Social Research Methods

3rd edition. An encyclopaedic introduction to the area of social research methods, which explores its research in addition to providing practical advice. With an updated chapter on the use of the internet.

Now in its third edition, this market-leading textbook continues to provide students with an excellent explanation and demonstration of the main designs and techniques in social research methods.

Part One; 1: Social research strategies; 2: Research designs; 3: Planning a research project and formulating research questions; 4: Getting started: reviewing the literature; 5: Ethics and politics in social research; Part Two; 6: The nature of quantitative research; 7: Sampling; 8: Structured interviewing; 9: Self-completion questionnaires; 10: Asking questions; 11: Structured observation; 12: Content analysis; 13: Secondary analysis and official statistics; 14: Quantitative data analysis; 15: Using SPSS for Windows; Part Three; 16: The nature of qualitative research; 17: Ethnography and participant observation; 18: Interviewing in qualitative research; 19: Focus groups; 20: Language in qualitative research; 21: Documents as sources of data; 22: Qualitative data analysis; 23: Computer-assisted qualitative data analysis: using NVivo; Part Four; 24: Breaking down the quantitative/qualitative divide; 25: Mixed methods research: combining quantitative and qualitative research; 26: E-research: using the Internet as object and method of data collection; 27: Writing up social research