Social science and participation

This free course, Social science and participation, looks at how social science investigates participation, and uses this topic to look in particular at how social science helps to enact social worlds. As you work through the course, you will see that social science enactment of participation is closely related to social science descriptions of, for example, voting or other citizenly practices, and related also to social science understandings of, for example, just how to define and evaluate poverty.

• Introduction
• Learning outcomes
• What is participation?
• Differences in participation
• Poverty and participation
• Who participates?
• Measuring participation
• Understanding participation
• Evaluating participation
• Participation in the UK
• Taking part and ‘having a voice’
• Why people get involved
• New ways of participating?
• Participating in social science
• Taking part in social science
• Enacting participation
• Expressing an opinion
• What do people need to participate?
• Conclusion
• Take the next step
• References
• Further reading
• Acknowledgements