Reflexivity is vital in social research projects, but there remains relatively little advice on how to execute it in practice. This book provides social science researchers with both a strong rationale for the importance of thinking reflexively and a practical guide to doing reflexivity within their research. The first book on the subject to build primarily on the theoretical and empirical contributions of Pierre Bourdieu's reflexive work, it combines academic analysis with practical examples and case studies, drawing both on recent reflexive research projects and original empirical data from new projects conducted by the author. Written in an engaging and accessible style, the book will be of interest to researchers from all career stages and disciplinary backgrounds, but especially early-career researchers and students who are struggling with subjectivity, positionality, and the realities of being reflexive.

This book focuses on the reality of China's modern judiciary, systematically demonstrating and discussing the judicial philosophy and judicial ethics as applied by Chinese courts and judges. In order to illustrate the methods of jurisprudence and sociology of law in the context of China's judicial practice and practicability of applicable laws, it also addresses judicial methodology and Chinese judges' trial methods. Based on comparative study and aiming at global judicial reform, the book provides valuable guidance and insights for readers pursuing a detailed understanding of modern Chinese judiciary, Chinese judges and Chinese rule of law. The book is intended to primarily serve the need of legal professionals around the world, in particular those who are interested in China's judicial system.

- puts forward the most comprehensive assessment of the relationship between mass shootings and background checks to date. -While scholars have carried out both quantitative analyses and case studies of mass shootings on this topic, no books exist on this topic and peer reviewed articles have thus far failed to account for why a historical increase in societal armament arose in the first place, have not fully identified causal mechanisms and pathways that link mass shootings to gun purchases, and have treated the proposed causal relationship as being linear in nature. - takes a multi-methodological approach comprised of case studies, quantitative analysis, and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to offer a transparent, well rounded inquiry on the mass shootings-background check nexus,. -provides readers with several different perspectives through which to consider the prominence of this vastly important empirical trend, and importantly, classifies the pathways, processes, and mechanisms that link mass shootings to post-shooting increases in gun purchases

Contingency Tables from Maps.

More Specialized Techniques for Contingency Tables.

Mobility Analysis.

Circular Statistics.

Spherical Statistics.

References.

Appendices.

Index of Notation for Chapter 9.

Author Index.

Subject Index.

Example Index.

Avoiding both over-simplification and jargon-riddled complexity, this book is an invaluable, straightforward guide to participatory research for you and your fellow practitioners working with community groups and organisations. The book offers a route map for co-research projects with groups and communities, taking you through each stage of the participatory research process, from planning a project to sharing the findings. Keeping in mind imperatives such as engagement and voice, the book explores how to carry out research in ways that are meaningful for communities. This book includes valuable resources such as reflection points, tasks and further reading lists, offering support to practitioners to plan and undertake participatory research projects with confidence.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Britain stood at the forefront of science and statistics and had a long and respected tradition of social investigation and reform. But it still did not yet have a 'science of society.' When, in the early 1900s, a small band of enthusiasts got together to address this situation, the scene was set for a grand synthesis. No such synthesis ever took place and, instead, British sociology has followed a resolutely non-statistical path. Sociology and Statistics in Britain, 1833-1979 investigates how this curious situation came about and attempts to explain it from an historical perspective. It uncovers the prevalence of a deep and instinctive distrust within British sociology of the statistical methodology and mindset, resulting in a mix of quiet indifference and active hostility, which has persisted from its beginnings right up to the present day. While British sociology has thrived institutionally since the post-war expansion of higher education, this book asks whether or not it is poorer for having failed to recognise that statistics provides the foundations for the scientific study of society and for having missed opportunities to build upon those foundations. Ultimately, this important, revealing and timely book is about British sociology's refusal to come to grips with a modern scientific way of thinking which no discipline that aspires to an effective study of society can afford to ignore.

