The use of the case study goes back to the beginnings of social science research and is still one of the most common forms of qualitative research. This book is a handy introduction to understanding, researching, and doing case studies in the social sciences and related fields. In this brief monograph, Jacques Hamel outlines several differing traditions of case study research—the Chicago School of Sociology, the anthropological case studies of Malinowski and others, and the French Le Play ...

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...

Fresh, insightful and clear, this exciting textbook provides an engaging introduction to the application of qualitative methodology in the real world.Expert researchers then trace the history and philosophical underpinnings of different methodologies, explore the specific demands each places upon the researcher and robustly set out relevant issues surrounding quality and rigor. Featured methodologies include action research, discourse analysis, ethnography, grounded theory, case st...

A revolutionary textbook introducing masters and doctoral students to the major research approaches and methodologies in the social sciences. Written by an outstanding set of scholars, and derived from successful course teaching, this volume will empower students to choose their own approach to research, to justify this approach, and to situate it within the discipline. It addresses questions of ontology, epistemology and philosophy of social science, and proceeds to issues of methodology ...

How should case studies be selected? Is case study methodology fundamentally different to that of other methods? What, in fact, is a case?Case Study Research: What, Why and How? is an authoritative and nuanced exploration of the many faces of case-based research methods. As well as the what, how and why, the author also examines the when and which - always with an eye on practical applications to the design, collection, analysis and presentation of the research.Case study m...

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.

"Maximum Likelihood Estimation. . . provides a useful introduction. . . it is clear and easy to follow with applications and graphs. . . . I consider this a very useful book. . . . well-written, with a wealth of explanation. . ."--Dougal Hutchison in Educational ResearchEliason reveals to the reader the underlying logic and practice of maximum likelihood (ML) estimation by providing a general modeling framework that utilizes the tools of ML methods. This fr...

Narratives in Social Science Research introduces students to the use of narrative methodology as a research tool. It offers a rigorous framework for the application of these devices within qualitative research. The book provides:An historical overview of the development of the narrative approach within the social sciencesA guide to how narrative methods can be applied in fieldworkAn explanation of how to incorporate a narrative approach wi...

Accurate data entry and analysis can be deceptively labor-intensive and time-consuming. Creating and Verifying Data Sets with Excel is a focused, easy-to-read guide that gives readers the wherewithal to make use of a remarkable set of data tools tucked within Excel—tools most researchers are entirely unaware of. Robert E. McGrath’s book is the first to focus exclusively on Excel as a data entry system. It incorporates a number of learning tools such as screenshots, text bo...

Bringing together the work of over eighty leading academics and researchers worldwide to produce the definitive reference and research tool for the social sciences, The SAGE Dictionary of Social Research Methods contains more than 230 entries providing the widest coverage of the all the main terms in the research process. It encompasses philosophies of science, research paradigms and designs, specific aspects of data collection, practical issues to be addressed when carryi...

A specialized presentation of fractal analysis oriented to the social sciencesThis primer uses straightforward language to give the reader step-by-step instructions for identifying and analyzing fractal patterns and the social process that create them. By making fractals accessible to the social science students, this book has a significant impact on the understanding of human behavior.This is the only book designed to introduce fractal analysis to a genera...

The focus in this Second Edition is again on logistic regression models for individual level data, but aggregate or grouped data are also considered. The book includes detailed discussions of goodness of fit, indices of predictive efficiency, and standardized logistic regression coefficients, and examples using SAS and SPSS are included.More detailed consideration of grouped as opposed to case-wise data throughout the bookUpdated discussion of the p...