Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, in collaboration with University of Groningen and University of Maryland, conducted a Summer School on Research Methodology and ‘R’ which took place over seven days from August 20-26, 2018, with researchers from Ammachi Labs, the Center for Women’s Empowerment and Gender Equality. The event was held at E-Learning Studio at the Amritapuri Campus.

A week-long summer intensive “Research Methodology with R for the Social Scientist” equipped participants in social science and management with the critical skills needed to define and develop a finite and “doable” research question.

Prof. Padma Rao Sahib, Assistant Professor at the Department of Global Economics and Management and Research Fellow at the SOM Research School at the Faculty of Economics and Business at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, and Mr. Sandeep Pillai, a 4th year Ph.D. student at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, were the facilitators of the session. They conducted various sessions on the topic, including research and writing articles, theory in research, and introduction to Descriptive and Summary Statistics.

The participants also had the opportunity to learn R with a few hands-on workshops. The participants got an increased insight into the research process, the nature of quantitative methodologies, and the tools to help them find and implement the appropriate methodology to their research question. The hands-on workshop gave the participants, an increased familiarity with the statistical software R. Also, they gained the experience of field research in a rural setting in India.