Research Books - Page 5

Doing a Literature Review: Releasing the Social Science Research Imagination (Published in association with The Open University)

Christopher Hart

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 9 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

so good my advisor is going to use it 5 out of 5 stars.
10 of 12 people found this review helpful.

This book is great. It has all you need to complete a research paper at any level. I used it for my bachelor's project which, according to my advisor, is equivalent to a Master's thesis in content requirement. My advisor has asked me to lend him the book so he can use it to revise the current research manual supplied by the college. This book is easy to read and has a lot of useful tables and charts.

Great Resource for the Dissertation 4 out of 5 stars.
8 of 11 people found this review helpful.

I found this book to be a great resource as I am doing research for my dissertation. It has helped me to look at the lit review in a new light and has given me several ideas of others avenues to search.

A good guide on how to analyze ideas and synthesize new ones 3 out of 5 stars.
6 of 6 people found this review helpful.

Hart's material will benefit anyone who needs to develop and demonstrate their expertise on a topic. He describes how the review contributes to the defense of a research topic and its findings, at the master's and doctoral levels. He presents examples of what thesis and dissertation boards look for in research proposals and papers.

The book describes techniques to extract clues about theories and methods a researcher used. Hart provides excellent guidance on how to analyze the literature on a topic, develop a map of ideas, and synthesize a new contribution.

Anyone who wants to develop their skills as a researcher, or student, should definitely purchase this book. I also shared many of this book's insights with my friends, who are not researchers.

Although I strongly recommend the book, I only rate it 3 stars. The book is unorganized, and the writing is poor.

In an example from Chapter 4, Hart presents a table of 19 common fallacies. The first column presents the type of fallacy (in no logical or methodical order). He titles the second column "What it is and how to avoid it" but only the first entry presents any "how to avoid it" data. The remaining 18 entries have no advice on avoidance.

I also felt some diagrams present no useful information; and his prose rambles and repeats itself. In short, Hart gives us dynamite information, but it is frustrating to sort through its sloppy presentation.

Editorial Review:

Doing a Literature Review offers students from across the social sciences and humanities a practical and comprehensive guide to writing a literature review. It takes the reader through the initial states of an undergraduate dissertation or postgraduate thesis.

Writing for Social Scientists: How to Start and Finish Your Thesis, Book, or Article (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing and Publishing)

Howard S. Becker

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Total reviews: 14 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Social scientists, whether earnest graduate students or tenured faculty members, clearly know the rules that govern good writing. But for some reason they choose to ignore those guidelines and churn out turgid, pompous, and obscure prose. Distinguished sociologist Howard S. Becker, true to his calling, looks for an explanation for this bizarre behavior not in the psyches of his colleagues but in the structure of his profession. In this highly personal and inspirational volume he considers academic writing as a social activity.

Both the means and the reasons for writing a thesis or article or book are socially structured by the organization of graduate study, the requirements for publication, and the conditions for promotion, and the pressures arising from these situations create the writing style so often lampooned and lamented. Drawing on his thirty-five years' experience as a researcher, writer, and teacher, Becker exposes the foibles of the academic profession to the light of sociological analysis and gentle humor. He also offers eminently useful suggestions for ways to make social scientists better and more productive writers. Among the topics discussed are how to overcome the paralyzing fears of chaos and ridicule that lead to writer's block; how to rewrite and revise, again and again; how to adopt a persona compatible with lucid prose; how to deal with that academic bugaboo, "the literature." There is also a chapter by Pamela Richards on the personal and professional risks involved in scholarly writing.

In recounting his own trials and errors Becker offers his readers not a model to be slavishly imitated but an example to inspire. Throughout, his focus is on the elusive work habits that contribute to good writing, not the more easily learned rules of grammar and punctuation. Although his examples are drawn from sociological literature, his conclusions apply to all fields of social science, and indeed to all areas of scholarly endeavor. The message is clear: you don't have to write like a social scientist to be one.

Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process (Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehen)

Kjell Erik Rudestam, Rae R. Newton

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Total reviews: 11 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Like the previous editions of this bestselling text, Surviving Your Dissertation: A Comprehensive Guide to Content and Process, Third Edition offers readers guidance that other dissertation guides often miss, from ways to improve one's writing, to identifying one's learning preferences, to dealing with emotional blocks. Using examples from a wide range of disciplines, the authors give readers expert advice on the entire dissertation process: selecting a suitable topic; conducting a literature review; managing data overload; building an argument; presenting the material, data, and results; and working with faculty committees. The entire text has been updated and fresh examples have been added to it. This edition features an up-to-the-minute discussion of online research and the use of software packages. The authors have expanded their coverage of qualitative work, and added information about the use of mixed methods to the book. These updates and more make the Third Edition of Surviving Your Dissertation a must have resource for graduate students.

Key Features of the Third Edition:

• Walks readers through the dissertation process as an ideal mentor would.
• Devotes more attention to qualitative work, and touches upon mixed methods.
• Discusses online library resources and completing one’s dissertation via the Internet.
• Features new material on the use of graphics.
• Includes information about informed consent forms.

(20080807)

The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research

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Total reviews: 7 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research, Third Edition, represents the state of the art for the theory and practice of qualitative inquiry. Built on the foundations of the landmark First and Second Editions (1994, 2000), the Third Edition moves qualitative research boldly into the 21st century. The editors and authors ask how the practices of qualitative inquiry can be used to address issues of social justice in this new century.

As with the Second Edition, the Third Edition represents virtually a new handbook. There are 14 totally new topics not touched upon in previous editions, including, among others, indigenous research, institutional review boards and human subject research, critical and performance ethnography, arts-based inquiry, narrative inquiry, Foucault, the ethics and strategies of on-line research, cultural and investigative poetics, and the politics of evaluation. More than half of the 45 chapters are written by authors new to the Handbook. Returning authors have thoroughly revised and updated their chapters. The organization is clear and sensible, moving from the general to the specific and from the past to the present and the future.

The SAGE Handbook of Qualitative Research is far-reaching and comprehensive, featuring a virtual "Who's Who" in the human sciences. It is an absolutely essential text for any scholar interested in the art, science, and practice of qualitative research, as well as a critical resource for all academic and public libraries.

Praise for Previous Editions

“This book is a must for anyone teaching, or wishing to better understand, qualitative research. This handbook is destined to be a classic text in the field of qualitative research that belongs on every student’s and researcher’s bookshelf.”
-HARVARD EDUCATIONAL REVIEW

“This may well be ‘the one book on qualitative research’ that one would want to take ‘to a desert island,’ as the editors hope.”
-JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY ETHNOGRAPHY

(20050914)

The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research

Barney G. Glaser, Anselm Strauss

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Total reviews: 6 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Experimental and theoretical investigations 2 out of 5 stars.
7 of 22 people found this review helpful.

A. The term "theory" is used to mean many different things as can be seen in dictionaries. Even a simple guess of which the origin is ignored by the guesser and which has no proof can be called a theory. Consequently, there is a general distrust of theories even among scientists, and one often hears the slighting remark "it's only a theory." This attitude is most conspicuous in human sciences, such as psychology and sociology, for example. There was even a period during which theory construction was prohibited in those disciplines as pointed out by the authors in relation to sociology: "Those who still wished to generate theory had to brook the negative, sometimes punitive, attitudes of their colleagues or professors" (p. 10). So, the authors' aim appears to be to find a method of theory construction that will produce theories that are "grounded" in experimental data and therefore cannot be derogated as "only a theory." In reality, a theory has to be based on, or "grounded in," experimental data to be considered scientific. The real issue is how the grounding has to be done. We will see what the authors recommend and what physicists did an still do.

The authors do not explain what they mean by "theory," and instead, they say that the kind of theory constructed with the method advocated by them "provides us with relevant predictions, explanations, interpretations, and applications" (p. 1). What they overlook is that empirical knowledge too does the same things. Thus, the authors appear not to see the difference between empirical knowledge and scientific theories, and between experimental and theoretical methods of scientific investigation. This insufficiency is apparent even in the title of their book: "The discovery of grounded theory." The laws of nature can be experimentally discovered, but a theory is not something that exists in nature and can be experimentally discovered. A theory is constructed using the appropriate and unique method and is then tested, as explained below.

