School of Social & Political Sciences

At the start of July, the School of Social and Political Sciences was a SSERC Summer Research Placement host. These placements provide opportunities for S5 learners to develop practical research skills. This was the School’s sixth year hosting placement participants and my second as placement coordinator. Placements are hosted by a range of university and industry facilitators engaging in work relating to science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM). Our placements differ slightly, introducing participants to the world of social research and guiding them through their own quantitative analysis using real world data. This broadens the diversity of placements on offer, attracting students with an interest in the social world.   

How it works 

The SSERC Summer Research Placement is a widening participation initiative that recruits’ students from across Scotland. It focusses on young people from lower socio-economic backgrounds, young carers, those with care experience and/or those who will be the first in their family to attend university. It provides young people direct practical insights into what a career in research could look like for them. Placements based in universities, such as ours, also informs students on opportunities they could have at university. 

Our participants are introduced to the world of social research, learning about the nature of data, how its produced and how it can be utilised to answer questions and provide solutions.

Placement participants are expected to produce a 10 page report and academic poster on their research. I ensure students can pick their own research topic, allowing them to explore social research via something that truly interests them. This helps spark their curiosity and can make translating practical applications of analysis techniques easier. 

The students are provided real world data sets and taught how to analyse it using R, an open-source statistical analysis software that is operated via code. By introducing placement participants to quantitative methods using R they gain not only a theoretical grasp of quantitative tools but practical coding skills useful in a broad range of contexts. R is the primary tool used in both undergraduate and postgraduate quantitative methods courses within SPS and given its free nature is widely used across a vast range of sectors. 

Before I took over as placement coordinator in 2024 Dr Lito Tsitsou ran it for three years. Lito developed the original workbook which guides students through the social research process, feeding into their final report. When asked her perspectives on the placement she said: 

“Summer research placements are such a worthwhile project, it was amazing to see young people developing tailored research skills, and presenting work equivalent to what 3rd year university student would produce which they also enjoyed - just in a few weeks! We had the opportunity to host incredibly talented people full of curiosity and critical skills” (Dr Lito Tsitsou). 

This year’s placement

Last year I was blown away by the calibre of work produced by the two placement participants. Given this, I decided to further develop the workbook tasks this year to make it more challenging and rewarding. The updated workbook provides a taster of all the core skills covered in the SPS honours level quantitative methods training. 

In previous years students were introduced to the nature of quantitative data, taught how to summarise and visualise it and explore it using hypothesis tests such as t-tests. The most advanced form of testing done by students in previous years were correlations featuring two variables. This year Esmee Bundy, our placement participant, did all of the tests covered by previous participants and was able to design her own linear regression models, which allowed her to not only test the relationship between variables but also control for other variables. 

The following is a brief reflection Esmee wrote on her experiences of the placement:   

“These two weeks have been so much more enjoyable than I could have expected, and I can't help but recognise how genuinely useful this will be to me in my future. I have learned so much – about report writing, research, but also about this area of work overall. My confidence in this area is significantly higher than before, and I have to thank Kirstie Ken and all those who have worked with me for that. I enjoyed the flexibility of the research topic, and the balance of supported and independent work. Even if I ultimately decide to not go further with social science, the skills I have learned for general independence, interpreting basic code, performing research and writing an academic report are applicable to so many things, and I'm incredibly thankful for the opportunity.” (Esmee Bundy, SSERC Summer Research Placement participant). 

My Reflections 

I have relished the opportunity to run these placements over the last two years and I’m looking forward to continuing to develop them. Having been a first-generation student from a working-class background myself I value contributing to widening participation endeavours such as this. Although at 16 I wouldn’t have been nearly as skilled as any of the placement participants I have worked with, I would have loved the opportunity to learn about and conduct my own social research on a topic of my choosing. My hope is that having someone who has similar experiences to them run this placement helped demystify social research, showing them that they can do it as well.   

Alongside working through the workbook of activities I always make sure to give the students tours of the campus, highlighting key things that if they were to study at Glasgow (as some of our former placement participants have) they would feel more at ease. I also set up discussions with academics other than myself, so the participants are exposed to a variety of different ways of working within academia. Finally, I also call upon my previous experience as a freelance researcher within the third sector to introduce them to other formats of research outputs. The last two years I have incorporated critical feminist perspectives on quantitative methods into these placements and highlighted research I did with the Young Women’s Movement on access to healthcare. This highlights to the participants different ways that research is communicated and also develops their critical thinking around the production of knowledge. 

I am looking forward to beginning preparations for next year’s placement, which I hope will have 2-4 participants allowing for some more peer support and group work. Before that there will be a celebration event in the Advanced Research Centre showcasing this year’s placement participants academic posters. This will be an opportunity for Esmee and the other participants from across the country to meet and see what each other have been working on. It is also a chance for us all to celebrate the hard work of all the participants. These placements are fairly intensive and I can’t emphasise enough how impressed I’ve been with all the participants I have engaged with thus far. 

Author: This was written by Dr Kirstie Ken English

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First published: 25 August 2025