Investigating the social world: the process and practice of research/ Russell K. Schutt.

PART I: FOUNDATIONS FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH; CHAPTER 1: SCIENCE, SOCIETY, AND SOCIAL RESEARCH; Learning About the Social World; Avoiding Errors in Reasoning About the Social World; Research in the News: Why Doesn't the Internet Reach Everyone?; Science and Social Science; Alternative Research Orientations; Strengths and Limitations of Social Research; CHAPTER 2: THE PROCESS AND PROBLEMS OF SOCIAL RESEARCH; Social Research Questions; Social Theories; Social Research Foundations; Theoretical Perspectives for Social Research; Social Research Strategies; Research in the News: Investigating Child Abuse Doesn't Reduce It; Social Research Standards; CHAPTER 3: RESEARCH ETHICS AND PHILOSOPHIES; Historical Background; Ethical Principles; The Institutional Review Board; Research in the News: What Would an IRB Say?; Social Research Proposals; Case Study: Evaluating a Public Health Program; PART II: FUNDAMENTALS OF SOCIAL. RESEARCH; CHAPTER 4: CONCEPTUALIZATION AND MEASUREMENT; Concepts; Research in the News: What is Your Race?; Operationalization; Measurement; Levels of Measurement; Evaluating Measures; CHAPTER 5: SAMPLING; Sample Planning; Research in the News: What Are Best Practices for Sampling Vulnerable Populations?; Sampling Methods; Sampling Distributions; CHAPTER 6: RESEARCH DESIGN AND CAUSATION; Research Design Alternatives; Research in the News: How to Reduce Crime?; Criteria and Cautions for Nomothetic Causal Explanations; Comparing Research Designs; PART III: BASIC SOCIAL RESEARCH DESIGNS; CHAPTER 7: EXPERIMENTS; History of Experimentation; True Experiments; Research in the News: Where Did You Hear That?; Quasi-Experiments; Validity in Experiments; Ethical Issues in Experimental Research; CHAPTER 8: SURVEY RESEARCH. Survey Research in the Social Sciences; Writing Survey Questions; Combining Questions in Indexes; Designing Questionnaires; Research in the News: What Can Surveys Uncover?; Organizing Surveys; Ethical Issues in Survey Research; CHAPTER 9: QUANTITATIVE DATA ANALYSIS; Introducing Statistics; Case Study: The Likelihood of Voting; Preparing Data for Analysis; Displaying Univariate Distributions; Summarizing Univariate Distributions; Research in the News: General Social Survey Shows Infidelity on the Rise; Analyzing Data Ethically: How Not to Lie With Statistics; Cross-Tabulating Variables; Regression Analysis; Analyzing Data Ethically: How Not to Lie About Relationships; CHAPTER 10: QUALITATIVE METHODS: OBSERVING, PARTICIPATING, News: What Motivates Policy Shifts?; Design Decisions; Policy Research; Ethics in Evaluation; CHAPTER 13: HISTORICAL AND COMPARATIVE RESEARCH AND CONTENT ANALYSIS; Overview of Unobtrusive Methods for Historical and Comparative Research; Historical Social Science Methods; Comparative Social Science Methods; Research in the News: Across the globe can we compare ____?; Demographic Analysis; Content Analysis; Ethical Issues in Historical and Comparative Research and Content Analysis; CHAPTER 14: SECONDARY DATA ANALYSIS AND BIG DATA; Secondary Data Sources; Research in the News: Long-term impact; how can research make the connection?; Challenges for Secondary Data Analyses; Big Data; Ethical Issues in Secondary Data Analysis and Big Data; CHAPTER 15: MIXED METHODS; History of Mixed Methods; Philosophy of Mixed Methods; Types of mixed methods. Strengths and Limitations of Mixed Methods; Ethics and Mixed Methods; Research in the News: What Came First, the Alleged Cause or the Effect?; CHAPTER 16: SUMMARIZING AND REPORTING RESEARCH; Writing Research; Displaying Research; Reporting Research; Research in the News: How Much Should Social Scientists Report?; Performing Meta-Analyses; Case Study: Broken Homes and Delinquency; Ethics, Politics, and Research Reports; Bibliography; Glossary.