Are you planning a desk-based qualitative research project, but aren't sure how to get started? This essential book provides all the guidance and advice you'll need to complete your project. Using two key visual pedagogical tools, the Metaphorical Tent and the Research Triangle, the book shows you how to produce vibrant and stimulating in-depth qualitative research that draws on high-quality data readily available via the internet. The book * takes you through the research process step-by-step, from choosing a topic to writing up conclusions; * examines a wide range of written, visual and audio data sources; * includes helpful case studies to demonstrate the practical application of concepts. Concise, practical and jam-packed with valuable tips, features and examples, this book will enable you to complete a successful desk-based research project you can be proud of.

Agent-based modeling is a new technique for understanding how the dynamics of biological, social, and other complex systems arise from the characteristics and behaviors of the agents making up these systems. This innovative textbook gives students and scientists the skills to design, implement, and analyze agent-based models. It starts with the fundamentals of modeling and provides an introduction to NetLogo, an easy-to-use, free, and powerful software platform. Nine chapters then each introduce an important modeling concept and show how to implement it using NetLogo. The book goes on to present strategies for finding the right level of model complexity and developing theory for agent behavior, and for analyzing and learning from models. Agent-Based and Individual-Based Modeling features concise and accessible text, numerous examples, and exercises using small but scientific models. The emphasis throughout is on analysis--such as software testing, theory development, robustness analysis, and understanding full models--and on design issues like optimizing model structure and finding good parameter values. * The first hands-on introduction to agent-based modeling, from conceptual design to computer implementation to parameterization and analysis* Provides an introduction to NetLogo with nine chapters introducing an important modeling concept and showing how to implement it using NetLogo * Filled with examples and exercises, with updates and supplementary materials at http://www.railsback-grimm-abm-book.com/ * Designed for students and researchers across the biological and social sciences * Written by leading practitioners Leading universities that have adopted this book include: * Amherst College * Brigham Young University * Carnegie Mellon University* Cornell University * Miami University * Northwestern University * Old Dominion University * Portland State University * Rhodes College * Susquehanna University * University College, Dublin * University of Arizona* University of British Columbia* University of Michigan * University of South Florida* University of Texas at Austin * University of Virginia

"Jarvis does a real service by introducing a new vision of research into the current debates over the nature and mission of the academy."
--Continuing Higher Education Review

"Jarvis has managed to bridge the worlds of theory and professional practice in a way that will help each better understand the other."
--Jon Wergin, professor of educational studies, School of Education, Virginia Commonwealth University

Genuine understanding of any field can only be developed through practice in that field. Peter Jarvis, an internationally known authority in the field of professional adult and continuing education, shows how theories of practice evolve from the practice itself and are unique to each practitioner. Doing professional work gives practitioners many opportunities to question, test, and revise theories taught in graduate programs. Such practice-based research gives rise to personalized theories of practice and also raises new questions for personal exploration.

Using examples and vignettes drawn from professional fields and settings around the world, Jarvis provides valuable insights into the nature of professional practice, the ways professionals learn, and how education for practice can be enhanced at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Jarvis examines why so many practitioners find their professional education inadequate preparation for actual practice, and he calls for a partnership between higher education and the professional workplace that will meet the challenges of the relationship between the two.

The Practitioner-Researcher is designed to help all practitioners for whom research is a tool in improving practice--from graduate students and their professors to employees in diverse industries or professional groups--and to facilitate an understanding of the relationship between practice and theory within the worlds of work and learning.

This book presents the proceedings from ECONOPHYS-2015, an international workshop held in New Delhi, India, on the interrelated fields of "econophysics" and "sociophysics", which have emerged from the application of statistical physics to economics and sociology. Leading researchers from varied communities, including economists, sociologists, financial analysts, mathematicians, physicists, statisticians, and others, report on their recent work, discuss topical issues, and review the relevant contemporary literature. A society can be described as a group of people who inhabit the same geographical or social territory and are mutually involved through their shared participation in different aspects of life. It is possible to observe and characterize average behaviors of members of a society, an example being voting behavior. Moreover, the dynamic nature of interaction within any economic sector comprising numerous cooperatively interacting agents has many features in common with the interacting systems of statistical physics. It is on these bases that interest has grown in the application within sociology and economics of the tools of statistical mechanics. This book will be of value for all with an interest in this flourishing field.

