Authors Jerome Kirk and Marc L. Miller define what is—and what is not—qualitative research. They suggest that the use of numbers in the process of recording and analyzing observations is less important than that the research should involve sustained interaction with the people being studied, in their own language and on their own turf. Following a chapter on objectivity, the authors discuss the role of reliability and validity and the problems that arise when these issues are neglected. Th...

A sourcebook of exercises, games, scenarios and role plays, this practical, user-friendly guide provides a complete and valuable resource for research methods tutors, teachers and lecturers.Developed to complement and enhance existing course materials, the 100 ready-to-use activities encourage innovative and engaging classroom practice in seven areas:finding and using sources of informationplanning a research projectconducting researchusi...

In order to prepare a successful research project, a qualitative researcher often must consult media documents of various types. Authors David L. Altheide and Christopher J. Schneider show readers how to obtain, categorize, and analyze these different media documents in this entry in the Qualitative Research Methods series. They look at traditional primary documents such as newspapers and magazines but also at more recent forms--television newscasts and cyberspace. The use...

`Wengraf provides a comprehensive theoretical and practical guide to the planning, conduct, and interpretative analysis of data by semi-structured interviewing methods. Forthright and frank in his comments about the limitations and practical implications of varying choices which investigators have to make in designing their research projects. Reading this text is like having a tough but expert and caring mentor who wants you to do the best research possible, but will not hesitate to tell y...

This timely, thoughtful book provides a clear introduction to using panel data in research.It describes the different types of panel datasets commonly used for empirical analysis, and how to use them for cross sectional, panel, and event history analysis. Longhi and Nandi then guide the reader through the data management and estimation process, including the interpretation of the results and the preparation of the final output tables.Using existing data sets and structured ...

This book is unique in its focus on showing students in the behavioral sciences how to analyze longitudinal data using R software. The book focuses on application, making it practical and accessible to students in psychology, education, and related fields, who have a basic foundation in statistics. It provides explicit instructions in R computer programming throughout the book, showing students exactly how a specific analysis is carried out and how output is interpreted.*"This text...

There is no shortage of research methods that are easily applied to the study of everyday human experience. How, though, does one attempt to study extraordinary human experiences ultimate values and meanings, peak experiences, transcendence, and heightened awareness, among others? Authors William Braud and Rosemarie Anderson introduce a series of transpersonal research methods that are intended to help researchers develop new ways of knowing and methods of inquiry. While these methods will...

This volume is dedicated to exploring and exposing the challenges, the possibilities, and the processes of empirical work in embodiment. Grounded in qualitative inquiry in the humanities and social sciences, the chapters describe perspectives and contexts of embodied research, but focus on the methodologies, methods, and analytic frames taken up to grapple with this ever-more theorised aspect of qualitative inquiry. The authors drawn together in this volume share an investment in the ways ...

This book provides an introduction to the theories, methods, and applications that constitute the social network perspective. Unlike more general texts, this title is designed for those current and aspiring educational researchers learning how to study, conceptualize, and analyze social networks. The author′s main intent is to encourage you to consider the social network perspective in light of your emerging research interests and evaluate how well this perspective illuminates the social c...

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com.What is Discourse Analysis? is an accessible introduction to an empirical research approach which is widely used in the social sciences and related disciplines.This book explores the idea of how meaning is socially constructed and how 'talk' and text can be interpreted. The challenges of discourse analysis are outlined as wel...

For many students, the experience of learning about and using qualitative methods can be bewildering. This book is an accessible step-by-step guide to conducting interview-based qualitative research projects. The authors discuss the 'hows' and 'whys' of qualitative research, showing readers the practices as well as the principles behind them. The book first describes how to formulate research questions suited to qualitative inquiry. It then discusses in detail how to select and invite rese...

Building SPSS Graphs to Understand Data is a must-have for anyone needing to understand large or small amounts of data. It describes how to build and interpret graphs, showing how "understanding data" means that the graph must clearly and succinctly answer questions about the data. In most chapters, research questions are presented, and the reader builds the appropriate graph needed to answer the questions.