Changing research methods practices (CRP): undertaking social science research in the context of Covid-19

This NCRM impact case study was written by Professor Melanie Nind of the University of Southampton and NCRM, Dr Andy Coverdale of the University of Southampton and Dr Robert Meckin of The University of Manchester and NCRM.

Background

World governments’ responses to the pandemic - restricting movement, banning travel, enforcing lockdowns and banning face-to-face contact between non-household members - had a huge effect on social research in the UK and worldwide. It particularly affected social researchers that rely on face-to-face data collection. In August 2020 the ESRC awarded the Changing Research Practices for Covid-19 (CRP) project team funding to investigate how Covid-19 was disrupting social research practices. Two more rounds of funding followed, with the project ending in June 2022.

Project overview

When it began, the CRP initiative set out to understand and share how researchers conducting social research were re-considering their designs, re-thinking their ethics, brokering different kinds of access, and adapting their research methods. The project team engaged with social researchers through a series of knowledge-exchange workshops and webinars, scrutinised the grey literature, and conducted a rapid evidence review of the published literature on how social research methods were being successfully adapted or designed for use within pandemic conditions. The findings were rapidly translated to freely available resources on the NCRM website, primarily collectively generated reading lists and practical Wayfinder guides.

The second phase of funding saw further knowledge exchange workshops, the creation of more practical resources for social researchers, and updating of the rapid evidence review. The final phase of the project added an in-depth exploration of how researchers have engaged with the contextual uncertainty of Covid-19 to manage methodological contingencies, and asked how productive is uncertainty for research methods? Working alongside other researchers, in the thick of uncertainty, the project team has secured agreement and authors for a special issue journal on this theme and produced additional open-access online resources that can be accessed through the NCRM website. The aim of this final phase of the project is to further build capacity for research in pandemic/post-pandemic times.

Impact

In its first and second phases the project generated immediate impacts with its knowledge-exchange workshops. The experience of participating in the workshops and other events had positive impacts on UK and international researchers’ capacity to address the challenges they faced. These included the ability to rethink methods and ethics, and to build resilience and capacity in individuals and teams. For example, one researcher whose fieldwork plans had been derailed, described the impact of the workshops he attended:

"It provided space and structure to think through how I might reorientate my ongoing research and adapt my methods in the face of changing circumstances. Through the workshops and the inter-workshop tasks I was afforded the time and critical support to reflect on what the important questions are in my current work and to select the best methods to pursuing them... My involvement in the workshop also benefited the [anonymised] team and project more generally by introducing an activity that we adapted to help facilitate our own cross-project methodological reflections... This activity helped us to recognise what were the core challenges for our methods and to identify how we were collectively seeking to adapt in response. Some of the themes exposed through this activity have continued to be developed by us and have informed subsequent research activities/innovation."

Another researcher, attempting to get his funded research in UK schools underway, reported back that:

"It was useful to join the focus groups because I felt that I wasn’t the only one struggling to collect data during covid... the emotional relief I experienced was very useful."

This was echoed by Saligari (see Case Study 3), who attributed the CRP to enabling her to continue with her PhD at a point when she was wondering whether she could continue.

The CRP has been responsive to the needs of its social researcher participants and produced series of workshops based on need and demand. These include, in phase 2, workshops on Researching with Children, Researching in the Global South, and Recruiting and Re-engaging Participants and Sustaining Research Relationships.

A distinctive feature of the CRP has been the engendering of collegiality amongst those participating and using its resources. This has manifested as researchers supporting others in finding ways that are both ethical and valid, to keep going with their social research enquiries. It has also led to participants co-producing reading lists and resources, writing Wayfinder Guides and producing other toolkit materials. This positive phenomenon was acknowledged by the CRP, after the first round of funding, with a recommendation that there should be a continuation of supportive and collegiate research communities for managing the challenges of researching in the pandemic. This was realised through the securing of further funding which resulted in extended, supportive knowledge-exchange workshops, where peer mentoring through shared solution-focused thinking took place.

This resonates with Saligari’s Case Study 3 where she discusses how the CRP enabled her to consider alternative methods and broaden her methodological and ethical horizons, when trying to identify alternatives to ethnographic work in the field. Kara (see Case Study 2), who has been strongly involved with the NCRM since 2015, who was invited by the CRP to be a discussant for the webinar attended by Saligari. This enabled Saligari to reconsider her understanding and use of ethics in her current work and will inform work in the future.

While the CRP has clearly built capacity and resilience in those attending its events and using its resources, it has also produced a ripple, or multiplier effect, building capacity beyond the original workshop participants. For example, one senior academic shared some of her reflective thinking (generated by a workshop task) with a conference audience where the issues resonated and "formed a useful lead into talking about strategies". Another academic is using the resources provided by the CRP in her teaching of "methods courses with Masters students" and will also be referring to these resources "within funding applications for new Covid-era empirical research".

As more researchers use the available resources, and more academic outputs are generated, we anticipate that further impacts will be generated, that are likely to provide evidence of societal and economic benefit.