This volume covers such topics as psychological ownership in organizations, employee perceptions of fairness when human resource systems change, a culture-based perspective of organization development implementation, and mapping the progress of change through organizational levels.

This series examines the interrelations of politics and society, bringing together articles from an international and interdisciplinary community of scholars.

Bernan Press proudly presents the sixteenth edition of Employment, Hours, and Earnings: States and Areas, 2022. A special addition to Bernan Press Handbook of U.S. Labor Statistics: Employment, Earnings, Prices, Productivity, and Other Labor Data, this reference is a consolidated wealth of employment information, providing monthly and annual data on hours worked and earnings made by industry, including figures and summary information spanning several years. These data are presented for states and metropolitan statistical areas. This edition features: Nearly 300 tables with data on employment for each state, the District of Columbia, and the nation's seventy-five largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) Detailed, non-seasonally adjusted, industry data organized by month and year Hours and earnings data for each state, by industry An introduction for each state and the District of Columbia that denotes salient data and noteworthy trends, including changes in population and the civilian labor force, industry increases and declines, employment and unemployment statistics, and a chart detailing employment percentages, by industry Ranking of the seventy-five largest MSAs, including census population estimates, unemployment rates, and the percent change in total nonfarm employment, Concise technical notes that explain pertinent facts about the data, including sources, definitions, and significant changes; and provides references for further guidance A comprehensive appendix that details the geographical components of the seventy-five largest MSAs The employment, hours, and earnings data in this publication provide a detailed and timely picture of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, and the nation's seventy-five largest MSAs. These data can be used to analyze key factors affecting state and local economies and to compare national cyclical trends to local-level economic activity. This reference is an excellent source of information for analysts in both the public and private sectors. Readers who are involved in public policy can use these data to determine the health of the economy, to clearly identify which sectors are growing and which are declining, and to determine the need for federal assistance. State and local jurisdictions can use the data to determine the need for services, including training and unemployment assistance, and for planning and budgetary purposes. In addition, the data can be used to forecast tax revenue. In private industry, the data can be used by business owners to compare their business to the economy as a whole; and to identify suitable areas when making decisions about plant locations, wholesale and retail trade outlets, and for locating a particular sector base.

Increasingly, social researchers are engaging with marginalized communities and becoming aware of their obligations to those they research. This book identifies issues associated with researching in what have traditionally been recognised as "hard to reach" communities and offers both conceptual analyses and practical suggestions on undertaking research that emphasizes the experience and contribution of those with whom the research is undertaken.

Multiple sclerosis is an incurable neurological disease of unknown cause with a fearful reputation for generating disability, unemployment, poverty and early death. This book critically surveys the current state of multiple sclerosis research, demonstrating the shortfall of current research undertaken on the lives of people with multiple sclerosis.

This textbook considers statistical learning applications when interest centers on the conditional distribution of a response variable, given a set of predictors, and in the absence of a credible model that can be specified before the data analysis begins. Consistent with modern data analytics, it emphasizes that a proper statistical learning data analysis depends in an integrated fashion on sound data collection, intelligent data management, appropriate statistical procedures, and an accessible interpretation of results. The unifying theme is that supervised learning properly can be seen as a form of regression analysis. Key concepts and procedures are illustrated with a large number of real applications and their associated code in R, with an eye toward practical implications. The growing integration of computer science and statistics is well represented including the occasional, but salient, tensions that result. Throughout, there are links to the big picture. The third edition considers significant advances in recent years, among which are: the development of overarching, conceptual frameworks for statistical learning; the impact of "big data" on statistical learning; the nature and consequences of post-model selection statistical inference; deep learning in various forms; the special challenges to statistical inference posed by statistical learning; the fundamental connections between data collection and data analysis; interdisciplinary ethical and political issues surrounding the application of algorithmic methods in a wide variety of fields, each linked to concerns about transparency, fairness, and accuracy. This edition features new sections on accuracy, transparency, and fairness, as well as a new chapter on deep learning. Precursors to deep learning get an expanded treatment. The connections between fitting and forecasting are considered in greater depth. Discussion of the estimation targets for algorithmic methods is revised and expanded throughout to reflect the latest research. Resampling procedures are emphasized. The material is written for upper undergraduate and graduate students in the social, psychological and life sciences and for researchers who want to apply statistical learning procedures to scientific and policy problems.