Knowledge and expertise, especially of the kind that can shape public opinion, have been traditionally the domain of individuals holding degrees awarded by higher learning institutions or occupying formal positions in notable organizations. Expertise is validated by reputations established in an institutionalized marketplace of ideas with a limited number of "available seats" and a stringent process of selection and retention of names, ideas, topics and facts of interest. However, the social media revolution, which has enabled over two billion Internet users not only to consume, but also to produce information and knowledge, has created a secondary and very active informal marketplace of ideas and knowledge. Anchored by platforms like Wikipedia, YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, this informal marketplace has low barriers to entry and has become a gigantic and potentially questionable, knowledge resource for the public at large. Roles, Trust and Reputation in Social Media Knowledge Markets will discuss some of the emerging trends in defining, measuring and operationalizing reputation as a new and essential component of the knowledge that is generated and consumed online. The book will propose a future research agenda related to these issues. The ultimate goal of research agenda being to shape the next generation of theoretical and analytic strategies needed for understanding how knowledge markets are influenced by social interactions and reputations built around functional roles. The authors, including leading scholars and young innovators, will share with the readers some of the main lessons they have learned from their own work in these areas and will discuss the issues, topics and sub-areas that they find under-studied or that promise the greatest intellectual payoff in the future. The discussion will be placed in the context of social network analysis and "big data" research. Roles, Trust and Reputation in Social Media Knowledge Markets exposes issues that have not been satisfactorily dealt with in the current literature, as the research agenda in reputation and authorship is still emerging. In a broader sense, the volume aims to change the way in which knowledge generation in social media spaces is understood and utilized. The tools, theories and methodologies proposed by the contributors offer concrete avenues for developing the next generation of research strategies and applications that will help: tomorrow's information consumers make smarter choices, developers to create new tools and researchers to launch new research programs.

This collection presents stories from the field that were gathered from researchers using a breadth of visual methods. Visual methods refer to the use of still or moving images either as forms of data, to explore research topics and explorations of artistic practice. In addition to well-established visual methods, such as photo-voice and photo-elicitation, the possibilities for visual methods are flourishing through the proliferation of visual culture and developments in digital technologies. Methodological and ethical issues are emerging as visual methods are adapted and applied to answer new kinds of research questions, and in varied settings and populations. Authors offer practical and thoughtful discussions of emerging methodological and ethical dilemmas they encountered in innovative projects that used visual methods either in combination with other methods or as a stand-alone method. The discussions will be of interest to those seeking to understand the value, and potential ethical risks, of visual methodologies for social research.

This book explains and illustrates criminal justice research topics, including ethics in research, research design, causation, operationalization of variables, sampling, methods of data collection (including surveys), reliance on existing data, validity, and reliability. For each approach, the book addresses the procedures and issues involved, the method's strengths and drawbacks, and examples of actual research using that method. Every section begins with a brief summary of the research method. Introductory essays set the stage for students regarding the who, what, when, where, and why of each research example, and relevant discussion questions and exercises direct students to focus on the important concepts. Research Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology: A Text and Reader features interesting and relevant articles from leading journals, which have been expertly edited to highlight research design issues. The text offers instructors a well-rounded and convenient collection that eliminates the need to sift through journals to find articles that illustrate important precepts. All articles are recent and address issues relevant to the field today, such as immigration and crime, security post-9/11, racial profiling, and selection bias in media coverage of crime. Ensuring a rich array, additional articles are downloadable at the Support Materials tab at www.routledge.com/9780367508890. The book encourages classroom discussion and critical thinking and is an essential tool for undergraduate and graduate research methods courses in criminal justice, criminology, and related fields.

