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ISSR Hiring Quantitative Methodology Consultants for Fall 2023
Please post and share this announcement with interested candidates. PDF link here.

Two white coffee mugs on a wooden shelf. Mugs read "IRB Certified, IRB Approved, Research Time!" in red letters.

On September 19, 2022, ISSR hosted two expert speakers on preparing to conduct ethical research with human subjects. Lynnette Sievert, of the UMass Amherst Institutional Review Board and Iris Jenkins, Associate Director, Human Research Protection Office, broke down what can feel like a daunting process into its essential ABCs. 

Image of red fist breaking out of a box, with shattered glass and numerals flying out

On October 20, 2021, ISSR celebrated Erica Scharrer's and Srividya Ramasubramanian's new book, Quantitative Research Methods in Communication: The Power of Numbers for Social Justice, an important new resource on using the power of numbers to advance social justice.

Dear ISSR community,
 
You may have heard that due to a dramatic increase in the cost of NVivo licenses, there was a question as to whether UMass Amherst would be able to renew the campus wide NVivo license for 2021-2022. We are pleased to report that the license has been extended for one year and will be active through September 2022. 
 

For the past few years, a number of departments at UMass Amherst have been exploring different options for providing access to high-performance computing capabilities for scholars working with large, hard-to-wrangle datasets. Last year, the folks at Research Computing invited a handful of researchers to pilot-test a remote fast computing cluster solution (the “Unity Cluster”). The Unity Cluster has moved past the pilot stage, and is now in "beta" and open to a wider group of scholars. 

QSR, the makers of NVivo qualitative data analysis software are scheduling virtual NVivo Research Network meetings to connect and discuss research methods with fellow researchers.

To register for the virtual meeting with researchers in New England, please see details below.

Next Meeting Topic: Using NVivo for Literature Reviews

COSSA Headlines: A monthly look at what's new and noteworthy in social science policy

COSSA provides a wealth of information to help social scientists follow the changing landscape of rules and resources at the federal agencies that fund social science research, as the government responds to the COVID-19 pandemic.

See the highlights of the current issue below, and subscribe to the COSSA Washington Update to stay abreast this of fast-changing context.

This week, the Center for Employment Equity released a new report entitled The COVID-19 Recession: An Opportunity to Reform our Low-Wage Economy?A shorter, public briefing paper on the same topic appears in The Conversation under the title How the coronavirus recession puts service workers at risk .

 

In response to heightened concerns about the spread of COVID-19 and in keeping with the decision to transition to remote course delivery at the UMass Amherst campus , we are writing to share some of our ongoing efforts to promote excellence in the social sciences during this period.

Stack of Books
Do you want to deepen your understanding of the statistics behind the methods you use in your research?  So do we! We invite to join our Statistics in the Social Sciences Reading Group (SSSRG). This is an interdisciplinary group of faculty, post-doctoral scholars and graduate students who gather to discuss a methodological topic based on group interest. We welcome participants from all disciplines! 
 

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