Realities, part of the ESRC National Centre for Research Methods
Dates: 1 October 2008 to April 2011
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) RES-576-25-0022
Director: Jennifer Mason
About Realities
Realities is part of the ESRC's National Centre for Research Methods [new window], which aims to improve research methods skills and techniques used by social scientists.
Realities aims to develop methods and approaches that capture the combination of vital, tangible and intangible dynamics in the way that personal relationships and relationalities are lived. Methodological creativity is central to our work, but we also value and draw on long-established methodological traditions. We describe our approach as "qualitatively-driven" - it starts from what we see as some of the best principles of qualitative research, but moves beyond these to engage both qualitatively and quantitatively with the complex realities of everyday lives.
We have two research projects where we put our ideas into practice by developing and extending methodologies for understanding the dynamics of relationships and personal lives. Our projects are:
- Inter/generational Dynamics - combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to study intergenerational relationships from the point of view of older people
- Critical Associations - using new and traditional methodological approaches to explore the positive and negative aspects of personal relationships between friends, foes, colleagues and acquaintances.
Our training and capacity building activities include our Methods in Dialogue workshops and one day Training Workshops, and we will have an international conference - Vital Signs 2 - in September 2010. See our events calendar for forthcoming events.
We also produce web-based resources, such as our working papers and toolkits.
Finally, in our 'interdisciplinary dialogue' events, we invite researchers working at the cutting edge of methodological developments into advanced level 'boundary-pushing' dialogue and debate.
For more information about our research, events and other activities see the Realities website [opens in new window].
Funding
This project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (Ref: RES-576-25-0022).