On November 7, Department of Innovative Social Work (DISW) once again successfully organized the Thesis Writing Workshop, entitled Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods in Practice. This activity aims to improve the theoretical foundation and practical skills of DISW Master students and help facilitate their thesis writing.

This thesis writing workshop invited Dr. Cheng Cheng to be the guest speaker, to elaborate the research design and implementation of quantitative research. Dr. Cheng comes from Department of Sociology, School of Humanities, Southeast University. At the same time, Dr. Cheng was also invited to join a discussion session with Dr. Shao Yanju, a DISW academic staff, about the practice of quantitative and qualitative research methods. Dr. Cheng was supervised by Prof. Bian Yanjie, and has been acquired solid foundation and rich research experience in quantitative studies.

Within this workshop, Dr. Cheng considerately and explicitly demonstrated the research process to develop a quantitative study, by sharing a series of published articles about peer relationship as examples, to show the core issues in the quantitative research. At the same time, Dr. Cheng also shared his personal experience of continually revising and polishing papers for publication, so as to encourage students to make innovative evidence-based research.

Furthermore, a Paper-Based Q&A Session was particularly set for students to share their specific research questions and concerns. Dr. Shao Yanju invited Dr. Cheng to respond together, respectively from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. In addition, Dr. Shao individually shared a session about the data collection and analysis in qualitative studies, as well as the practical procedures of grounded theory, to facilitate students who adopt qualitative method in their thesis. In the end, the workshop organizer, Department of Innovative Social Work hopes that this workshop can really improve Master students’ learning in research methods and breaking through the method dilemma in their thesis writing.