Synopsis
This guide to conducting social research gives equal weight to qualitative and quantitative approaches to carrying out a final year social science undergraduate dissertation project. Although the focus is on application, the intellectual debates that frame practical concerns receive attention. The chapters follow the typical process of a social research project, first covering issues confronted when beginning research, including ethics, developing the research question, and other topics. A section on research design and data collection includes chapters on qualitative interviewing; ethnography and case study research; collecting textual data; ethnomethodology and conversation analysis; hypotheses, operationalization, and variables; sampling; survey design; and collecting and coding data. Data analysis is discussed in chapters on coding qualitative data, semiotic and narrative forms of discourse analysis, using computer software (Nvivo/N6), describing and exploring relationships among variables, inferential statistics, and data manipulation. The volume concludes with two chapters discussing producing a written report and presenting research findings to an audience. Annotation ©2005 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR