Hot Topics Archive

Past editions of Sage Research Methods Hot Topics can be accessed through the links below. The current Hot Topics page is updated quarterly with material linked to a new theme.


Social Media Research

Contents include a recent history and broad definition of social media research; opportunities to consider the ethical implications of collecting and analyzing social media posts; and sentiment analysis of online political activism as it unfolds in real time.


Critical Thinking

Learn about the importance of critical thinking skills for conducting rigorous social science research, evaluating and contextualizing knowledge, and achieving precision in understanding. This edition includes a case study on measuring critical thinking, and a dataset for analyzing the dialogue of primary school students learning how to think critically.


Child's drawing of home, from a case study on visual methods

Visual Methods & Data Visualization

Methods of focus include visual research, diary methods, photo elicitation and artistic inquiry, alongside contingency tables, log-linear models, frequency analysis and social media analysis.