Understanding Research
Description
Understanding Research is an accessible and visually-appealing introduction to research. Whether students become producers or consumers of research, this text shows them that the subject is both interesting and highly relevant for their lives and professional work.
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Content
IN THIS SECTION:
1.) BRIEF
2.) COMPREHENSIVE
BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter 1: Why Do Research?
Chapter 2: Planning A Study
Chapter 3: Becoming An Ethical Researcher
Chapter 4: Sampling, How To Select A Few To Represent The Many
Chapter 5: Measuring Social Life, How Many? How Much? What Type?
Chapter 6: The Survey: Asking People Questions
Chapter 7: The Experiment
Chapter 8: Research With Non-Reactive Measures
Chapter 9: Making Sense Of The Numbers
Chapter 10: Observing People In Natural Settings
Chapter 11: Looking At The Past And Across Cultures
Chapter 12: Writing A Research Report
Appendices
COMPREHENSIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS:
Chapter 1: Why do research?
On What Basis Do You Make Decisions?
How Do We Know What We Know?
What is Empirical Social Research?
Fit the Question You Want to Answer With a Type of Social Research
Steps in the Research Process
What have you learned?
Applying what you learned.
Chapter 2: Planning a Study
Picking a Study Topic
Conducting a Review Past Studies
Focusing on a Research Question
The Research Proposal
Chapter 3: Becoming an Ethical Researcher
The Ethical Imperative
Scientific Misconduct
Ethical Issues Involving Research Participants
Ethics and the Sponsors of Research
Politics of Research
Value-Free and Objective Research
Chapter 4: Sampling, How to select a few to represent the many
How and Why do Samples Work?
Focusing on at a specific group: four types of non-random samples
Coming to Conclusions about Large Populations
Three Specialized Sampling Techniques
Inferences from a Sample to a Population
What Have You Learned?
Chapter 5: Measuring Social Life, How Many? How Much? What Type?
Why Measure?
Making Aspects of the Social World Visible
Measuring with Numbers or Words
How to Create Good Measures: Reliability and Validity
A Guide to Quantitative Measures
How to create an Index
How to create a Scale
What have you Learned?
Chapter 6: The Survey: Asking People Questions
What is a Social Survey?
How to Conduct a Survey
Writing Good Survey Questions
Effective Questionnaire Design Tips
Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Survey Formats
Survey Interviewing
Chapter 7: The Experiment
Doing Experiments in Everyday Life
What Questions Can You Answer with the Experimental Method?
Why Assign People Randomly?
Do You Speak the Language of Experimental Design?
Experimental Validity Inside and Out
What You Can See In Experimental Results with Comparison
How to be Ethical in Experiments
What did you Learn?
Chapter 8: Research With Non-Reactive Measures
Analyzing Physical Evidence for Clues About Social Life
Revealing the Content Buried Within Communication Messages
Mining Existing Statistical Sources to Answer New Questions
Answering New Questions Using Survey Data Collected by Others
Conducting Ethical Non-Reactive Research
Chapter 9: Making Sense of the Numbers
What to do once you have the numbers
How to Describe Quantitative Results
Inferring from Statistics
Conclusion
Chapter 10: Observing People in Natural Settings
What is Field Research?
Studying People in