Engaging Students in Quantitative Methods : it's all about the data

In a period of high profile national concern about the low level of quantitative skills in the UK social Science community increasing attention has been given to the way quantitative methods (QM) are taught on our undergraduate programmes (MacInnes 2009, Parker et al 2008). While most Sociology programmes now include some compulsory QM training these modules are often unpopular with students with very few going on to take more specialised quantitative options or use any QM in their final year dissertations (MacInnes 2009). This is worrying, from the perspective of the future health of the discipline, but also in terms of the employability of our students, with increasing recognition of the importance of numeric skills in a highly competitive graduate labour market