
Social Research Methods
Qualitative, Quantitative and Mixed Methods Approaches
- 656 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About this book
Framing research as the process of asking and answering questions, this book demonstrates how to identify good research questions and how to structure and explore them successfully. Whether you are just beginning your research journey or are a seasoned traveller, it helps you: • Decide what you want to achieve with your research
• Know what options you have to explore your goals
• Navigate the nuances of different research approaches
• Understand the decisions of other researchers
• Choose what path best suits your project. Through real-life examples demonstrating different types of research, the book introduces qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches so you can compare different methods at every stage of the research process, from initial idea and design to data collection and analysis. This new edition includes new chapters on collecting and analysing mixed methods data, and additional content on qualitative data analysis. New examples reflect the cultural and global diversity of social research, and extra visual aids and summaries support understanding of key research concepts and stages. The book is accompanied by an online teaching guide, including videos, additional case studies, annotated articles, and critical thinking exercises.
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Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Half Title
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Preface
- About the Author
- Your Online Resources
- Part I Researching society
- 1 How and why we study society
- 2 Methods and methodologies in social science
- 3 The ethics and politics of research
- Part II Designing social research
- 4 Creating research questions
- 5 Doing a literature review
- 6 Choosing a research design
- 7 Finding sources and data
- 8 Sampling
- PART III Data collection and data quality
- 9 Ethnography and participant observation
- 10 Structured observation
- 11 Unstructured interviews and focus groups
- 12 Questionnaires and surveys
- 13 Documentary sources and qualitative content analysis
- 14 Quantitative content analysis
- 15 Collecting qualitative and quantitative data: Comparisons and combinations
- 16 Data quality, reliability and validity
- Part IV Data analysis
- 17 Qualitative data analysis: Coding, categorization and concept development
- 18 Qualitative data analysis: Typologies, hypotheses and holistic understanding
- 19 Quantitative data analysis: Indexes and distributions
- 20 Quantitative data analysis: Relationships between variables
- 21 Generalizing empirical findings
- 22 Analysing qualitative and quantitative data: Comparisons and combinations
- Part V Asking and answering questions in social science
- 23 Description, explanation and understanding
- 24 Time, space and level
- 25 Relations, networks and structures
- 26 Big data and computational social science
- Part VI Writing and presenting research
- 27 Working with data visualization
- 28 Writing about research
- Glossary
- References
- Index