Social scientists are facing a new research era, where big data and computational methods provide an opportunity to address current social science questions in different ways - as well as enabling new questions to be asked. However, developing the skills needed to work with new types of data and new methods poses a challenge for researchers who already have multiple and varied demands on their time. Should social scientists be expected to learn data science skills, or should we encourage specialisation and collaboration with computer scientists and others with technical skills? Can the creation of new, easy-to-use tools and software for computational and big data research reduce the barrier to entry?

The panel highlight some of the questions around what skills future social scientists should be expected to have and how to support the development of those skills. They discuss some of the tools available for researchers working in the emerging field of computational social science, consider opportunities to incentivise the creation of new software and address the challenges involved with making research software sustainable.

Panelists:

Simon Hettrick - Deputy Director, The Software Sustainability Institute; Co-Director, The Southampton Research Software Group
Dr Andreea Moldovan - Senior Research Officer, University of Essex
Kenneth Benoit - Professor of Quantitative Social Research Methods, and Head of the Department of Methodology at the London School of Economics and Political Science; Founder of Quanteda Studio
Tomasso Venturini - Founder & Co-ordinator of the Public Data Lab; Researcher at the Institut des Systèmes Complexes Rhône-Alpes and the École Normale Supérieure of Lyon

Chaired by Lou Coady - Head of Marketing & Community Engagement, SAGE Publishing

SAGE Ocean
SAGE Ocean is an initiative from SAGE Publishing to help social scientists navigate vast data sets and work with new technologies. Our hope is that our work will help to make it easier for social researchers to work with big data and new technology in order to advance our understanding of the world.

This event was part of the ESRC Festival of Social Science 2018.
https://esrc.ukri.org/public-engagement/festival-of-social-science/