ABSTRACT
In recognising a shortage of quantitative skills in the UK Social Science community, scholars have highlighted shortcomings in the way quantitative methods (QM) are taught in undergraduate programmes (Falkingham & McGowan, 2011; MacInnes, 2009; Parker, Dobson, Scott, Wyman, & Landén, 2008). These reports observe that while on most programmes some quantitative training is now compulsory, for many students it is something detached from the rest of their degree, lacking relevance to the major disciplinary themes covered in their substantive courses. This observation may highlight a problem with the methods courses themselves, which tend to teach the mechanics of data analysis. Equally, it might be because much ‘non-methods’ teaching lacks quantitative examples and references to the contribution of quantitative approaches to subject knowledge. Against a background of widely reported student anxiety over quantitative data (Adeney & Carey, 2011; Howery & Havidan, 2006; Slootmaeckers, Kerremans, & Adriaensen, 2014; Williams, Payne, Hodgkinson, & Poade, 2008), the marginalisation of quantitative evidence in substantive teaching is a clear obstacle to getting students to see quantitative methods training as anything more than a module to be got through.
