Messy and mixed: working with quant and qual data (partial recording)

Описание: Please note: This recording only contains the presentation by Simone Long. Cristian Heredia Ligorria has chosen not to make his presentation available to re-watch. If your are interested in speaking to Cristian about his research, please contact [email protected].

Session chair: Prof. Rich Harris, Professor of Quantitative Social Geography, University of Bristol; SWDTP Director

Analysing Mixed Ideologies Using Mixed Methods
Simone Long, PhD researcher at The University of Exeter
This presentation covers the research design utilised for examining different extremist forums on the internet. In particular, it discusses a multi-stage PhD project looking at ideological cross-pollination between the alt-right and extreme misogynistic
communities that combines quantitative and qualitative methods for looking at the various dimensions of extremist interaction and discourse online. Crucially, it covers the methodological challenges specific to this project, raising questions that are crucial to devising effective analytical approaches and sampling strategies for addressing conceptually difficult research questions like those concerning social phenomena

Making Sense of Messy Legal Data: Analysing Climate Litigation in
Latin America and the Caribbean
Speaker: Cristian Heredia Ligorria, PhD researcher in Socio-legal Studies at UWE Bristol
My doctoral research investigates rights-based climate litigation (RBCL) in Latin America and the Caribbean applying a socio-legal methodology and from a decolonial perspective. Chapter 3 of my thesis is grounded in the construction and analysis of a working dataset of 51 RBCL cases (as of November 2024). This process combined qualitative and quantitative methods to identify high-level trends, map actors (who litigates, against whom, and in what contexts), and develop a typology of cases.
The analysis presented several methodological challenges: the diversity of legal systems across the region, inconsistencies in reporting, language barriers, and the evolving nature of climate litigation. Data were cleaned and verified manually, drawing on databases such as the Sabin Center and supplemented by direct regional expertise.
Supervisory feedback, peer-reviewed collaborations, and external expert input were essential in refining the methodology and ensuring rigour.
This experience highlights both successes and the practical challenges of working with heterogeneous legal data, and offers lessons for socio-legal researchers conducting comparative data analysis in underexplored regions.