The Lively Science is Michael Agar's accessible, idiosyncratic, often humorous, and sometimes controversial explication of his own polestar truth: "Research on humans in their social world by other humans is not a traditional science like the one created by Galileo and Newton." However, if the social world is not a lab, neither is it a collection of random events. The book lays out a clear, straightforward path to carrying out the basic scientific tasks of forming questions and answering them to explore and account for that non-randomness. The author deploys myriad engaging examples drawn from a lifetime of applied and basic research to demonstrate how human science researchers can produce discoveries that are scientifically defensible and useful in the real world. Agar grounds his how-to guide in an approachable discussion of epistemology and draws on thinkers whose writings may be unfamiliar to many social scientists. He blends that work with new intellectual tools, such as complexity theory, disasters research, and conversational analysis. The result is an innovative and practical methodology that is true to the realities and surprises of research by and about humans, yet preserves scientific standards of falsifiability, empiricism, logic, and systematic presentation of results. This book represents the best of Michael Agar's visionary work. With a new foreword by Michael Brown celebrating Agar's enormous contribution to social science methodology, The Lively Science is for all researchers who seek to explore the full potential of a human social science.

Political theory offers a great variety of interpretive traditions and models. Today, pluralism is the paradigm. But are all approaches equally useful? What are their limits and possibilities? Can we practice them in isolation, or can we combine them? Modeling Interpretation and the Practice of Political Theory addresses these questions in a refreshing and hands- on manner. It not only models in the abstract, but also tests in practice eight basic schemes of interpretation with which any ambitious reader of political texts should already be familiar. Comprehensive and engaging, the book includes: A straightforward typology of interpretation in political theory. Chapters on the analytical Oxford model, biographical and oeuvre- based interpretation, Skinner's Cambridge School, the esoteric model, reflexive hermeneutics, reception analysis and conceptual history. Original readings of Federalist Paper No. 10 , Plato's Statesman, de Gouges's The Three Urns, Rivera's wall painting The History of Mexico and Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing; with further chapters on Machiavelli, Huang Zongxi and a Hittite loyalty oath. An Epilogue proposing pragmatist eclecticism as the way forward in interpretation. An inspiring, hands- on textbook suitable for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as experienced scholars of political theory, intellectual history and philosophy interested in learning more about types and models of interpretation, and the challenge of combining them in interpretive practice.

Originally published in 1982, this book describes those basic ideas and techniques of statistics which should be known to every social scientist. The explanations are given in careful detail at a level of mathematical sophistication which will be readily attainable by students meeting statistical methods for the first time. All the methods described are applied to, and sometimes are motivated by, genuine problems of interest arising in sociology, social policy, politics or human geography. The authors often provide a meaningful discussion of the substantive problem itself in addition to an analysis of the statistical techniques being used on it. In this way subject matter and statistical techniques are integrated in an original and effective manner. The authors combine considerable experience of shared teaching of social statistics with familiarity with its use in practical fields and in research. Their book therefore focuses on the most directly applicable methods and is carefully sequenced to promote rapid student understanding. The topic of probability - which so often confuses students - is here dealt with simply yet thoroughly. The chapter on the sources of social statistics, whilst being unusual in a text of this kind, is particularly welcome and comprehensively meets the needs of students on a wide range of courses. Introducing Social Statistics will make the vitally important field of statistics accessible to all students of the social sciences.

Social Movements and Global Social Change teaches students not only about how social change occurs but also how social movements can contribute to this change. The book links two concepts in sociology that are often related in real life, but that can seem disconnected in traditional approaches to teaching these courses. The book examines different types of social movements, including those often ignored in social change textbooks, such as riots, migration, and disorganized protest. It also looks at citizens' rights and inequality in connection to social movements and change. The book features global perspectives and examples throughout.

The Handbook on Teaching Social Issues, 2nd edition, provides teachers and teacher educators with a comprehensive guide to teaching social issues in the classroom. This second edition re-frames the teaching of social issues with a dedicated emphasis on issues of social justice. It raises the potential for a new and stronger focus on social issues instruction in schools. Contributors include many of the leading experts in the field of social studies education. Issues-centered social studies is an approach to teaching history, government, geography, economics and other subject related courses through a focus on persistent social issues. The emphasis is on problematic questions that need to be addressed and investigated in-depth to increase social understanding, active participation, and social progress. Questions or issues may address problems of the past, present, or future, and involve disagreement over facts, definitions, values, and beliefs arising in the study of any of the social studies disciplines, or other aspects of human affairs. The authors and editor believe that this approach should be at the heart of social studies instruction in schools.

Surveys enjoy great ubiquity among data collection methods in social research: they are flexible in questioning techniques, in the amount of questions asked, in the topics covered, and in the various ways of interactions with respondents. Surveys are also the preferred method by many researchers in the social sciences due to their ability to provide quick profiles and results. Because they are so commonly used and fairly easy to administer, surveys are often thought to be easily thrown together. But designing an effective survey that yields reliable and valid results takes more than merely asking questions and waiting for the answers to arrive. Geared to the non-statistician, the Handbook of Survey Methodology in Social Sciences addresses issues throughout all phases of survey design and implementation. Chapters examine the major survey methods of data collection, providing expert guidelines for asking targeted questions, improving accuracy and quality of responses, while reducing sampling and non-sampling bias. Relying on the Total Survey Error theory, various issues of both sampling and non-sampling sources of error are explored and discussed. By covering all aspects of the topic, the Handbook is suited to readers taking their first steps in survey methodology, as well as to those already involved in survey design and execution, and to those currently in training. Featured in the Handbook: * The Total Survey Error: sampling and non-sampling errors. * Survey sampling techniques. * The art of question phrasing. * Techniques for increasing response rates * A question of ethics: what is allowed in survey research? * Survey design: face-to-face, phone, mail, e-mail, online, computer-assisted.? * Dealing with sensitive issues in surveys. * Demographics of respondents: implications for future survey research. * Dealing with nonresponse, and nonresponse bias The Handbook of Survey Methodology in Social Sciences offers how-to clarity for researchers in the social and behavioral sciences and related disciplines, including sociology, criminology, criminal justice, social psychology, education, public health, political science, management, and many other disciplines relying on survey methodology as one of their main data collection tools.

This Open Access book investigates the methodological and ethical dilemmas involved when working with digital technologies and large-scale datasets in relation to ethnographic studies of digital migration practices and trajectories. Digital technologies reshape not only every phase of the migration process itself (by providing new ways to access, to share and preserve relevant information) but also the activities of other actors, from solidarity networks to border control agencies. In doing so, digital technologies create a whole new set of ethical and methodological challenges for migration studies: from data access to data interpretation, privacy protection, and research ethics more generally. Of specific concern are the aspects of digital migration researchers accessing digital platforms used by migrants, who are subject to precarious and insecure life circumstances, lack recognised papers and are in danger of being rejected and deported. Thus, the authors call for new modes of caring for (big) data when researching migrants' digital practices in the configuration of migration and borders. Besides taking proper care of research participants' privacy, autonomy, and security, this also spans carefully establishing analytically sustainable environments for the respective data sets. In doing so, the book argues that it is essential to carefully reflect on researchers' own positioning as being part of the challenge they seek to address.

Focus Groups: From Structured Interviews to Collective Conversations is a conceptual and practical introduction to focus group. As the title indicates, focus groups traditionally encompass a wide range of discursive practices. These span from formal structured interviews with particular people assembled around clearly delimited topics to less formal, open-ended conversations with large and small groups that can unfold in myriad and unpredictable ways. Additionally, focus groups can and have served many overlapping purposes-from the pedagogical, to the political, to the traditionally empirical. In this book, focus groups are systematically explored; not as an extension or elaboration of interview work alone, but as its own specific research method with its own particular affordances. This book comprehensively explores: The nature of focus groups Politic and activist uses of focus groups Practical ways to run a successful focus group Effective analysis of focus group data Contemporary threats to focus groups Focus Groups: From Structured Interviews to Collective Conversations is essential reading for qualitative researchers at every level, particularly those involved in education, nursing, social work, anthropology, and sociology disciplines.

Six Steps to Preparing Exemplary Principals and Superintendents is the first book to inspire and guide professors and program administrator's proven ways to prepare exemplary principals and superintendents for schools. The authors review issues surrounding extreme criticism of leadership education and counter with positive new research and practices that clearly highlight successful programs that link preparation to on-the-job successes of graduates. The reader will find a step-by-step guide to selecting the best students, creating a pre- and post-assessment of student learning, a well-designed procedure to pretest and assure that all masters degree students actually acquire a strong knowledge base and score well on state licensure exams. The final step provides proven questionnaires to survey graduates of the masters or doctoral programs to gather valuable feedback for constant program improvement and relevance to the real world of schools.

This book is an introduction into stochastic processes for physicists, biologists and financial analysts. Using an informal approach, all the necessary mathematical tools and techniques are covered, including the stochastic differential equations, mean values, probability distribution functions, stochastic integration and numerical modeling. Numerous examples of practical applications of the stochastic mathematics are considered in detail, ranging from physics to the financial theory. A reader with basic knowledge of the probability theory should have no difficulty in accessing the book content.

This book explores the very latest developments in the South China Sea maritime dispute. It examines the South China Sea as an arena for geostrategic competition between China and the United States and why the dispute is so important for regional and global geopolitics. It outlines the most recent developments in the sea itself and assesses the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the current views of the contesting claimants. It considers the position of countries from outside the region, India as well as Japan; surveys military and naval developments; and examines confidence building, preventive diplomacy, and dispute resolution measures. The book concludes by highlighting the points of greatest risk and by discussing how the situation is likely to develop going forward.

Find the answers to disaster and emergency management research questions with Disaster and Emergency Management Methods. Written to engage students and to provide a flexible foundation for instructors and practitioners, this interdisciplinary textbook provides a holistic understanding of disaster and emergency management research methods used in the field. The disaster and emergency management contexts have a host of challenges that affect the research process that subsequently shape methodological approaches, data quality, analysis and inferences. In this book, readers are presented with the considerations that must be made before engaging in the research process, in addition to a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches that are currently being used in the discipline. Current, relevant, and fascinating real-world applications provide a window into how each approach is being applied in the field. Disaster and Emergency Management Methods serves as an effective way to empower readers to approach their own study of disaster and emergency management research methods with confidence.

This book focuses on performing hands-on meta-analysis using MetaXL, a free add-on to MS Excel. The illustrative examples are taken mainly from medical and health sciences studies, but the generic methods can be used to perform meta-analysis on data from any other discipline. The book adopts a step-by-step approach to perform meta-analyses and interpret the results. Stata codes for meta-analyses are also provided. All popularly used meta-analytic methods and models - such as the fixed effect model, random effects model, inverse variance heterogeneity model, and quality effect model - are used to find the confidence interval for the effect size measure of independent primary studies and the pooled study. In addition to the commonly used meta-analytic methods for various effect size measures, the book includes special topics such as meta-regression, dose-response meta-analysis, and publication bias. The main attraction for readers is the book's simplicity and straightforwardness in conducting actual meta-analysis using MetaXL. Researchers would easily find everything on meta-analysis of any particular effect size in one specific chapter once they could determine the underlying effect measure. Readers will be able to see the results under different models and also will be able to select the correct model to obtain accurate results.

In this long-awaited book, Ursula Huws brings together the results of decades of prescient research on labour market transformation to provide an authoritative overview of the impacts of technological, economic, social and political change on working life in the 21st century. Placing current upheavals in global labour markets firmly in their historical context, she debunks myths about the impacts of artificial intelligence on labour, pointing to the processes whereby new employment is created, as well as old jobs destroyed, while never underestimating the contradictory impacts of digitalisation on work organisation, resistance, adaption and innovation. This book is underpinned by a clear conceptual framework, that analyses the dynamics of the restructuring of capitalism and labour, taking full account of unpaid social reproductive work, and integrating a feminist analysis whilst also pointing to new forms of commodification that will shape the future. Labour in Contemporary Capitalism will be an invaluable resource and point of reference for students and scholars studying the sociology of labour, economic structures, technology, and globalisation.