in population decline trajectories in 1,871 sub-national areas across 43 European territories. The methodology allows for a holistic understanding of decline trajectories whilst also considering the ordering, timing, and magnitude of population decline. Its main contribution is the formulation of a typology of decline in which eight distinct pathways to depopulation are identified and mapped.
University of Liverpool: @nnewsh_
Rawsthorne, Sam: Does (Mandated) Annual Report Discourse on Strategy Provide Meaningful Insights About Value Creation?
Managers face increasing pressure from financial statement users and regulators to articulate their approach to creating and maintaining shareholder value. However, concerns about revealing proprietary information to competitors potentially limits the usefulness of strategy disclosures. I investigate whether and how strategy discourse provides meaningful insights into firm-level approaches to value creation by constructing a large corpus of strategy disclosures extracted from UK annual reports. To test whether strategy discourse contains relevant content I apply topic modelling techniques (Latent Dirichlet Allocation and Correlation Explanation models) to identify prominent themes. This allows me to map content to recognisable textbook models or otherwise shed light on management-based views of strategy. Next, I investigate the language of strategy discourse using corpus linguistics techniques including keyword analysis and collocation networks. This reveals salient features relative to other narrative commentary to test whether strategy discourse is presented in a clear and meaningful way.
Lancaster University: @rawsthorne_sam
Sawyer, Hannah: Investigating the underlying causes of the verb-marking deficit in English-speaking children with Developmental Language Disorder
Developmental Language Disorder (DLD) affects approximately 7% of language-learning children and is defined as “a significant deficit in language ability that cannot be attributed to hearing loss, low non-verbal intelligence or neurological damage” (Leonard, 2014: 3). My PhD aims to investigate the underlying causes of the verb-marking deficit in English-speaking children with DLD by testing an input-based account using multiple different quantitative methods. One method I will be using is sentence repetition as it is a highly effective way of probing weaknesses in children’s knowledge across a controlled set of items. Currently, however, I am using different programming languages such as Python, R and UNIX-command line tools to analyse transcriptions of children’s spontaneous speech for verb-marking errors. This method was chosen as the transcripts are publicly available and provide easy access to samples of children’s speech without the need for experimental data collection (which is important during the COVID-19 pandemic).
University of Liverpool: @HSawyer01
Schwaller, Ellen: Quantifying impacts of urban food environment policies: A hybrid model approach
The food environment plays an essential role as a determinant of diet and associated health outcomes like cardiovascular disease and diabetes. I am interested in how policies impacting our food environment result in different diet outcomes across the population. To investigate, this project takes a hybrid modelling approach utilising complex systems science methods. A small area estimation technique simulates individual-level attributes of the Liverpool population. These are inputs, along with data on the local food environment, to an agent-based model (ABM). Different policy scenarios, co-created with local stakeholders, are simulated utilising the ABM and the outcomes are analysed. With this I hope to facilitate decision making, taking into account the complex nature of the multiple factors acting within and on the food environment.
University of Liverpool: @etc_ellen
Thornton, Emma: Inequalities in vocabulary: examining the predictive value of SES measures over developmental and historical time
This study involved secondary data analysis of two large UK birth cohort studies: the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) and British Cohort Study (BCS) to investigate inequalities in language development. Following multiple imputation, regression modelling and model comparisons were conducted in R to assess the relative value of 5 SES predictors and a composite measure of SES in predicting language ability throughout childhood (ages 3, 5, 11 and 14) in the MCS cohort. Using data from the MCS and BCS, 2 indicators of SES were then used to look at inequalities in language ability in early childhood, late childhood and adolescence in both cohorts. These cohorts were chosen as they are separated by a period that saw considerable change to the occupational and educational structure of the UK and due to the rich availability of SES and vocabulary measures at multiple ages throughout childhood, particularly from the MCS cohort.
