Essentials of Research Methods: A Guide to Social Science Research

Preface.

Acknowledgements.

1. When Should We Trust What We Know? Why Research Methods?.

2. Ethics: It’s the Right Thing To Do.

3. Some Perfectly Valid Points: Measurement, Internal, and External Validity.

4. Measure By Measure—Making the Abstract Concrete.

5. If It Glitters Is It Gold? Assessing Measures.

6. One Thing Leads to Another: Causal Analysis.

7. Designing Ideas: Research Strategies.

8. An Informative Few:Sampling.

9. Our Inquisitive Nature: The Questionnaire.

10. Talking Heads: The Interview.

11. Watch and Learn: Field Research.

12. Getting Organized: Descriptive Statistics.

13. Beyond Description: Inferential Statistics.

References.

Web Resources.

Index