Data Collection in Context

The further series sets out to examine the history, aims, techniques and limitations of social research, and it is hoped that it will be of interest to the same readership. It will seek to offer an informative but not uncritical introduction to some of the methodologies of social science. The major differences between the first edition and this are a new chapter explicating more fully the logic of variable analysis and measurement, and one discussing some of the recent developments in social research especially within interdisciplinary and applied contexts. Other chapters have been updated and sometimes given a different slant more in keeping with recent thinking on methodological matters. In many respects the focus on "data collection" at the expense of "data analysis" has been so artifically constraining that we have had to make more than just a little reference to the latter issues. The chapter on variable analysis, for example, could not be written purely as a discussion of data collection.