Durable social connections are priceless resources for support, companionship, and opportunity. They make life worth living. However, not everyone has equal access to these seemingly free social resources. Like many other valuable things in life, 'social capital' is both a source and a consequence of inequality throughout the population – something that reinforces the status quo and existing social hierarchies. In Friends and Fortunes, the authors painstakingly document that the distributi...

Social sequence analysis includes a diverse and rapidly growing body of methods that social scientists have developed to help study complex ordered social processes, including chains of transitions, trajectories and other ordered phenomena. Social sequence analysis is not limited by content or time scale and can be used in many different fields, including sociology, communication, information science and psychology. Social Sequence Analysis aims to bring together both foundational and rece...

Why use qualitative methods? What kinds of questions can qualitative methods help you answer? How do you actually do rigorous and reflective qualitative research in the real world?Written by a team of leading researchers associated with NatCen Social Research (the National Centre for Social Research) this textbook leads students and researchers through the entire process of qualitative research from beginning to end - moving through design, sampling, data collection, analysis and r...

Narrative Inquiry provides both a new theoretical orientation and a set of practical techniques that students and experienced researchers can use to conduct narrative research. Explaining the principles of what she terms "dynamic narrating," author Colette Daiute provides an approach to narrative inquiry that builds on practices of daily life where we use storytelling to connect with other people, deal with social structures, make sense of surrounding events, and craft our...

Focus Group Methodology is an introductory text which leads readers through the entire process of designing a focus group study, from conducting interviews to analysing data and presenting the findings. It also includes discussions on cross-cultural and virtual focus group.Liamputtong presents clear, practical advice in simple terms which will be appropriate for undergraduate and postgraduate students who are undertaking research, making this an ideal starter text ...

The perfect book for any student taking a research methods course for the first time!The new edition of David and Sutton′s text provides those new to social research with a comprehensive introduction to the theory, logic and practical methods of qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods research. Covering all aspects of research design, data collection, data analysis and writing up, Social Research: An Introduction is the essential companion for all undergraduate and postgraduate...

Qualitative Social Research employs an accessible approach to present the multiple ways in which criticism enhances research practice. Packed full of relevant, ′real world′ examples, it showcases the strengths and pitfalls of each research method, integrating the philosophical groundings of qualitative research with thoughtful overviews of a range of commonly used methods.This book is ideal for students and prospective researchers and explains what makes qualitative sociol...

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...

`The authors make excellent use of illustrative examples′ - Reference ReviewsThe SAGE Dictionary of Statistics provides students and researchers with an accessible and definitive resource to use when studying statistics in the social sciences, reading research reports and undertaking data analysis. Written by leading academics in the field of methodology and statistics, the Dictionary will be an essential study guide for the first-time researcher a...

This book takes a fresh look at applying regression analysis in the behavioural sciences by introducing the reader to regression analysis through a simple model-building approach.The authors start with the basics and begin by re-visiting the mean, and the standard deviation, with which most readers will already be familiar, and show that they can be thought of a least squares model. The book then shows that this least squares model is actually a special case of a regression analysi...

Rediscovering Grounded Theory is a bold re-evaluation of the origins of grounded theory, a philosophical clarification of its key ideas and a presentation of the most effective way to use its techniques in your research.It answers questions such as ′What should grounded theory look like?′, ′How do I recognise grounded theory?′ and ′How do I produce good grounded theory?′ by returning to the original ideas as they were presented by Glaser and Strauss.Sharp, clear and thought...

The use of the cognitive interviewing method for survey question testing has proliferated and evolved over the past 30 years. In more recent years the method has been applied to the evaluation of information letters and leaflets and to research consent forms. This book provides a practical handbook for implementing cognitive interviewing methods in the context of applied social policy research, based on the approach used by the authors at the NatCen Social Research (NatCen) where cognitive...