The authors' insufficiency in differentiating between experimental and theoretical investigations is reflected also in the second part of their book's title: "strategies for qualitative research." The term "research" indicates experimental investigation more often than theory construction, as in the nomenclature of The American Psychological Association, for example. So, the authors seem to say in the title of their book that reliable theories can be discovered by using adequate research strategies, which they will explain. Their text supports this view.

"We argue in our book for grounding theory in social research itself - for generating it from the data" (p. viii). "We believe that the discovery of theory from data - which we call grounded theory - is a major task confronting sociology today" (p. 1). "The basic theme in our book is the discovery of theory from data systematically obtained from social research" (p. 2). The issues involved in generating grounded theory from the data are listed as follows: "sampling, coding, reliability, validity, indicators, frequency distributions, conceptual formulation, construction of hypotheses, and presentation of evidence" (p. viii). The key issues are "construction of hypotheses" and "presentation of evidence."

B. The construction of hypotheses is explained thus: "The comparison of differences and similarities among groups not only generates categories, but also rather speedily generates generalized relations between them. It must be emphasized that these hypotheses..." (p. 39). So, "generalized relations" constitute hypotheses and are derived from the data. The authors also talk about "many levels of generality," "working" or "ordinary" hypotheses, "theoretical" hypotheses, and their integration (p. 40), but they do not clarify what they precisely mean.

Physicists are experts in theory construction but do not write about its method, because it looks most natural to them, for the reason mentioned below. It is only said that a theory is constructed by integrating at least one hypothesis with known facts. At the end of his book Principia, Newton explained very briefly the beginning of the process of theory construction and illustrated the rest of it by constructing his theory of mechanics. Judging from what Newton and other great theoreticians of physics said and/or did, hypotheses are framed in physics as explained by the authors (p. 39), but a hypothesis leads to theory construction only when it is generalized to cover phenomena of which the data do not allow the deduction of that hypothesis, contrary to the author's belief. For example, Newton assumed that, in accordance with his third law of motion, the Earth was attracting the Sun with the same force with which the Sun was attracting the Earth, even though this cannot be deduced directly from empirical data without using Newton's theory, i.e., it cannot be proved through direct measurement. A theory is made up of some basic statements, or laws, which contain at least one hypothesis that cannot be deduced from the analysis of every phenomenon to which it applies; when it is used to study a particular phenomenon, these laws are integrated with knowledge about that phenomenon. "Integration" means in this context deducing common consequences from the laws and the particulars of the phenomenon that is studied theoretically. All this means that the authors' explanation of the generation of hypotheses is valid only concerning a hypothesis that turns to empirical knowledge by being deduced from the data related to every phenomenon to which the hypothesis is supposed to apply and which is used to test it. Thus, the authors' conception of the generation of hypotheses is not valid in theory construction.

C. In relation to the "presentation of evidence," the authors require "an excessive piling of evidence to establish a proof" (p. 40). What they mean by this becomes clear when they explain the verification of some hypotheses, or hypothetical theories, on pages 119-131 and elsewhere. In each one of their examples, the verification is done by showing that the hypothesis, or the theory, is seen to be valid about a particular phenomenon, meaning that it can be deduced from the data related to that phenomenon. What the authors overlook is that when a hypothesis, or theory, can be deduced from the data related to every phenomenon to which it applies, it stops being a hypothesis or a theory and becomes empirical knowledge, as mentioned. For example, when ice is heated, it turns to water. This causal relation can be adopted as a hypothesis when it is observed for the first time; but after it is observed each time ice is heated, it becomes empirical knowledge. In opposition to this, a scientific theory contains at least one hypothesis that cannot be deduced from the data related to every phenomenon to which it is supposed to apply, as mentioned above. For example, the equations of the electromagnetic theory as they existed before Maxwell were not considered a theory but a group of empirical knowledge. They became "the electromagnetic theory" after Maxwell added to one of them the hypothetical term related to displacement currents which are not detected in any way even today. Because a theory contains at least one hypothesis that cannot be deduced from the data related to every phenomenon to which it is assumed to apply, it cannot be deduced from such data by definition. A theoretical hypothesis, or a theory, is tested not by deducing it from the data but by deducing some of its consequences from the data, which also means that the data support the consequences of the hypothesis or theory. Some scientists, notably psychologists, believe that untested hypotheses have no scientific value. The truth is that it is precisely non-testable hypotheses that make theories possible. Such hypotheses become tested together with the theory to which they belong - through their consequences that are supported by empirical data, which also means that those consequences can be deduced also from the data.

