Services
Free (To You) Services
Research Conversations Request a Conversation
We provide up to 4 hours of FREE research methods advice and coaching each year to anyone doing or thinking about doing research (students, staff and faculty from any Faculty at McMaster, community-based researchers, those at other institutions) on any social research topic.
Access to Qualtrics (McMaster Faculty of Social Sciences only) Request Access
Spark manages licenses for Qualtrics survey software on behalf of the Faculty of Social Sciences for its faculty and students. To access a license, you must have a reason why Mac‘s default survey software – Limesurvey – won‘t work for your purposes.
Qualitative Suite Learn More
Available free to FSS faculty and graduate students (and at reasonable rates to others), we have a large room designed for focus groups and group observation studies and two smaller rooms designed for interviews.
CoLab Learn More
LR Wilson 5803 is set up as a co-working space available to all graduate students and faculty. In addition to a coffee bar, open work space, and conversation area, we have several private rooms that members can reserve.
Spark Talks & Video Repository Explore Talks
On Fridays from 10:30-11:20 during the school year, we host virtual research methods talks from fascinating researchers across the world working at the forefront of social research methods. We maintain an online archive on MacVideo with all talks covering most methods.
Research Toolkits Explore our Toolkits
Spark presents a curated, free resource for social science researchers – the Research Toolkits. Organized into seven key categories, including Basic Qualitative, Basic Quantitative, Empowerment and Equity, Computationally Intensive Quantitative, Addressing Complexity, Research Quality, and Knowledge Mobilization, these toolkits offer specialized resources and guidance to enhance various research methodologies. Ideal for students, faculty, and community researchers, they provide essential support for diverse research needs.
Classroom Presentations Request a Presentation
Spark‘s team is available to come into classes (both undergraduate and graduate) to discuss all things social research, do demos of methods or software, or lead students in an activity.
Services We Charge For
Brighter Spark Applied Research Learn More
Brighter Spark Applied Research is our applied research, evaluation and organizational change consulting company. We partner with not-for-profit organizations, social value businesses and governments to help them supercharge their impact with the power of evidence. Contact us for a free conversation and price quote.
SEAL Learn More
SEAL is a ‘data enclave‘ where sensitive or proprietary data can be stored with very low risk. Thanks to innovative remote access technology, you can access data with these protections from your own computer anywhere in the world. Researchers do their full analysis process from within this environment, with all major research software available on our virtual machines. We also work with data owners to establish governance around data access, and are a trusted site for many sensitive data sets from businesses, government, universities and not-for-profits. Prices start at $50/month.
Research Team Training & Coaching Learn More
Research Team Training & Coaching Principal Investigators sometimes find it hard to find the time to fully onboard new teams and teach them the needed methods or protocols. And of course, sometimes even the PI is learning the methods and building protocols for the first time. To ease the overwhelm, we provide custom training and coaching for research teams – from a few hours to as you need it over multiple years. We’ll work with PIs to not only do the training but make sure the processes and protocols are clear and agreed to, and that everything is working smoothly. That’s our measure of success. We charge $150/hour including prep time.
Direct Research Services Learn More
Our team can implement virtually any research method with exceptional quality, allowing you to focus where you add the most value. We don’t want to see your research suffer because you don’t have the help you need at a particular time. While subject to our own capacities, we can generally jump in quickly and perform necessary social research tasks including data gathering, literature review, data cleaning and wrangling in Stata or R, data visualization, and knowledge mobilization activities. All work is supervised by a highly experienced researcher. Rates start at $75/hour.
Research Impact & Knowledge Mobilization Evaluation Learn More
Some grants call for evaluation of the impact of the research/education activities. We are highly experienced at evaluating research impact and happy to contract with PIs needing to build this into their proposals. Contact us for a free conversation and price quote.
Workspace Learn More
Spark‘s lovely space is available for rent evenings and weekends. We will staff the space and are happy to coordinate parking, catering and other needs. Rates start at $75/hr.