Selecting Research Methods
1st Edition
Published on 23. October 2008
Book
Hardback
1640 pages
978-1-84787-180-0 (ISBN)
Description
Selecting Research Methods provides advice from prominent social scientists concerning the most crucial steps for planning and undertaking meaningful research: selecting the methods to be used. Contributors to the collection address methodological choices in four stages: design, sampling, coding and measurement, and analysis. The volumes provide an integrated approach to methodological choice in two ways. First, the contributions range from the early decisions about design options through the concluding choices about analyzing, interpreting, and presenting results. Second, the collection is integrated because it addresses the needs of projects that collect qualitative evidence, quantitative data, or both.
Volume 1 concerns design choice; the articles focus on selecting designs that are effective for answering research questions and achieving the goals of the researcher. Volume 2 is on sampling and includes, in addition to sampling from populations, advice on choosing methods for recruiting informants for interviews, selecting sites for participant observation, and assigning subjects to control and experimental groups. Volume 3 reviews options for coding and measurement; it emphasizes methodological choices that enable researchers to study concepts in ways that enhance the reliability and validity of the research. Finally, the articles included in Volume 4 review the range of choices available among methods to analyze results and interpret the meanings of evidence.
Volume 1 concerns design choice; the articles focus on selecting designs that are effective for answering research questions and achieving the goals of the researcher. Volume 2 is on sampling and includes, in addition to sampling from populations, advice on choosing methods for recruiting informants for interviews, selecting sites for participant observation, and assigning subjects to control and experimental groups. Volume 3 reviews options for coding and measurement; it emphasizes methodological choices that enable researchers to study concepts in ways that enhance the reliability and validity of the research. Finally, the articles included in Volume 4 review the range of choices available among methods to analyze results and interpret the meanings of evidence.
More details
Series
Edition
Four-Volume Set
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
2995 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84787-180-0 (9781847871800)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
W. Paul Vogt is Emeritus Professor of Research Methods and Evaluation at Illinois State University where he won both teaching and research awards. He specializes in methodological choice and program evaluation and is particularly interested in ways to integrate multiple methods. His other books include: Tolerance & Education: Learning to Live with Diversity and Difference (Sage Publications, 1998); Quantitative Research Methods for Professionals (Allyn & Bacon, 2007); Education Programs for Improving Intergroup Relations (coedited with Walter Stephan, Teachers College Press, 2004). He is also editor of four 4-volume sets in the series, Sage Benchmarks in Social Research Methods: Selecting Research Methods (2008); Data Collection (2010); Quantitative Research Methods (2011); and, with Burke Johnson, Correlation and Regression Analysis (2012).His most recent publications include the coauthored When to Use What Research Design (2012) and Selecting the Right Analyses for Your Data: Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches (2014).
Content
VOLUME 1: SELECTING DESIGNS FOR GATHERING EVIDENCE
Epistemological Diversity and Education Research: Much ado about nothing much?