D. So, what the authors call "grounded theory" is in reality empirical knowledge, both because of the generation of its hypotheses and its verification. They ignore what a theory is and how it is constructed and tested. Worse than that, because they present the acquisition of empirical knowledge as theory construction, they close the door to real theory construction although they acknowledge the lack of, and the need for, theories in social sciences. However, the authors cannot be blamed for this mistake, because the process by which the grand theories of physics have been constructed, and are still constructed, is not explained in detail anywhere in the literature. This is a shameful blind spot of some disciplines of science and prevents progress in them. In my books, I have explained the method of theory construction in detail on the basis of what the great theoreticians of physics have said and done, profiting also from the views of Bertrand Russell, and I presented many examples of theories constructed using this method, including a psychological theory of automatic responses such as the symptoms of non-organic mental disorders, dreams, cerebral lateralization as a structural response, etc.

In reality, the method of theory construction is built into the brain/mind by evolution and is used by everyone automatically in daily life because of its survival value. Physicists have been the first scientists to use that method consciously, beginning with Newton.

E. So, the book of Glaser and Strauss explains not how scientific (reliable and respectable) theories are constructed but how fruitful research (experimental investigation) can be conducted. It may deserve five stars concerning the "strategies for qualitative research" and also as an illustration of the general ignorance reigning in social sciences about what a scientific theory is, how it is constructed, and how it is tested; but as a book about the construction of scientific theories, it deserves five black holes.

Editorial Review:

This volume is directed toward closing the gap between theory and empirical research and improving social scientists' capacities for generating theory that is relevant and useful to their research.

Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications (Structural Analysis in the Social Sciences)

Stanley Wasserman, Katherine Faust

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 8 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Not for anyone with Mathematics or Computer Science background 2 out of 5 stars.
15 of 20 people found this review helpful.

This book is unbelievably tedious and repetitious. There is very little actual content for the length of the book. It takes nearly 200 pages just to define some very basic terms from graph theory. This might have been fine if the space were taken up by some sort of meaningful discussion on the relevance of these graph theory concepts to sociological studies and theory. The book (possibly the field?) has the flavor of "here's a hammer, now what can we hit with it?".

Would have liked to see a format based on justification of the analytic techniques from sociological principles, or something much much more concise. Nothing much to see here, move on.

Editorial Review:

Social network analysis, which focuses on relationships among social entities, is used widely in the social and behavioral sciences, as well as in economics, marketing, and industrial engineering. Social Network Analysis: Methods and Applications reviews and discusses methods for the analysis of social networks with a focus on applications of these methods to many substantive examples. As the first book to provide a comprehensive coverage of the methodology and applications of the field, this study is both a reference book and a textbook.

Exploring Research (7th Edition)

Neil J. Salkind

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

The Best! 5 out of 5 stars.
12 of 12 people found this review helpful.

Regardless of what your research needs are, this books could be called "research for dummies" in its excellent and easy-to-follow explanations. Buy this book, even if your required text is something else - It's filled with examples and can be read like an adventure novel in bed WHILE being truly comprehended! I've taken statistics, research classes, etc. - I wished I had read this book along with my first class! There's nothing dry about this and 1000 words are too few to praise it adequately!

