Books in the Applied Social Research Methods series

Looking for a practical guide to using mixed methodologies? This book explores the most effective way to combine qualitative and quantitative techniques. It begins with a discussion of the paradigm wars between positivism and constructivism, explains the difference between using mixed methods in just the research methodology portion of a study versus using mixed model studies across all phases of the process, and then presents a typology of mixed methods and mixed model studies.

A guide for researchers dealing with the problems of sampling, this book uses the Practical Design Approach and therefore integrates sampling design into the overall research design and explains the inter-relationships between research design and sampling choices.

A systematic introduction to models, methods and applications of event history analysis. The text emphasizes "hands on" information including the use and misuse of samples, models and covariates in applications and the structural arrangement of input data.

How can organizations handle the opportunities and threats posed by rapidly changing markets and external conditions? How can they improve their overall effectiveness? The Third Edition of Diagnosing Organizations contains up-to-date treatments of techniques and models for diagnosing how organizations deal with challenges like these.

Reveals the pitfalls and suggest strategies to overcome problems in the design and planning of applied research. With a focus on how to refine research questions as real world events force deviations from the original research plan, this guide discusses how to study and monitor programme implementation and statistical power analysis.

Givers information on computer-based storage and retrieval systems. This title features expanded coverage of computer-based information, including a chapter on CD-ROM products and updated coverage of on-line information search services.

Providing readers with an introduction to how to conduct a research synthesis of literature, this Fifth Edition has new material on the use of the internet and other new developments in technology, including new statistics for describing meta-analytic results

Using a new model for the classification of types of readings, this book shows how to read, analyze and interpret life story materials. The authors introduce four models: holistic-content reading; holistic-form reading; categorical-content reading; and categorical-form reading.

Considers meta-analytic procedures (the quantitative summary of a research domain) in sufficient detail for readers either to carry them out for themselves, or evaluate the procedures when used by others and offers advice about the applicability of these techniques to specific research questions.

This volume aims to help prospective educational researchers plan their research in schools more carefully. It focuses on such issues as: access and credibility in the school; traditional issues of designing research; questions that emerge as the design is imposed on the school culture and setting particularly with regard to school staff and student assessment; the length of interventions and whether or not to schedule follow-up studies; and how to interpret and communicate findings to schools and policy makers.Using personal experiences from their field research to illustrate key concepts, the authors have also included a research project to clarify the practical issues of school research.

What is the current spatial form and structure of our urban environment, and how can we study the factors and forces that account for the specific structure of urban space, its social and political processes, population distribution and land use? The authors highlight specific research questions and the ways in which they can be approached.

This book explores ways of overcoming the problems researchers may encounter in collecting and interpreting data generated from Hispanic studies.

When studying families, how do researchers decide which family members should be included in their study? What if the family consists of nonmarried parents, or homosexual partners? Or what if a couple does not have any children? Are they considered a family? This book examines the inherent problems researchers face when studying this social group.

The author of Internal Evaluation provides an introduction to the theory and practice of internal evaluation; he presents the stages of internal evaluation growth, ways of identifying users' needs and selecting appropriate evaluation methods, and the evaluation techniques associated with each stage and with developing and managing the internal evaluation resource.

Covers how to write good questions aimed at collecting information about objective facts and events, some alternative methods for attacking common measurement problems, how to evaluate the extent to which questions are consistently understood and administered, and how to evaluate the data resulting from a set of questions.

A practical guide to producing standardized, and reliable, interviews, this volume represents a blending of social science theories of interviewing dynamics, the authors' own extensive research on interview-related error and research evidence from other prominent methodologists.