ENP-24305 Social Scientific Analysis of Environmental Issues

Course

Credits 5.00

Language of instruction:

English

Continuation courses:

ENP-34306 Environmental Policy: Analysis and Evaluation; MAT-22306 Quantitative Research Methodology and Statistics

Contents:

This course will introduce the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of social science research through which environmental issues are studied. The final goal of the course is to learn students the approaches and theories and the three most important research designs which are used by social scientists to study environmental issues. Moreover, students will learn to critically assess publications from the social sciences concerning the environment, both from a theoretical as well as from a methodological point of view. Apart from this students are also introduced to, and actively learn to work with, the analysis of data by means of the statistical computer programme SPSS for Windows.

Learning outcomes:

At the end of the course students are able to demonstrate knowledge of:
- current approaches within social sciences regarding environmental issues;
- characteristics of the three most important research strategies of social scientific research: the experiment, the survey and the case study.
At the end of the course students are expected to be able to:
- judge the quality of research publications in the field of social sciences of the environment from a social theoretical perspective;
- judge the quality of research publications in the field of social sciences of the environment from a methodological perspective;
- perform a basic data analysis in SPSS.

Activities:

- attending and preparing lectures;
- reading, analyzing and assessing the theoretical and methodological content of research articles;
- data-analysis (SPSS).

Examination:

- paper containing a review of the theoretical and methodological content of a social scientific article;
- SPSS assignments;
- written exam.