Mission & Charter

MethodNET’s Mission Statement

In a context of growing diversity and sophistication of social scientific methods, it is increasingly important to foster dialogue across methodological approaches. Methods training in specific methods and techniques is important, but it cannot stand alone. For social science to reap its potential, scholars also need to be trained in a pluralistic fashion to understand research across different methodological approaches.

It is also crucially important to promote more equitable access to methods training, given the increasing differentials between institutions in terms of in-house methods expertise, infrastructure and local training offer.

The Methods Excellence Network therefore pursues three overarching goals so that social scientific methods contribute to stronger scholarly work and to better address real-world issues:

1. Pluralism : contribute to/foster innovation and dialogue across social scientific methodologies, including in the training of scholars

2. Accessibility : provide and promote accessible world-class social science methodological education and methods training for researchers and professionals

3. Support : provide methodological support to the social science scholarly community and to professionals

The Methods Excellence Network constitutes a global community that provides an inclusive conversation and innovation space around research methods in academia, business, government and civil society.

MethodNET’s Charter: our guiding principles

  1. Methodological pluralism and inclusiveness: each one of the diverse social scientific methods, along with its epistemology, has its own added value and contribution for scholarly and applied work

  2. Informed methodological debates: we foster debates and cross-fertilization between methodologies

  3. Methodological innovation: we encourage the development of emerging methods and innovation within established methods, as well as the adoption of rigorous standards

  4. Disciplinary consolidation: we believe that methodological innovation, accompanied with cross-methods dialogue, contributes to the further consolidation of social scientific disciplines and to their contribution to addressing real-world issues

  5. Cross-disciplinary fertilization: we encourage methodological debates across social scientific disciplines

  6. Training accessibility: methodological education and methods training must be offered at an affordable cost, so that they are accessible to participants from diverse settings

  7. Career development: methodological education and methods training bring a distinctive contribution to professional skill-building and career building in academia and in diverse sectors

  8. Lifelong learning: upgrading one’s methodological knowledge and methods skills is worthwhile all along one’s career

  9. Methods training importance: besides self-learning and ‘learning by doing’, following formal methodological education and methods training is important to be able to exploit the full potential of a given method”

  10. Ethical standards and fundamental rights: we support scholarly ethical standards, data protection good practices, and compliance with fundamental human rights and with principles of non-discrimination, equity and inclusiveness


Updated, 17 September 2021