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Using everyday jargon-free language,Designing Social Research guides you through the jungle of setting up a research study. Ian Greener provides guidance on how to practically plan your research and helps you to understand the underpinning methodological principles that should inform your decisions about the methods you plan to use.

This is the perfect book for beginner students and new researchers looking to design a research project and make sense of and justify the many decisions that go into the research design process. It will help you to assess the appropriateness of a range of methods and to understand the strengths and limitations of different approaches to research.

Greener highlights key debates in the field, both philosophical and practical, and presents them in such a way that they remain constantly relevant to research practice of his readers. Coverage includes:

Framing an effective research question/problem; Examining the jargon of social research; The links between theory, methodology and method; The role of literature reviewing in research design; Managing and planning the research process; Sampling; Qualitative designs; Quantitative designs; Mixed methods designs; Data analysis.

Designing Social Research will be ideal first reading for undergraduates planning significant research projects for their dissertations. It will also be invaluable to first year PhD students considering how they will go about their research projects.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• List of tables(p. xi)
• About the author(p. xii)
• Acknowledgements(p. xiii)
• preface(p. xiv)
• 1 Introduction to social research design or what are you talking about?(p. 1)
• Introduction(p. 1)
• Defining terms(p. 1)
• Some general points about research questions(p. 7)
• Some other general guidelines(p. 10)
• Some practical examples of how questions, methods and philosophy combine(p. 11)
• What's the problem, and how are you going to research it?
• A logic of appropriateness(p. 18)
• Conclusion(p. 20)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 20)
• 2 Reviewing what other people have said or how can I tell if others research is any good?(p. 22)
• Introduction(p. 22)
• Nuts and bolts(p. 23)
• The hierarchy of evidence(p. 24)
• Reading efficiently and critically, and taking notes(p. 26)
• So is the study any good?(p. 27)
• Writing a review(p. 29)
• Conclusion(p. 34)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 35)
• Example Qualitative research and the evidence base of policy(p. 35)
• 3 Surveys and questionnaires or how can I conduct research with people at a distance?(p. 38)
• Introduction(p. 38)
• The use of questionnaires the best (and worst) of quantitative (and qualitative) social research(p. 38)
• Surveys and questionnaires(p. 38)
• Perspectives on questionnaires(p. 39)
• Designing questionnaires(p. 41)
• Open and closed responses(p. 42)
• Getting questions really clear(p. 44)
• Common response forms(p. 47)
• Questionnaire design(p. 48)
• Analysing and reporting questionnaire responses(p. 49)
• Reflexivity and questionnaires(p. 50)
• Contentious issues(p. 51)
• Conclusion - working with the good and bad of questionnaires(p. 52)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 53)
• Example - The Paradox of Choke(p. 54)
• 4 Elements of quantitative design: sampling and statistics or what can I do with numbers?(p. 55)
• Introduction(p. 55)
• Numbers and their importance(p. 55)
• What are numbers good for?(p. 57)
• The philosophy of quantitative research(p. 58)
• Sampling(p. 62)
• Some issues in quantitative analysis basic descriptive statistics(p. 67)
• Conclusion(p. 70)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 71)
• Example - Super Crunchers(p. 71)
• 5 Ethnography as a research approach or what do I gain from watching people and talking to them?(p. 73)
• Introduction(p. 73)
• What is ethnography?(p. 74)
• When would I want to use an ethnography?(p. 74)
• What does it mean to conduct an ethnography?(p. 75)
• Philosophical debates around ethnography(p. 79)
• What do the differences in approach mean for the resulting ethnography?(p. 81)
• What kind of research does an ethnographic research project produce?(p. 83)
• How can you increase the chance of doing good ethnographic research?(p. 85)
• Conclusion - getting close or producing useless knowledge?(p. 89)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 90)
• Example - Reading Ethnographic Research(p. 90)
• 6 Dealing with qualitative data - or what should I do with all these words?(p. 93)
• Introduction(p. 93)
• The aims of qualitative research(p. 94)
• Grounded theory, coding and generalisation(p. 95)
• The mechanics of grounded theory(p. 96)
• Discourse analysis and its variants(p. 99)
• Quantitative approaches to textual analysis(p. 101)
