
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
"You might think that dancing doesn't have a lot to do with social research, and doing social research is probably why you picked this book up in the first place. But trust me. Salsa dancing is a practice as well as a metaphor for a kind of research that will make your life easier and better."
Savvy, witty, and sensible, this unique book is both a handbook for defining and completing a research project, and an astute introduction to the neglected history and changeable philosophy of modern social science. In this volume, Kristin Luker guides novice researchers in: knowing the difference between an area of interest and a research topic; defining the relevant parts of a potentially infinite research literature; mastering sampling, operationalization, and generalization; understanding which research methods best answer your questions; beating writer's block.
Most important, she shows how friendships, non-academic interests, and even salsa dancing can make for a better researcher.
"You know about setting the kitchen timer and writing for only an hour, or only 15 minutes if you are feeling particularly anxious. I wrote a fairly large part of this book feeling exactly like that. If I can write an entire book 15 minutes at a time, so can you."
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Information
Table of contents
- Contents
- 1 Salsa Dancing? In the Social Sciences?
- 2 What’s It All About?
- 3 An Ode to Canonical Social Science
- 4 What Is This a Case of, Anyway?
- 5 Reviewing the Literature
- 6 On Sampling, Operationalization, and Generalization
- 7 Getting Down to the Nitty-Gritty
- 8 Field (and Other) Methods
- 9 Historical-Comparative Methods
- 10 Data Reduction and Analysis
- 11 Living Your Life as a Salsa-Dancing Social Scientist
- Appendix One: What to Do If You Don’t Have a Case
- Appendix Two: Tools of the Trade
- Appendix Three: Special Resources for Specific Methods
- Appendix Four: Sample Search Log
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Author’s Note
- Acknowledgments
- Index