Comments on: Five recommendations for maximising the relevance of social science research for public policy-making in the big data era https://ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk/five-recommendations-for-maximising-the-relevance-of-social-science-research-for-public-policy-making-in-the-big-data-era/ Understanding public policy online Mon, 07 Dec 2020 14:25:40 +0000 hourly 1 By: Simone Gabbriellini https://ensr.oii.ox.ac.uk/five-recommendations-for-maximising-the-relevance-of-social-science-research-for-public-policy-making-in-the-big-data-era/#comment-26 Wed, 06 Nov 2013 15:41:31 +0000 http://blogs.oii.ox.ac.uk/policy/?p=2196#comment-26 Dear Helen,

I read your post with enthusiasm, I do agree with your view on how social scientists should evolve their skills. I am a sociologist and I work in the agent-based modeling field, so I had to pick up a lot of computer sciences skills in order to manage data and run computational models.
When I was working on my PhD, it was hard to find other sociologists who were skilled in computer science (at least in Italy), so I learned mainly by asking questions on mailing lists, reading books and by errors.
After 8 years I think a have mastered a lot, and occasionally I have the chance to give some of this back to young students… but more is needed and Social Sciences Departments ought to deal with this fact: students need to learn how to program, other than run statistical softwares.

Best regards,
Simone

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