Research

This concise, hands-on book by author Elizabeth A. Wentz is essential reading for any graduate student entering the dissertation process in the social or behavioral sciences. The book addresses the importance of ethical scientific research, developing...

Taking the topics of a quantitative methodology course and illustrating them through Monte Carlo simulation, this book examines abstract principles, such as bias, efficiency, and measures of uncertainty in an intuitive, visual way. Instead of thinking in...

Strategies of Qualitative Inquiry, Fourth Edition is Volume II of the three-volume paperback versions of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Fourth Edition. This portion of the handbook consists of the topics addressed in "Part III: Strategies of...

First published Open Access under a Creative Commons license as What is Qualitative Longitudinal Research?, this title is now also available as part of the Bloomsbury Research Methods series. This volume offers a new introduction to an evolving...

The ego-net approach to social network analysis, which takes discrete individual actors and their contacts as its starting point, is one of the most widely used approaches in the field. This is the first textbook to take readers through each stage of...

Many health care practitioners and researchers are aware of the need to employ factor analysis in order to develop more sensitive instruments for data collection. Unfortunately, factor analysis is not a unidimensional approach that is easily understood...

This accessible, hands-on text has now been revised and updated, with expanded coverage of topics including how theory may emerge from exploratory data analysis. The book prepares graduate students, new researchers, and even seasoned investigators to...

The Craft of Political Research is a non-technical introduction to research design and analysis in political science, emphasizing the choices we make when we design a research project and analyze its results. The book's approach centers on asking an...

What forms of knowledge can social science claim to produce? Does it employ causal analysis, and if so what does this entail? What role should values play in the work of social scientists? These are the questions addressed in this book. They are...

For anyone in need of a concise, introductory guide to principle components analysis, this book is a must. Through an effective use of simple mathematical geometrical and multiple real-life examples (such as crime statistics, indicators of drug abuse,...

The past decade has seen increased attention to cost-effectiveness and benefit-cost analysis in education as administrators are being asked to accomplish more with the same or even fewer resources, philanthropists are keen to calculate their "return on...

For over twenty-five years, Charles C. Ragin has developed Qualitative Comparative Analysis and related set-analytic methods as a means of bridging qualitative and quantitative methods of research. Now, with Peer C. Fiss, Ragin uses these impressive new...

Scholars have long recognized that ethnographic method is bound up with the construction of theory in ways that are difficult to teach. The reason, Allaine Cerwonka and Liisa H. Malkki argue, is that ethnographic theorization is essentially...

The Second Edition of Qualitative Online Interviews provides researchers the guidance they need to extend the reach of their studies beyond physical boundaries. Focusing on designing, conducting, and assessing data drawn from online interviews as well as...

Students at postgraduate, and increasingly at undergraduate, level are required to undertake research projects and interviewing is the most frequently used research method. Interviewing for Social Scientists provides a comprehensive and authoritative...

This book guides you through designing and implementing an online experiment in social science research in a clear and straightforward manner. At an approachable pace, it covers foundational principles of good experimental design before setting out...

Web Survey Methodology guides the reader through the past fifteen years of research in web survey methodology. It both provides practical guidance on the latest techniques for collecting valid and reliable data and offers a comprehensive overview of...

This straightforward and original text sets out best practice for designing, conducting and analysing research on work with young people. A creative and practical guide to evaluation, it provides the tools needed to bridge the gap between theoretical...

Understanding Qualitative Research and Ethnomethodology provides a discussion of qualitative research methods from an ethnomethodological perspective. Detailed yet concise, Paul ten Have's text explores the complex relation between the more traditional...

Undercover research is an emotive and controversial field often equated with deception and transgression. Using classic examples and contemporary case studies this book challenges covert research's dispersed place within the social sciences and...

Spline Regression Models shows the nuts-and-bolts of using dummy variables to formulate and estimate various spline regression models. For some researchers this will involve situations where the number and location of the spline knots are known in...

This is the first accessible and practical guide to using multilevel models in social research. Multilevel approaches are becoming increasingly important in social, behavioral, and educational research and it is clear from recent developments that...

Focus Group Practice is unique in providing a picture of focus group moderation and interaction that is based on the study of what actually happens in high-class market research focus groups and in using recent theories of interaction, for example...

This distinctive, nuanced book addresses the more complex theoretical issues embedded in the qualitative research paradigm. Adopting a reflective stance that emphasises the role of the researcher it carefully avoids a standardised 'tick box' approach to...

This book is about doing discourse analysis. Its focus is on method, but the method is embedded in a wider theoretical perspective on social life, in the view of language as action, in the recognition that the social world revolves around talk (and...

Vera Toepoel's practical, how-to guide to doing surveys online takes you through the entire process of using surveys, from systematically recruiting respondents, to designing the internet survey, to processing the survey data and writing it up. This...

Qualitative and Mixed Methods Data Analysis Using Dedoose (R): A Practical Approach for Research Across the Social Sciences provides both new and experienced researchers with a guided introduction to dealing with the methodological complexity of mixed...

As policing has recently become a major topic of public debate, it is also a growing area of ethnographic research. Writing the World of Policing brings together an international roster of scholars who have conducted fieldwork studies of law enforcement...

Collecting and Interpreting Qualitative Materials, Fourth Edition is Volume III of the three-volume paperback versions of The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Fourth Edition. This portion of the handbook considers the tasks of collecting,...

Challenges and Solutions in Ethnographic Research: Ethnography with a Twist seeks to rethink ethnography 'outside the box' of its previous tradition and to develop ethnographic methods by critically discussing the process, ethics, impact and knowledge...

Much applied research takes place as if complex social problems--and evaluations of interventions to address them--can be dealt with in a purely technical way. In contrast, this groundbreaking book offers an alternative approach that incorporates...

"An extremely useful handbook for students and any newcomers to survey research."--NetworkRecent research has yielded many new clues about how survey questions "behave," and some of these findings have offered practical guidance for question writing...

Quality underpins the success (or failure) of any piece of qualitative research. In this book, Uwe Flick takes you through the steps in method and design to ensure quality and reliability throughout the entire research process. Showing hands-on what it...

Richard Krueger offers a rich and valuable discussion of focus group analysis that is sure to become a major guide in future focus group efforts. Because analyzing focus group data is different from analyzing data collected through other qualitative...

In an increasingly data-driven world, it is more important than ever for students as well as professionals to better understand basic statistical concepts. 100 Questions (and Answers) About Statistics addresses the essential questions that students ask...

'Researching young people's lives will be useful to both the novice researcher and anyone interested in learning about new methods of practice' - Youth Studies Australia Researching Young People's Lives provides an overview of some of the key...

This innovative book provides students and researchers alike with an indispensible introduction to the key theoretical issues and practical methods needed for data collection. It uses clear definitions, relevant interdisciplinary examples from around...

This important method provides researchers with a powerful and flexible new technique for analyzing the structure of relationships among categorically scored variables. Frequently described as a "categorical data analogue to factor analysis", the method...

"This is a first-class book dealing with one of the most important areas of current research in applied statistics...the methods described are widely applicable...the standard of exposition is extremely high." --Short Book Reviews from the International...

A comprehensive collection of contemporary and classical readings on sociological method, this book provides students with systematic analyses of each of the major strategies employed in sociological research. It may be used as a supplement or as the...