The Poverty of Deductivism: A Constructive Realist Model Of Sociological Explanation - H. Siegel
A Tale Of Two Cultures: Contrasting Quantitative And Qualitative Research - P.S. Gorski
What Good is Polarizing Research into Qualitative and Quantitative? - J. Mahoney and G. Goertz
Integrating Survey and Ethnographic Methods for Systematic Anomalous Case Analysis - K. Ercikan and W.M. Roth
What Works and Why: Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches in large-scale evaluations - L.D. Pearce
Fieldwork, Economic Theory, and Research on Institutions in Developing Countries - I. Plewis and P. Mason
The Benefits of Being There: Evidence from the literature on work - C. Udry
Mapping the Process: An exemplar of process and challenge in grounded theory analysis - D. Tope, L.J. Chamberlain, M. Crowley and R. Hodson
Identity in Focus: The use of focus groups to study the construction of collective identity - B. Harry, K.M. Sturges and J.K. Klinger
Rational Choice, Structural Context, and Increasing Returns: A strategy for analytic narrative in historical sociology - J. Munday
The Growth and Development of Experimental Research in Political Science - N. Pedriana
The Logic of The Survey Experiment Reexamined - J.N. Druckman, Donald P. Green, J.H. Kuklinski and A. Lupia
The Role of Randomized Field Trials in Social Science Research - B.J. Gaines, J.H. Kuklinski, and P.J. Quirk
Naturally Occurring Preferences and Exogenous Laboratory Experiments: A case study of risk aversion - R.A. Moffitt
Understanding Interaction Models: Improving empirical analysis - G.W. Harrison, J.A. List and C. Towe
A Potential Outcomes View of Value-Added Assessment in Education - T. Brambor, W.R. Clark and M. Golder
What are Value-Added Models Estimating and what does this Imply for Statistical Practice? - D.B. Rubin, E.A. Stuart and E.L. Zanutto
VOLUME 2: METHODS TO SAMPLE, RECRUIT, AND ASSIGN CASES - S.W. Raudenbush
Recruitment for a Panel Study of Australian Retirees
The Difficulty of Identifying Rare Samples to Study: The case of schools divided into schools within schools - Y. Wells, W. Petralia, D. Devaus and H. Kendig
In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies - V.E. Lee, D.D. Ready and D.J. Johnson
Population Estimation without Censuses or Surveys: A discussion of mark-recapture methods - J. Henrich, R. Boyd, S. Bowles, C. Camerer, E. Fehr, H. Gintis and R. Mcelreath
A Different Kind of Snowball: Identifying Key Policymakers - M. Bloor
Sampling and Estimation in Hidden Populations Using Respondent-Driven Sampling - K. Farquharson
Sample Size: More than calculations - M.J. Salganik and D.D. Heckathorn
Sample Size Planning for the Standardized Mean Difference: Accuracy in parameter estimation via narrow confidence intervals - R.A. Parker and N.G. Bergman
Sufficient Sample Sizes for Multilevel Modeling - K. Kelley and J.R. Rausch
Two-Step Hierarchical Estimation: Beyond regression analysis - C.J.M. Maas and J.J. Hox
Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative Research - C.H. Achen
When Can History Be Our Guide? The pitfalls of counterfactual inference - E.S. Lieberman
The Possibility Principle: Choosing negative cases in comparative research - G. King and L. Zeng
Use of Extreme Groups Approach: A critical reexamination and new recommendations - J. Mahoney and G. Goertz
The Intervention Selection Bias: An underrecognized confound in intervention research - K.J. Preacher, R.C. Maccallum, D. Rucker and W.A. Nicewander
Getting the Most from Archived Qualitative Data: Epistemological, practical, and professional obstacles - R.E. Larzelere, B.R. Kuhn and B. Johnson
Whose Data are they Anyway? Practical, legal and ethical issues in archiving qualitative research data - N. Fielding
Recording Technologies and the Interview in Sociology, 1920-2000 - O. Parry and N.S. Mauthner
Toward An Open-Source Methodology: What we can learn from the blogosphere - R.M. Lee
Does Mode Matter for Modeling Political Choice? Evidence from the 2005 british election study - M.M. Blumenthal
Reaching Migrants in Survey Research: The use of global position system to reduce coverage bias in China - D. Sanders, H.D. Clarke, M.C. Stewart and P. Whitley
VOLUME 3: METHODS FOR CODING & MEASURING DATA - P.E. Landry, and M. Shen
Can there be Reliability without "Reliability"?
