Coinciding with this year's Congregations for General Admission to Degrees, being held on 29 and 30 June and 1 July, a new book associated with the Graduates of the Millennium project has just been published.

Coinciding with this year's Congregations for General Admission to Degrees, being held on 29 and 30 June and 1 July, a new book associated with the Graduates of the Millennium project has just been published.

The book discusses the research methods used by University of Cambridge social scientist Dr Chris Mann to track the fortunes of a group of students who entered the University in 1997 and who graduate this week. This project forms part of an equal opportunities initiative funded by the University and some individual colleges.

Dr Mann used e-mail to communicate with 200 undergraduates in a range of disciplines over the course of their degrees. The students offered diverse viewpoints on the 'Cambridge University Experience' by virtue of differences between their intellectual interests, social background, gender, and personalities. Dr Mann investigated the impact of the students' changing perceptions of their intellectual and social life at Cambridge on their academic choices and the fulfilment of their personal potential.

This innovative use of the Internet has been heralded as a breakthrough in research methods, as it updates traditional techniques such as paper-based surveys and face-to-face interviews for use with the new technology of cyberspace.

For full details of the project, and of the research methods used, see: Mann, C. and Stewart, F. (2000) Internet Communication and Qualitative Research: A Handbook for Researching Online, Sage Publications.

Further information:
Dr Chris Mann, Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, University of Cambridge. Fax: 44 1223 334550; E-mail: ccm10@cam.ac.uk


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