Course summary

Social Sciences with Data Science combines social inquiry with data analytics. This course is multidisciplinary, including subjects such as Sociology and Economics, with options in Politics and International Studies and Interdisciplinary Methodologies, among others. It is driven by offering a comprehensive understanding how data can be obtained, managed, and analysed to better explain social, economic, and human processes in contemporary societies. Key questions addressed include: How can data help to explain complex social and economic processes? What is good data, and how can it be collected? How can data be analysed and presented effectively? Social Sciences with Data Science combines social inquiry with data analytics. This course is multidisciplinary, including subjects such as Sociology and Economics, with options in Politics and International Studies and Interdisciplinary Methodologies, among others. It is driven by offering a comprehensive understanding how data can be obtained, managed, and analysed to better explain social, economic, and human processes in contemporary societies. Key questions addressed include: How can data help to explain complex social and economic processes? What is good data, and how can it be collected? How can data be analysed and presented effectively? The course encourages a critical understanding of the role of data in data driven societies, by developing your skills in data collection, analysis, and presentation across disciplines. Studying this multidisciplinary programme, focusing on data skills, will enable you to make sense of data and to work with data towards solving social and economic problems. Building on the strengths of the Departments of Sociology and Economics, as well as the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Warwick, this course offers you multidisciplinary learning, hands-on teaching and research opportunities in data analysis, as well as placement opportunities. Topics you will explore include techniques for collecting data, including web surveys, text data and social media data; approaches to analysing data using software employed in data science; the ethics of collecting and analysing data, including data justice and algorithmic fairness; and applying data analysis to questions of economic and social development and economic and social inequalities. The course includes a work placement opportunity, during which you can apply your skills to solve real-world problems in an employer project. The multidisciplinary focus provides a thorough yet broad understanding of the issues, key concepts and approaches, as well as the challenges of data-driven societies.