The Meaning and Consequences of "Reliability." - R.J. Mislevy
My Current Thoughts on Coefficient Alpha and its Successor Procedures - P.A. Moss
Reliability: Arguments for multiple perspectives and potential problems with generalization across studies - L.J. Cronbach
Reliability: A Rasch Perspective - D.M. Dimitrov
Instructional Program Coherence: What it is and why it should guide school improvement policy - R.E. Schumacker and E.V. Smith
Measurement Validity: A shared standard for qualitative and quantitative research - F.M. Newman, B. Smith, E. Allensworth and A.S. Bryk
What Good are Statistics that don't Generalize? - R. Adcock and D. Collier
Enhancing the Validity and Cross-Cultural Comparability of Measurement in Survey Research - D.W. Shaffer and R.C. Serlin
Death by Survey: Estimating Adult mortality without selection bias from sibling survival data - G. King, C.J.L. Murray, J.A. Salomon and A. Tandon
Ratings and Rankings: Reconsidering the structure of values and their measurement - E. Gakidou and G. King
A Lot More To Do: The sensitivity of time-series cross-section analyses to simple alternative specifications - S. Ovadia
Methods for Testing and Evaluating Survey Questions - S.E. Wilson and D.M. Butler
Research Synthesis: The practice of cognitive interviewing - S. Presser, M.P. Couper, J.T. Lessler, E. Martin, J. Martin, J.M. Rothgeb and E. Singer
Pretesting Experimental Instructions - P.C. Beatty and G.B. Willis
Use of Exploratory Factor Analysis in Published Research: Common errors and some comment on improved practice - L.S. Rashotte, M. Webster and J.M. Whitmeyer
Comparing Check-all and Forced-Choice Question Formats in Web Surveys - R.K. Henson and J.K. Roberts
Helping Respondents Get it Right the First Time: The influence of words, symbols, and graphics in web surveys - J.D. Smyth, D.A. Dillman, L.M. Christian and M.J. Stern
An Assessment of Alternative Measures of Time Use - L.M. Christian, D.A. Dillman and J.D. Smyth
Event History Calendars and Question List Surveys: A direct comparison of interviewing methods - F.T. Juster, H. Ono and F.P. Stafford
VOLUME 4: METHODS FOR ANALYSING AND REPORTING RESULTS - R.F. Belli, W.L. Shay and F.P. Stafford
The Contribution of Computer Software to Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Data Analysis
What do Economists Talk About? A linguistic analysis of published writing in economic journals - P. Bazeley
Dimension Reduction of Word-Frequency Data as a Substitute for Intersubjective Content Analysis - N. Goldschmidt and B. Szmrecsanyi
Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data - A.F. Simon and M. Xenos
TCQA: A Technique For Adding Temporality to Qualitative Comparative Analysis - M. Laver, K. Benoit and J. Garry
Reducing Complexity in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA): Remote and proximate factors and the consolidation of democracy - N. Caren and A. Panofsky
Fuzzy Sets and Social Research - C.O. Schneider and C. Wagemann
Causal Complexity and Party Preference - C.C Ragin and P. Pennings
Running a Best-Subsets Logistic Regression: An alternative to stepwise methods - G. Grendstad
Introduction to the Special Issue on Model Selection - J.E. King
Consider Propensity Scores to Compare Treatments - D.L. Weakliem
Remarks on the Analysis of Causal Relationships in Population Research - L.M. Rudner and J. Peyton
Statistical Inference and Patterns of Inequality in the Global North - R. Moffitt
Generalization in Qualitative Research - T.P. Moran
The Difference between 'Significant' and 'Not Significant' Is Not Itself Statistically Significant - G. Payne and M. Williams
Replication with Attention to Numerical Accuracy - A. Gelman and H. Stern
Diversity in Everyday Research Practice: The case of data editing - M. Altman and M.P. Mcdonald
Why We Need a Structured Abstract in Education Research - E. Leahey, B. Entwisle and P. Einaudi
Strengthening Structured Abstracts for Education Research: The need for claim-based structured abstracts - F. Mosteller, B. Nave and and E.J. Miech
A History of Effect Size Indices - A.E. Kelly and R.K. Yin
Epistemological Diversity and Education Research: Much ado about nothing much?
