Semester: AY2018/2019 Sem I
Professor(s): Vincent Chua and Mu Zheng
Workload: Manageable
Overall: This is a compulsory module for all sociology majors. Half the module focused on qualitative methods and the other half on quantitative. The qualitative part came more easily to me and my partner. I think it would be the easier section for most sociology majors and FASS kids to grasp. The lecture introduces you to some basic principles and techniques of qualitative fieldwork. You will then be given some time during tutorials to find a partner and discuss a bit about your project. Our question was “does neighbourhood affect life chances?”. My partner and I then had to choose our field-site, conduct interviews and visit the actual site before writing the essay. I did this project with my friend so it was quite fun and had quite a lot of LOL moment. The quantitative part was something I struggled with more. As we had to learn to use SPSS and understand hypothesis testing and related statistical concepts, I would think that this would be more challenging for most FASS kids who run far away from these words. I regret not listening closer and trying to understand SPSS better because it can come in handy in the later years.
While the content was rather dry, the textbook chosen for this semester was quite entertaining. The author made many jokes which was great as it made this dry topic more bearable. Would suggest one to try to listen as much as possible because methodology is really important in higher level modules (and even in some 2k modules) where you need to conduct and design your own research.
Assignments: one essay/project for qualitative method and one project for quantitative method. The qualitative project was described above so I’ll skip that. The quantitative project involved using SPSS to understand the relationship between 2 variables and using what you found to answer some assigned questions. The qualitative project was fun for me but the quantitative one was more painful as I didn’t really understand what was happening. I managed to wriggle my way into partnering with my friend again but do note that they tried to shuffle us around for the 2nd project.
Exams: Just a final paper. It’s kinda like a research design paper. For qualitative, some questions gave scenarios and asked you to design an experiment. I think they also asked about principles of the qualitative method. For quantitative, you will probably need to memorise how to do hypothesis testing and how to answer hypothesis testing related questions. You also need to know how to read tables generated by SPSS.
Professors: Dr Vincent Chua was quite a funny guy. He usually inject personal stories and examples into his lecture. Dr Mu Zheng was quite boring although she is a very nice lady. In general, this is a dry module so I recognise the limitations of the professors as well. I think Dr Vincent Chua did quite well considering the nature of the module.
Tutorials: My tutor was Dr Mu. She is indeed a very pleasant and approachable lady. I was late for almost every tutorial but she never once scolded me. However, her tutorials were also quite dry. Tutorials consisted mostly of project discussion and reviewing of methodological principles for the qualitative portion. The quantitative portion was more hands on as the tutorial was where we had to learn to use SPSS proper. There was also time allocated for us to use SPSS for our quantitative project.
Recommend? I would generally not recommend this module as a UE. It is really not that interesting nor the best the sociology department have to offer. However, if you need to do a methodology module (I think social work majors can do this module to fulfil requirements), I would say it is an alright module to take.
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