Research Design In Social Research

The book provides the reader with an understanding of the importance of research design and its place in the research process; describes the main types of research designs in social research; explains the logic and purposes of design to enable students to evaluate particular research strategies; equips students with the design skills to operate in real-world research situations.

This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of conducting scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. This book is currently used as a research text at universities on six continents and will shortly be available in nine different languages.

This book presents different research designs, their respective purposes and merits as well as their underlying assumptions. Research designs are characterised by a certain combination of knowledge aims and strategies for data production. An adequate design is the key to carrying out a successful research project. Nevertheless, the literature on design is scarce, compared to the literature on methods. This book clarifies the basic distinction between variable-oriented designs and case designs, and proceeds to integrated, comparative and intervention-oriented designs. A step-by-step guide to the design process and the choices to make is also included. The book's clear style makes it an excellent guide for master students and PhD students doing their first research exercises, while it is also useful for more experienced researchers who want to broaden their design repertoire and keep up to recent innovations in the field of research design.

Research design is of critical importance in social research, despite its relative neglect in many methods resources. Early consideration of design in relation to research questions leads to the elimination or diminution of threats to eventual research claims, by encouraging internal validity and substantially reducing the number of alternative explanations for any finite number of research ′observations′. This new book: discusses the nature of design; gives an introduction to design notation; offers a flexible approach to new designs; looks at a range of standard design models; and presents craft tips for real-life problems and compromises. Most importantly, it provides the rationale for preferring one design over another within any given context. Each section is illustrated with case studies of real work and concludes with suggested readings and topics for discussion in seminars and workshops, making it an ideal textbook for postgraduate research methods courses. Based on the author′s teaching on the ESRC Doctoral Training Centre "Masters in Research Methods" at the University of Birmingham, and his ongoing work for the ESRC Researcher Development Initiative, this is an essential text for postgraduate researchers and academics. There is no book like Research Design on the market that addresses all of these issues in an easy to comprehend style, for those who want to design research and make critical judgements about the designs of others.

Textbook on the research methodology of social research - covers research models, theories, measurement, simulation, samples and estimates, data collecting, interviewing and use of questionnaires, descriptive and explanatory analysis, etc. Bibliography pp. 269 to 274.

Designing Social Research is a uniquely comprehensive and student-friendly guide to the core knowledge and types of skills required for planning social research. The authors organize the book around four major steps in social research – focusing, framing, selecting and distilling – placing particular emphasis on the formulation of research questions and the choice of appropriate 'logics of inquiry' to answer them. The requirements for research designs and proposals are laid out at the beginning of the book, followed by a discussion of key design issues and research ethics. Four sample research designs on environmental issues illustrate the role of research questions and the application of the four logics of inquiry, and this third edition includes new material dedicated to social research in a digital, networked age. Fully revised and updated, Designing Social Research continues to be an invaluable resource to demystify the research process for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Together with the authors' Social Research: Paradigms in Action and Blaikie's Approaches to Social Enquiry, it offers social scientists an informative guide to designing social research.

Research Design: The Logic of Social Inquiry is a collection of critical writings on different aspects of social research. They have been carefully selected for the variety of approaches they display in relation to three broad styles of research: experimental, survey, and ethnographic. All are classic contributions to the development of methodology and excellent expositions of particular procedures. The book is organized in sections that detail the methods of a typical experimental research program design, data collection, and data analysis. These five sections include The Language of Social Research, Research Design, Data Collection, Measurement, and Data Analysis and Report. Each is preceded by an introduction stressing the unique strengths of the different viewpoints represented and reconciling them in one coherent approach to research. The volume includes displays of philosophical underpinnings of different methodological styles and important issues in research design. Data collection methods, particularly the problem of systematic bias in the data collected, and ways in which researchers may attempt to reduce it, are discussed. There is also a discussion on measurement in which the central issues of reliability, validity, and scale construction are detailed. This kind of synthesis, between such diverse schools of research as the experimentalists and the ethnographers, is of particular concern to social researchers. The book will be of great value to planners and researchers in local government and education departments and to all others engaged in social science or educational research.