Editorial Review:

 The 7th edition of Exploring Research provides an introduction to research methods in a friendly, approachable writing style. It explores the use of electronic sources (the Internet) as a means to enhance research skills; it includes discussions about scientific methods; and it incorporates the most common types of research models in the social and behavioral sciences, including qualitative methods. It provides coverage of the research process, problem selection, sampling and generalizability; a discussion of the measurement process provides a comprehensive resource for those seeking to further their research skills. It also describes how to collect and analyze data, and provides thorough instruction on how to prepare and write a research proposal and manuscript.  An excellent handbook for those in the social, behavioral, and health science fields.

Basics of Qualitative Research: Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory

Juliet Corbin, Anselm C. Strauss

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

The Third Edition of the bestselling Basics of Qualitative Research:Techniques and Procedures for Developing Grounded Theory continues to offer immensely practical advice and technical expertise to aid researchers in making sense of their collected data. Authors Juliet Corbin and the late Anselm Strauss (co-creator of Grounded Theory) present methods that enable researchers to analyze and interpret their data, and ultimately build theory from it. Highly accessible in their approach, Corbin and Strauss provide a step-by-step guide to the research act--from the formation of the research question through several approaches to coding and analysis, to reporting on the research. Full of definitions and illustrative examples, this book concludes with chapters that present criteria for evaluating a study, as well as responses to common questions posed by students of qualitative research. Significantly revised, Basics of Qualitative Research remains a landmark volume in the study of qualitative methods.

Key Features of the Third Edition:

• Allows for students to develop their critical thinking skills in the "Critical Issues" section at the end of each chapter.

• Shows the actual steps involved in data analysis (from description to grounded theory) and data gathering by means of theoretical sampling.

• Provides exercises for thinking, writing and group discussion that reinforces material presented in the text.

• Consists of a student companion Web site at www.sagepub.com/corbinstudysite that includes real data and practice with qualitative software such as MAXQDA, as well as student practice exercises.

Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Applied Social Research Methods)

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Editorial Review:

The Fourth Edition of Robert K. Yin’s bestselling text presents the breadth of the case study method but at a detailed level.  It serves as a complete portal to the world of case study research.

The Fourth Edition now covers more than 50 case studies, about one-quarter of them not cited in earlier editions, with vignettes of the case studies appearing throughout the text. Similarly, this edition contains numerous citations to the most recent literature. New methodological insights cover the similarities between case studies and other social science methods. The book gives fresh attention to different quantitative analyses as they might be used as parts of case studies and also discusses more fully the use of mixed methods research designs. The Fourth Edition retains two important components in much their same form, from previous editions. The first is the chapter on composing case study research, given the importance yet difficulty of the compositional process. The second is Donald Campbell’s insightful foreword.

Key Features

• Provides sound principles of case study research put into practice to identify and suggest solutions to problems commonly encountered when doing case studies
• Contains 44 boxes throughout the book describe real case studies in many different fields. The boxed examples illustrate points made in the text.
• Offers a comprehensive approach to presenting the case study method
• Pays special attention to case study design and analysis.
• Incorporates more pedagogy. For instance, chapter titles are followed with a brief abstract that summarizes the chapter’s contents.

Intended Audience

This text is ideal for students and instructors in the departments of Public Administration, Political Science, Education, Economics, Management and Psychology.

Method in Social Science: A Realist Approach

Andrew Sayer

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 1 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

A philosophical approach 4 out of 5 stars.
5 of 10 people found this review helpful.

Intense book. You can summarize it by saying "The book is readable independently of your ability to understand it". Is best if is used in a doctorate program where you can extrapolate the philosophy between the lines and the author's point of view. Final warning: Do not read this before going to bed.

Editorial Review:

Method in Social Science was widely praised on its first publication for providing a series of penetrating reflections on central questions in social science discourse. This second edition directly reflects new developments in the areas of philosophy and methodology. Sayer has rewritten and substantially enlarged the introduction, clarifying many of the arguments that appear in the text. There is also a short discussion of the importance of narrative form, particularly useful for students concerned with the problems of writing, composition, and presentation of their own material.