A one-of-a-kind compilation of modern statistical methods designed to support and advance research across the social sciences

"Statistics in the Social Sciences: Current Methodological Developments" presents new and exciting statistical methodologies to help advance research and data analysis across the many disciplines in the social sciences. Quantitative methods in various subfields, from psychology to economics, are under demand for constant development and refinement. This volume features invited overview papers, as well as original research presented at the Sixth Annual Winemiller Conference: Methodological Developments of Statistics in the Social Sciences, an international meeting that focused on fostering collaboration among mathematical statisticians and social science researchers.

The book provides an accessible and insightful look at modern approaches to identifying and describing current, effective methodologies that ultimately add value to various fields of social science research. With contributions from leading international experts on the topic, the book features in-depth coverage of modern quantitative social sciences topics, including:

Correlation Structures

Structural Equation Models and Recent Extensions

Order-Constrained Proximity Matrix Representations

Multi-objective and Multi-dimensional Scaling

Differences in Bayesian and Non-Bayesian Inference

Bootstrap Test of Shape Invariance across Distributions

Statistical Software for the Social Sciences

"Statistics in the Social Sciences: Current Methodological Developments" is an excellent supplement for graduate courses on social science statistics in both statistics departments and quantitative social sciences programs. It is also a valuable reference for researchers and practitioners in the fields of psychology, sociology, economics, and market research.

This collection sets a new agenda for conducting research on the EU and learns from past mistakes. In doing so it provides a state-of-the-art examination of social science research designs in EU studies while providing innovative guidelines for the advancement of more inclusive and empirically sensitive research designs in EU studies

"Social Simulation for a Digital Society" provides a cross-section of state-of-the-art research in social simulation and computational social science. With the availability of big data and faster computing power, the social sciences are undergoing a tremendous transformation. Research in computational social sciences has received considerable attention in the last few years, with advances in a wide range of methodologies and applications. Areas of application of computational methods range from the study of opinion and information dynamics in social networks, the formal modeling of resource use, the study of social conflict and cooperation to the development of cognitive models for social simulation and many more. This volume is based on the Social Simulation Conference of 2017 in Dublin and includes applications from across the social sciences, providing the reader with a demonstration of the highly versatile research in social simulation, with a particular focus on public policy relevance in a digital society. Chapters in the book include contributions to the methodology of simulation-based research, theoretical and philosophical considerations, as well as applied work. This book will appeal to students and researchers in the field.

Insights developed in the past two decades by philosophers of the social sciences can serve to enrich the challenging intellectual tasks of conceptualizing, investigating, and representing the human past. Likewise, intimate engagement with the writings of historians can deepen philosophers' understanding of the task of knowing the past. This volume brings these perspectives together and considers fundamental questions, such as: What is historical causation? What is a large historical structure? How can we best conceptualize "mentalities" and "identities"? What is involved in understanding the subjectivity of historical actors? What is involved in arriving at an economic history of a large region? How are actions and outcomes related? The arguments touch upon a wide range of historical topics -- the Chinese and French Revolutions, the extension of railroads in the nineteenth century, and the development of agriculture in medieval China.

This graduate-level textbook is a tutorial for item response theory that covers both the basics of item response theory and the use of R for preparing graphical presentation in writings about the theory. Item response theory has become one of the most powerful tools used in test construction, yet one of the barriers to learning and applying it is the considerable amount of sophisticated computational effort required to illustrate even the simplest concepts. This text provides the reader access to the basic concepts of item response theory freed of the tedious underlying calculations. It is intended for those who possess limited knowledge of educational measurement and psychometrics. Rather than presenting the full scope of item response theory, this textbook is concise and practical and presents basic concepts without becoming enmeshed in underlying mathematical and computational complexities. Clearly written text and succinct R code allow anyone familiar with statistical concepts to explore and apply item response theory in a practical way. In addition to students of educational measurement, this text will be valuable to measurement specialists working in testing programs at any level and who need an understanding of item response theory in order to evaluate its potential in their settings.

The effective use of development economic theories in practice is limited, the authors contend, by the lack of explicit criterion for judging their scientific content. The directional progress of critical research and teaching is also constrained by this deficiency. This study advances a meta-theory designed to assist in evaluating the scientific validity of theories in economic development and how these theories can be improved to assist social practice. Using this model, the study then examines existing theories, dividing them into explanatory and prescriptive theories. The explanatory theories include the stage-based theories of Marx, Schumpeter, and Rostow, and factor-based theories, including capital-based, human-capital-based, and technology-based theories. The prescriptive theories include explanatory-theory-based prescriptions, interventionist prescriptive theories, and theories of economic planning. In conclusion, the authors contend that modern analysis of development economics is plagued with logical ills, misleading notions, and a weak theoretical structure that lacks scientific appeal. Most of the theories, except for those of Marx and Schumpeter, neglect an analysis of the mechanism of change.

This book presents a general and comprehensive framework for the assurance of quality in measurements. Written by a foremost expert in the field, the text reflects an on-going international effort to extend traditional quality assured measurement, rooted in fundamental physics and the SI, to include non-physical areas such as person-centred care and the social sciences more generally. Chapter by chapter, the book follows the measurement quality assurance loop, based on Deming's work. The author enhances this quality assurance cycle with insights from recent research, including work on the politics and philosophy of metrology, the new SI, quantitative and qualitative scales and entropy, decision risks and uncertainty when addressing human challenges, Man as a Measurement Instrument, and Psychometry and Person-centred care. Quality Assured Measurement: Unification across Social and Physical Sciences provides students and researchers in physics, chemistry, engineering, medicine and the social sciences with practical guidance on designing, implementing and applying a quality-assured measurement while engaging readers in the most novel and expansive areas of contemporary measurement research.

This book results from a research program on which I have spent most of my time since 1974. It addresses two of the major problems facing social system account ing: how to measure and account for nonmarket activities and how to combine social and economic indicators. The solution I propose is accounts based on behavior settings, a concept originated by Roger G. Barker more than thirty years ago. Behavior settings are the natural units of social activity into which people sort themselves to get on with the busi ness of daily life--grocery stores, school classes, reI i gious services, meetings, athletic events, and so on. The descriptive power of behavior settings has been established in surveys of complete communities in the United States and England, of high schools ranging in size from fewer than 100 to more than 2000 students, of rehabilitation centers in hospitals, and of several other types of organizations. Behavior settings are empirical facts of everyday life. A description of a community or an organization in terms of behavior settings corresponds to common experi ence. In many cases, small establishments are behavior settings; the paid roles in behavior settingsare occupa tions; and the buildings and equipment of establishments are the buildings and equipment of behavior settings."

This volume explores the professional ethics of addresses the varied ethical needs of the professional economists and public policy professionals. Using terms and methods familiar to the reader, the book goes beyond the typical narrative of economics and morality to walk the professional through the process of ethical decision-making. Designed to be easy to navigate and applicable to everyday practice, this book includes a step-by-step illustrated guide through an ethical decision-making process using a methodology specifically tailored to economists and policy professionals. It describes numerous unique ethical tests and resolution methods which are utilized in a portfolio structure. The book also includes a brief and convenient catalogue of important figures in philosophy and ethics, translated into their policy applications; it concludes with candid advice from experts in different subfields on how ethics impacts their professional lives. This volume provides a foundation and framework for those in economics and public policy to implement a relevant practice of professional ethics both at and in their work.

What constitutes a causal explanation, and must an explanation be causal? What warrants a causal inference, as opposed to a descriptive regularity? What techniques are available to detect when causal effects are present, and when can these techniques be used to identify the relative importance of these effects? What complications do the interactions of individuals create for these techniques? When can mixed methods of analysis be used to deepen causal accounts? Must causal claims include generative mechanisms, and how effective are empirical methods designed to discover them? The Handbook of Causal Analysis for Social Research tackles these questions with nineteen chapters from leading scholars in sociology, statistics, public health, computer science, and human development.

In this powerful volume, six qualitative methods are used to analyze a couple therapy with a troubled young couple, illustrating the intricate processes and sub-processes of therapy through client interactions with their therapists and with each other. Increasingly popular for revealing the nuances and complexity of human interactions, qualitative approaches focus on process and discursive methods which can be particularly rewarding in multi-client settings. Through the examples that make up the text, practitioners and researchers become better acquainted with the power of qualitative perspectives and are encouraged to examine their own views on therapy as they consider these and other concepts: The development of dialogical space in a couple therapy session. Introducing novelties into therapeutic dialogue: the importance of minor shifts of the therapist. Therapists' responses for enhancing change through dialogue: dialogical investigations of change. Fostering dialogue: exploring the therapists' discursive contributions in a couple therapy. Dominant story, power, and positioning. Constructing the moral order of a relationship in couples therapy. Research Perspectives in Couple Therapy: Discursive Qualitative Methods ably demonstrates the balance between therapeutic art and science for family and couples therapists, psychologists, and other mental health professionals in research and practice.

Nowadays statistical surveys represent an important source of scientific knowledge and a consolidated decision support tool in many fields of applications: from social sciences to economics, marketing, medicine, political science, etc. Most of the methodological issues concerning statistical surveys have been investigated by scientists so that the scientific literature offers a plenty of excellent references concerning all the required steps for planning and realizing them. Nevertheless, facing real problems through statistical surveys often requires looking for operative solutions deviating from the consolidated methodology or choosing through several options. The book will focus on theory and applications of statistical surveys, providing remarks and innovative solutions to face problems in survey practice. Topics covered in the book will include all the main issues regarding a planning of a statistical survey: data collection, sampling scheme, questionnaire definition, estimation. A good balance between formal rigor and clarity will allow the book be aimed to practitioners involved in applied research but also to academics interested in recent scientific developments in the field.

China Urban Statistics 1988 is an important reference book for understanding and studying economic and social conditions in Chinese cities. This is an annual publication presenting data on economic development in 382 Chinese cities. The data in the 1988 edition are figures for 1987. There were 381 cities in China at the end of 1987. However, since the cities of Huangshan and Tunxi in Anhui Province maintained separate statistical reports in 1987 after the administration of these two cities was merged, there are a total of 382 cities included in this book. Data presented in this volume include a survey of population, surface area, agricultural and industrial production, transportation and telecommunications, urban development, trade and commerce, education and culture, public health, labor, and public finance. China Urban Statistics 1988 is a revised and improved English language edition of the official China Statistical Abstract compiled by the State Statistical Bureau of the People's Republic of China (SSB). The English Language Editorial Board was responsible for the translation and annotation of this volume. The English Language Editorial Board is composed of representatives of the China Statistical Information and Consultancy Service Center, an affiliate of the SSB, and the China Statistics Archives, a research center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. This is the sixth volume in a series of statistical annuals. The volumes so far published are China Statistical Abstract 1988, China Social Statistics 1986, China Trade and Prices Statistics 1988, China Rural Statistics 1988 and China Statistical Abstract 1989.

Die fachliche und kulturelle Vielfalt der Praxis der Sozialen Arbeit und der Sozialpadagogik in Polen, Rumanien und Deutschland wird in diesem Tagungsband deutlich. Grundlagenthemen der Sozialen Arbeit, spezifische Ausbildungsaspekte, Aufsatze zum Themenfeld Gesundheit und Aufsatze zu spezifischen Praxisansatzen in der Sozialen Arbeit sind in diesem Band enthalten.