The Poverty of Deductivism: A Constructive Realist Model Of Sociological Explanation - H. Siegel
A Tale Of Two Cultures: Contrasting Quantitative And Qualitative Research - P.S. Gorski
What Good is Polarizing Research into Qualitative and Quantitative? - J. Mahoney and G. Goertz
Integrating Survey and Ethnographic Methods for Systematic Anomalous Case Analysis - K. Ercikan and W.M. Roth
What Works and Why: Combining quantitative and qualitative approaches in large-scale evaluations - L.D. Pearce
Fieldwork, Economic Theory, and Research on Institutions in Developing Countries - I. Plewis and P. Mason
The Benefits of Being There: Evidence from the literature on work - C. Udry
Mapping the Process: An exemplar of process and challenge in grounded theory analysis - D. Tope, L.J. Chamberlain, M. Crowley and R. Hodson
Identity in Focus: The use of focus groups to study the construction of collective identity - B. Harry, K.M. Sturges and J.K. Klinger
Rational Choice, Structural Context, and Increasing Returns: A strategy for analytic narrative in historical sociology - J. Munday
The Growth and Development of Experimental Research in Political Science - N. Pedriana
The Logic of The Survey Experiment Reexamined - J.N. Druckman, Donald P. Green, J.H. Kuklinski and A. Lupia
The Role of Randomized Field Trials in Social Science Research - B.J. Gaines, J.H. Kuklinski, and P.J. Quirk
Naturally Occurring Preferences and Exogenous Laboratory Experiments: A case study of risk aversion - R.A. Moffitt
Understanding Interaction Models: Improving empirical analysis - G.W. Harrison, J.A. List and C. Towe
A Potential Outcomes View of Value-Added Assessment in Education - T. Brambor, W.R. Clark and M. Golder
What are Value-Added Models Estimating and what does this Imply for Statistical Practice? - D.B. Rubin, E.A. Stuart and E.L. Zanutto
VOLUME 2: METHODS TO SAMPLE, RECRUIT, AND ASSIGN CASES - S.W. Raudenbush
Recruitment for a Panel Study of Australian Retirees
The Difficulty of Identifying Rare Samples to Study: The case of schools divided into schools within schools - Y. Wells, W. Petralia, D. Devaus and H. Kendig
In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral experiments in 15 small-scale societies - V.E. Lee, D.D. Ready and D.J. Johnson
Population Estimation without Censuses or Surveys: A discussion of mark-recapture methods - J. Henrich, R. Boyd, S. Bowles, C. Camerer, E. Fehr, H. Gintis and R. Mcelreath
A Different Kind of Snowball: Identifying Key Policymakers - M. Bloor
Sampling and Estimation in Hidden Populations Using Respondent-Driven Sampling - K. Farquharson
Sample Size: More than calculations - M.J. Salganik and D.D. Heckathorn
Sample Size Planning for the Standardized Mean Difference: Accuracy in parameter estimation via narrow confidence intervals - R.A. Parker and N.G. Bergman
Sufficient Sample Sizes for Multilevel Modeling - K. Kelley and J.R. Rausch
Two-Step Hierarchical Estimation: Beyond regression analysis - C.J.M. Maas and J.J. Hox
Nested Analysis as a Mixed-Method Strategy for Comparative Research - C.H. Achen
When Can History Be Our Guide? The pitfalls of counterfactual inference - E.S. Lieberman
The Possibility Principle: Choosing negative cases in comparative research - G. King and L. Zeng
Use of Extreme Groups Approach: A critical reexamination and new recommendations - J. Mahoney and G. Goertz
The Intervention Selection Bias: An underrecognized confound in intervention research - K.J. Preacher, R.C. Maccallum, D. Rucker and W.A. Nicewander
Getting the Most from Archived Qualitative Data: Epistemological, practical, and professional obstacles - R.E. Larzelere, B.R. Kuhn and B. Johnson
Whose Data are they Anyway? Practical, legal and ethical issues in archiving qualitative research data - N. Fielding
Recording Technologies and the Interview in Sociology, 1920-2000 - O. Parry and N.S. Mauthner
Toward An Open-Source Methodology: What we can learn from the blogosphere - R.M. Lee
Does Mode Matter for Modeling Political Choice? Evidence from the 2005 british election study - M.M. Blumenthal
Reaching Migrants in Survey Research: The use of global position system to reduce coverage bias in China - D. Sanders, H.D. Clarke, M.C. Stewart and P. Whitley
VOLUME 3: METHODS FOR CODING & MEASURING DATA - P.E. Landry, and M. Shen
Can there be Reliability without "Reliability"?
The Meaning and Consequences of "Reliability." - R.J. Mislevy
My Current Thoughts on Coefficient Alpha and its Successor Procedures - P.A. Moss
Reliability: Arguments for multiple perspectives and potential problems with generalization across studies - L.J. Cronbach
Reliability: A Rasch Perspective - D.M. Dimitrov
Instructional Program Coherence: What it is and why it should guide school improvement policy - R.E. Schumacker and E.V. Smith
Measurement Validity: A shared standard for qualitative and quantitative research - F.M. Newman, B. Smith, E. Allensworth and A.S. Bryk
What Good are Statistics that don't Generalize? - R. Adcock and D. Collier
Enhancing the Validity and Cross-Cultural Comparability of Measurement in Survey Research - D.W. Shaffer and R.C. Serlin
Death by Survey: Estimating Adult mortality without selection bias from sibling survival data - G. King, C.J.L. Murray, J.A. Salomon and A. Tandon
Ratings and Rankings: Reconsidering the structure of values and their measurement - E. Gakidou and G. King
A Lot More To Do: The sensitivity of time-series cross-section analyses to simple alternative specifications - S. Ovadia
Methods for Testing and Evaluating Survey Questions - S.E. Wilson and D.M. Butler
Research Synthesis: The practice of cognitive interviewing - S. Presser, M.P. Couper, J.T. Lessler, E. Martin, J. Martin, J.M. Rothgeb and E. Singer
Pretesting Experimental Instructions - P.C. Beatty and G.B. Willis
Use of Exploratory Factor Analysis in Published Research: Common errors and some comment on improved practice - L.S. Rashotte, M. Webster and J.M. Whitmeyer
Comparing Check-all and Forced-Choice Question Formats in Web Surveys - R.K. Henson and J.K. Roberts
Helping Respondents Get it Right the First Time: The influence of words, symbols, and graphics in web surveys - J.D. Smyth, D.A. Dillman, L.M. Christian and M.J. Stern
An Assessment of Alternative Measures of Time Use - L.M. Christian, D.A. Dillman and J.D. Smyth
Event History Calendars and Question List Surveys: A direct comparison of interviewing methods - F.T. Juster, H. Ono and F.P. Stafford
VOLUME 4: METHODS FOR ANALYSING AND REPORTING RESULTS - R.F. Belli, W.L. Shay and F.P. Stafford
The Contribution of Computer Software to Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Data Analysis
What do Economists Talk About? A linguistic analysis of published writing in economic journals - P. Bazeley
Dimension Reduction of Word-Frequency Data as a Substitute for Intersubjective Content Analysis - N. Goldschmidt and B. Szmrecsanyi
Extracting Policy Positions from Political Texts Using Words as Data - A.F. Simon and M. Xenos
TCQA: A Technique For Adding Temporality to Qualitative Comparative Analysis - M. Laver, K. Benoit and J. Garry
Reducing Complexity in Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA): Remote and proximate factors and the consolidation of democracy - N. Caren and A. Panofsky
Fuzzy Sets and Social Research - C.O. Schneider and C. Wagemann
Causal Complexity and Party Preference - C.C Ragin and P. Pennings
Running a Best-Subsets Logistic Regression: An alternative to stepwise methods - G. Grendstad
Introduction to the Special Issue on Model Selection - J.E. King
Consider Propensity Scores to Compare Treatments - D.L. Weakliem
Remarks on the Analysis of Causal Relationships in Population Research - L.M. Rudner and J. Peyton
Statistical Inference and Patterns of Inequality in the Global North - R. Moffitt
Generalization in Qualitative Research - T.P. Moran
The Difference between 'Significant' and 'Not Significant' Is Not Itself Statistically Significant - G. Payne and M. Williams
Replication with Attention to Numerical Accuracy - A. Gelman and H. Stern
Diversity in Everyday Research Practice: The case of data editing - M. Altman and M.P. Mcdonald
Why We Need a Structured Abstract in Education Research - E. Leahey, B. Entwisle and P. Einaudi
Strengthening Structured Abstracts for Education Research: The need for claim-based structured abstracts - F. Mosteller, B. Nave and and E.J. Miech
A History of Effect Size Indices - A.E. Kelly and R.K. Yin