• Analysing documents(p. 102)
• What are the criteria for a good qualitative analysis?(p. 104)
• Truth in social research(p. 106)
• Conclusion - finding appropriate methods for dealing with your data(p. 108)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 110)
• Example - The Body Multiple(p. 110)
• 7 Causality in your research or how deep should ontology go?(p. 112)
• Introduction(p. 112)
• Ontology and depth(p. 113)
• Science, method and causality(p. 113)
• Constant conjunction(p. 114)
• The world is flat(p. 115)
• Going deeper(p. 117)
• Levels of analysis(p. 120)
• Conclusion - how deep do you need to go?(p. 122)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 123)
• Example - Rogue Traders and financial losses(p. 124)
• 8 Dealing with time and control or what time period suits my research, and how do I stop the world from interfering in it?(p. 125)
• Introduction(p. 125)
• How does social research deal with time?(p. 125)
• Phenomenology and process philosophy researching the present(p. 126)
• History and political science - researching the past(p. 127)
• What time frame fits your research, and how does time affect what you can say?(p. 129)
• The openness (and closedness) of systems(p. 131)
• A way around the problem of the experimental method - scale and sampling(p. 135)
• What are case studies for - an aid to generalisation or an analysis of power and expertise?(p. 137)
• Conclusion - time and control in social research(p. 138)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 140)
• Example - accounts of the financial crisis(p. 140)
• 9 Ethics - or what practices are appropriate in my research?(p. 142)
• Introduction(p. 142)
• The importance of ethics in research(p. 143)
• The official line - what bodies such as the ESRC have to say(p. 145)
• Questioning the official line or is it even possible to follow all these ethical principles?(p. 148)
• The importance of balance and appropriateness in ethics(p. 150)
• Different perspectives on ethics(p. 151)
• Conclusion - doing what's right and doing what's ethical(p. 153)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 154)
• Example - 'Teenagers telling sectarian stories'(p. 155)
• 10 Writing up your research or what can I say I've found?(p. 157)
• Introduction(p. 157)
• The differences between description, analysis and argument(p. 157)
• Making an argument - what have you found out?(p. 160)
• The bases of good arguments(p. 160)
• Supporting a conclusion(p. 161)
• Other concerns with arguments(p. 164)
• Deductive and inductive arguments(p. 167)
• Structuring a piece of writing to bring out your argument(p. 169)
• Conclusion - writing up research so that it is clear to you (and to everyone else)(p. 172)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 173)
• 11 Writing up reviews and putting together proposals or can you provide some examples of all of this?(p. 174)
• Introduction(p. 174)
• Putting together a literature review(p. 174)
• The role of the literature review(p. 175)
• Doing a literature review(p. 176)
• Exclusion and systematic review(p. 177)
• Exclusion and realist review(p. 178)
• Putting together a research proposal(p. 183)
• Conclusion - the skills of being a practising researcher(p. 189)
• Five things to remember about this chapter(p. 190)
• 12 Conclusion - or getting on with social research(p. 191)
• Introduction(p. 191)
• Others' claims as a basis for your own work(p. 192)
• Defining the job at hand(p. 192)
• Designing research that is appropriate for the job at hand(p. 193)
• Mixing methods(p. 194)
• Being careful with data and with ethics(p. 197)
• Writing it all up(p. 197)
• Conclusion - doing research well(p. 198)
• Example - Ladbroke Grove(p. 198)
• Glossary(p. 201)
• References(p. 203)
• Index(p. 206)

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Ian Greener is a Professor in the Schoolof Applied Social Sciences at Durham Universitywhere he leads the provision of research methods teaching on ESRC-accreditedcourses. Prior to this he worked for a number of UK Higher EducationUniversities including Manchester and York in Business Schools and SocialScience Departments. His main research interest is trying to keep up with thehectic pace of public sector reform both in the UK and internationally, using arange of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research strategies toexamine continuity and change in public services, and which has led to books onthe history of the NHS and public management, and over fifty articles publishedin a range of international peer-reviewed journals.

Ian lives in York where he spends his time trying to stophis children, Bethany, Emily and Anna, from spending what remains of his money,and walking a spaniel his wife insists he must grow to like. He likes good redwine, Strictly Come Dancing, and co mputers that work.