Research Methods Archives | UCL Press

Critical Thinking for the Arts and Humanities

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 03:42:05 +0000

This textbook provides multi-disciplinary introduction to critical thinking skills as applied to the arts and humanities. It includes fifteen case studies, each based on research conducted at UCL to illustrate critical thinking skills within a specific discipline, guiding students through the research process and offering inspiration and example for wider research design and practice. The case studies are introduced by a summary of the main concepts and skills, and the research methodologies applied. Accompanying exercises provide opportunities to apply the skills illustrated in the study to real-world contexts.

This book avoids promoting a view of critical thinking as a set of generic skills that apply across academia. Instead, it encourages students to understand the skills they will be expected to apply in their own study of the arts and humanities. Approaches to knowledge vary across academic disciplines – and this book equips students with the ability to think critically in their own work.

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An Introduction to Science, Technology, Warfare and Peace

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 04:26:05 +0000

This textbook introduces how sociology, history and philosophy of science and technology (Science and Technology Studies or STS) approach the topic of war and security. It covers key concepts and theoretical approaches in STS and how they offer new insight into critical security, war and peace studies. To make the theory accessible, the book draws on seminal and contemporary empirical case studies, from weapons of mass destruction to everyday security and surveillance.

This textbook is ideal for students with no background knowledge of STS or as an introduction for more advanced researchers in other fields that study war and security, including politics and international relations, history, geography, sociology and anthropology.

Designed to support both independent and classroom learning, each carefully structured chapter begins by listing its key features and concepts so that readers understand the coverage at a glance. Chapters end with discussion questions to encourage critical thinking and suggested further readings. Online resources offer additional support in the form of learning activities and answer prompts for the discussion questions.

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Reading Randomised Controlled Trials

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 05:14:06 +0000

In early 2021-22, the Flexible Phonics reading intervention, a large-scale randomised controlled trial, took place in 118 schools in England and involved nearly 3,000 children. This study aimed to provide valuable insights into the success of largely school-based education trials. The Flexible Phonics trial proved to be not only an important experiment in improving children’s literacy, but a case study in which the methodology of single randomised controlled trials in education can be considered.

Reading Randomised Controlled Trials investigates the complexities of conducting randomised controlled trials in the field of education and how they can be seen as a cultural activity. The book emphasises the human operations, decision-making, and actions that drive such trials, which are often overlooked in published reports. Through the case study of Flexible Phonics, the book highlights the key differences between scaled educational trials and other types of trials, such as pharmaceutical trials. The additional focus on early childhood literacy is of significant educational importance, particularly in the context of UK school partial closures in 2020 and 2021 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Reading Randomised Controlled Trials is ultimately a unique resource on the implementation of randomised controlled trials in authentic school contexts and for the sustained improvement of practice in education.

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A Guide to Performing Systematic Reviews of Health and Disease

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 04:10:12 +0000

This practical guide to performing systematic reviews in a healthcare context provides a step-by-step approach for students and health professionals. Using free, opensource software to extract data and perform the necessary meta-analyses, this guide navigates the process of reviews, from study design and randomised controlled trials to interpreting results and reporting your findings.

Each chapter includes an overview, learning outcomes and practice questions. Aimed particularly at those who do not have an extensive statistical background, it will help enable you to confidently perform high quality systematic reviews.

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Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 04:44:05 +0000

Methods and Methodologies in Heritage Studies offers succinct, easily accessible analyses of the disciplinary debates, intellectual legacies and practical innovations that have led to understandings of heritage value today.

Through a diverse collection of expert voices, this volume invites readers to embark on their own journeys through appropriate methodologies for research and public engagement. Readers can draw on analyses of key problem areas and argumentative interventions to create a roadmap for the many disciplinary approaches that converge on heritage studies.

Oriented specifically towards learning and teaching heritage across archaeology, anthropology, history and geography, this textbook is designed to support critical, ethical heritage students, researchers and practitioners.

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Social Research for our Times

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 05:40:12 +0000

For 50 years, researchers at UCL’s Thomas Coram Research Unit have been undertaking ground-breaking policy-relevant social research. Their main focus has been social issues affecting children, young people and families, and the services provided for them. Social Research for our Times brings together different generations of researchers from the Unit to share some of the most important results of their studies. Two sections focus on the main findings and conclusions from research into children and children services, and on family life, minoritised groups and gender. A third is then devoted to the innovative methods that have been developed and used to undertake research in these complex areas. Running through the book is a key strategic question: what should be the relationship between research and policy? Or put another way, what does ‘policy relevant research’ mean? This perennial question has gained new importance in the post-Covid, post-Brexit world that we have entered, making this text a timely intervention for sharing decades of experience. Taking a unique opportunity to reflect on research context as well as research findings, this book will be of interest to researchers, teachers, students and those involved in policy making both in and beyond dedicated research units, and can be read as a whole or sampled for individual standalone chapters.

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Being Interdisciplinary

Sat, 22 Aug 2026 03:14:04 +0000

In Being Interdisciplinary, Alan Wilson draws on five decades as a leading figure in urban science to set out a systems approach to interdisciplinarity for those conducting research in this and other fields. He argues that most research is interdisciplinary at base, and that a systems perspective is particularly appropriate for collaboration because it fosters an outlook that sees beyond disciplines. There is a more subtle thread, too. A systems approach enables researchers to identify the game-changers of the past as a basis for thinking outside convention, for learning how to do something new and how to be ambitious, in a nutshell how to be creative. Ultimately, the ideas presented address how to do research.

Building on this systems focus, the book first establishes the basics of interdisciplinarity. Then, by drawing on the author’s experience of doing interdisciplinary research, and working from his personal toolkit, it offers general principles and a framework from which researchers can build their own interdisciplinary toolkit, with elements ranging from explorations of game-changers in research to superconcepts. In the last section, the book tackles questions of managing and organising research from individual to institutional scales.

Alan Wilson deploys his wide experience – researcher in urban science, university professor and vice-chancellor, civil servant and institute director – to build the narrative. While his experience in urban science provides the illustrations, the principles apply across many research fields.

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