This book examines the intersection of race, political sermons, and social justice. Religious leaders and congregants who discuss and encourage others to do social justice embrace a form of civil religion that falls close to the covenantal wing of American civil religious thought. Clergy and members who share this theological outlook frame the nation as being exceptional in God’s sight. They also emphasize that the nation’s special relationship with the Creator is contingent on the nation ...

Experts from a range of disciplines offer practical advice for conducting social science research in racial and ethnic minority populations. Readers will learn how to choose appropriate methods—longitudinal studies, national surveys, quantitative analysis, personal interviews, and other qualitative approaches—and how best to employ them for research on specific demographic groups. The volume opens with a brief introduction to the difficulty of defining a population and designing a research...

Prominent sociologist Dorothy Smith outlines a method of inquiry that uses everyday experience as a lens to examine social relations and social institutions. Concerned with articulating an inclusive sociology that goes beyond looking at a particular group of people from the detached viewpoint of the researcher, this is a method of inquiry for people, incorporating the expert's research and language into everyday experience to examine social relations and institutions. The book begins by ex...

Did mandatory busing programs in the 1970s increase the school achievement of disadvantaged minority youth? Does obtaining a college degree increase an individual's labor market earnings? Did the use of the butterfly ballot in some Florida counties in the 2000 presidential election cost Al Gore votes? If so, was the number of miscast votes sufficiently large to have altered the election outcome? At their core, these types of questions are simple cause-and-effect questions. Simple cause-and...

What principles should guide an empowerment evaluation? And how can these principles actually be put into practice? One of the primary tasks in an empowerment evaluation (EE) is to increase the capacity of program stakeholders to plan, implement, and evaluate their own programs. This book presents the most current formulation of the 10 principles of EE and provides professionals and students with the tools to put these principles into practice. Through case studies of diverse evaluation pr...

Contemporary anthropology has changed drastically in the new millennium, expanding beyond the anachronistic study of "primitive" societies to confront the burning social, economic, and political challenges of the day. In the process, anthropologists often come face to face with issues that require them to take a public position—issues such as race and tolerance, health and well-being, food security, reconciliation and public justice, global terror and militarism, and digital mediaT...

Surveys enjoy great ubiquity among data collection methods in social research: they are flexible in questioning techniques, in the amount of questions asked, in the topics covered, and in the various ways of interactions with respondents. Surveys are also the preferred method by many researchers in the social sciences due to their ability to provide quick profiles and results. Because they are so commonly used and fairly easy to administer, surveys are often thought to be easily thrown tog...

The Handbook of Experimental Economic Methodology, edited by Guillaume R. Fréchette and Andrew Schotter, aims to confront and debate the issues faced by the growing field of experimental economics. For example, as experimental work attempts to test theory, it raises questions about the proper relationship between theory and experiments. As experimental results are used to inform policy, the utility of these results outside the lab is questioned, and finally, as experimental econom...

Quantitative and Statistical Research MethodsThis user-friendly textbook teaches students to understand and apply procedural steps in completing quantitative studies. It explains statistics while progressing through the steps of the hypothesis-testing process from hypothesis to results. The research problems used in the book reflect statistical applications related to interesting and important topics. In addition, the book provides a Research Analysis and Interpretation Guide to he...

In this tribute to Benjamin Wright, former students and colleagues recall the foundational contributions he made to the theory and practice of measurement in a career spanning over five decades. Wright is recognized as the foremost proponent of the psychometric approach of Georg Rasch, a Danish mathematician, whose ideas continue to provoke controversy. Wright’s colleagues and students, and students of their students, are leaders in educational research and practice around the world. This ...

This book reflects on the contemporary use of ethnography across both social and natural sciences, focusing in particular on organizational ethnography, autoethnography, and the role of storytelling. The chapters interrogate and reframe longstanding ethnographic discussions, including those concerning reflexivity and positionality, while exploring evolving themes such as the experiential use of technologies. The open and honest accounts presented in the volume explore the perennial anxieti...

The evaluation profession has experienced rapid growth in the past five years. Prior to 1995. there were five national evaluation organizations: the American Evnluntion Association (AEA). the Asociacion Centroamericana de Evaluacion (ACE). the Australasian Evaluation Society (AES). the Canadian Evaluation Society (CES). and the European Evaluation Society (EES). In November 1995. AEA and CES cosponsored an international evaluation conference in Vancouver, of the conference was "Evaluation ...