Critical approaches and innovative methodologies

A major objective of most INED research studies is to establish precise descriptions or explanations of demographic and social phenomena. However, many studies in this fifth main research area include critical discussion of concepts, approaches, and data used. Critical thinking of this kind will be especially important and valuable in the 2026-2030 period, intervening as it does in a context of intense methodological innovation—due in part to the potential of AI—where new methods are used to handle increasingly diverse and in some cases "big" (massive-scale) data.