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There is now a lack of quantitative capacity among practitioners and teachers in sociology in Ireland. Yet interest in the value of quantitative methods among governments, funding organisations and society in general are on the increase. Social science research councils and funders in other countries, notably the UK, have realised there is a problem and are now attempting to remedy this through increased funding for the recruitment of quantitatively trained academics for example, Q-Step. The paper examines a number of developments notably Big Data, increases in transdisciplinary research and developments in mixed methods research which, it is argued, underline the need for more and better quantitative methods teaching in sociology. The paper calls for sociology departments to rethink their curricula and actively promote the teaching of a range of methods at the undergraduate level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the development of SPSS from 1968 to 2008, and the manner in which it has been used in teaching and research in British Sociology. We do this in order to reveal some of the changes that have taken place in statistical reasoning as an inscription device in the discipline over this period. We conclude that to characterise these changes as a shift from ‘causal’ to more ‘descriptive’ modes of analysis is too simplistic. Such a shift is certainly apparent, but it meshes in complex ways with a range of other – just as important – changes, that together mark a phase-shift in the functioning of sociological quantification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common phenomenon in sociology (and in other disciplines presumably) is that of the 'taken_for-granted reference'. This is typically an original empirical study, the findings of which become accepted and thereafter acknowledged as valid evidence in support of argument or for the generation of new hypotheses or counter hypotheses without presentation of critical re-evaluation. The extent to which this occurs and how and why it does occur are largely uninvestigated. In this paper, one case of the taken-for-granted reference, which is widely used in studies of social mobility, is subjected to critical re-evaluation in the light of original empirical research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]