Review: Innovations in digital research methods

As educational researchers, we are used to difficulty (‘pedagogy is hard to know’, Nind et al. 2016). But the ‘deluge’ of big data throws up both familiar and new challenges; amongst them ethics, access, capacity, linkage, the sticky intersections between quantitative and qualitative methods, and the ‘black box’ of third party algorithmic data processing and collection. With this proliferation of social, transactional data, the ‘crisis’ of empirical sociology identified by Savage and Burrows (2007) has arguably arrived. So what are the tools that are needed to broach this space? What new methods are required, and what are their politics?Into this tumult, Halfpenny and Proctor deliver 'Innovations in Digital Research Methods', an edited collection that strikes a balance between horizon scanning conceptual work, and the emerging realities at the cutting edge of new research practices. Across 13 chapters, international experts, many drawn from some of the UK’s leading digital research groups, introduce new tools, approaches and strategies for engaging new forms of data, and meeting new research challenges. Topics covered include: new sources of data, data linkage, spatial and social media analysis, text-mining, modelling and simulation. The practicalities of multi-model data collection and analysis, data management, ethics, visualization and developments in statistical software are also wrangled between opening and closing chapters that are more polemical. [...