University of Liverpool: @emma_thornton95
Wainwright, Lee: How the process of entrepreneuring can help people overcome oppression, with focus upon ex-offenders who have made a new positive life transition
Emancipatory entrepreneurship focusses upon the process of entrepreneuring as a route to autonomy and emancipation for marginalised groups, breaking free from the oppressive stigma and the ‘othering’ of a dominant power through entrepreneurial activity. This research project explores how ex-offenders who have undertaken entrepreneurial pathways have successfully transitioned out of at-risk circumstances. To do this longitudinal narrative interviews and graphic elicitation are employed, highlighting the key high and low events across the participants process of transition. Early results shed light on the absence of individual agency and sense of control in the appreciation of everyday opportunities. In conditions of oppression where agency and control (and freedom) are taken away, everyday opportunities can nevertheless be seen emerging as a result of compliance and peers rewarding and legitimizing inaction. Results will contribute to our understanding of entrepreneurial behaviour as embedded in emancipatory life-projects in absence of a “new venture” outcome and in traditional boundary conditions in entrepreneurship research (e.g. a business is being developed).
University of Liverpool: @lee1wainwright
Watson, James: Dementia care pathways and GP data: Survival Analysis, Logistic Regression, Sequence Analysis
Aims: My PhD aims to understand how use of, quality and type of health and social care interactions for people with dementia (PwD) can vary by patients’ age, gender, socio-economic deprivation and urban/rural geography.
Methods: Initial analyses is an exploration of the millions of records PwD’s interactions with their GP practice. We will build sequence analysis to illustrate different dementia care trajectories/pathways and care choices, highlighting those which elicit positive and negative health outcomes.
We have produced logistic regression models and odds ratios to assess the impact of age group and gender on patient’s likelihood of mortality. We have also prospectively identified survival analyses; demonstrating temporal change in survival and potential impact of previously stated factors.
Preliminary Results: Logistic regression indicates males with dementia have greater risk of mortality, and PwD aged 75-84 have greater risk of mortality than those aged 85-94 and 95+.
University of Liverpool: @JmsWats
Welsh, Alexandra: Statistics for Public Health: Using Joint Longitudinal-Survival Models to Estimate Quality-Adjusted Life-Years
Cost-effectiveness analyses are key in allocating healthcare resources. The health outcomes used for these analyses should incorporate the impact of a treatment on both the length of life and health-related quality of life (HQoL). The quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) is one such summary measure. An area under the curve (AUC) method can be used to estimate QALYs, through linear interpolation of the longitudinal HQoL data points. However, summary measures such as the AUC may result in biased estimates[1]. We aim to investigate whether and when using joint longitudinal-survival models[6] can reduce this bias, and lead to efficiency gains when estimating QALYs. We are conducting a simulation study to identify which scenarios induce bias. The data is simulated from a joint model[7]; scenarios considered vary the slope, censoring, and data missingness. QALYs are estimated using the model by Glasziou et al. (1998). This study will be expanded to assess other models, such as joint models and joint models with reverse-time elements[2], [4], [5].
Lancaster University: @AlexWelsh_stats
Zhang, Jingwen: Modelling the longitudinal dynamics of rural-urban health disparity in later life in China
My PhD research aims to investigate the longitudinal dynamics of rural-urban health disparity in later life in China. Several longitudinal and life-history modelling techniques will be employed to enrich the understanding. Drawing data from China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, I will first use a multilevel growth curve model to identify the health trajectory of older people throughout the later life and across different periods to understand the temporal patterns of health inequality. Secondly, to further explain the rural-urban health inequality, sequence analysis will be employed to construct the life trajectories (work, family and migration history) of rural and urban older adults. A mediation analysis will be conducted to examine whether heterogenous life trajectories explain the health inequality found. Lastly, the multilevel modelling structure will be extended to incorporate spatial aspects in order to test the effect of community-level and regional-level context on the rural-urban health disparity. Other methodological contributions of this PhD will be addressing the missingness in respective life history data and the health selection bias.
University of Manchester: @lily_zjw
