This bestselling title has been extensively revised and updated to provide an accurate statistical portrait of the American family as it exists today. Data collected from federal and state government agencies, Gallup polls, professional journals, and research are presented in a single, easily accessible format. Nearly 350 graphs, charts, and figures are provided. The second edition reflects the changing demographics of the American family. Among the issues receiving new or expanded coverage are the amount of time husbands spend doing household tasks, the concept of equal pay for equal work, parents' interaction with children, child abuse, household income, and fathers' participation in child care.

For the social sciences, the approach and processes in research are quite different. The type of evidence that social scientists can collect is often very dependent on the method that has been used to gather the data. The type of findings that can be discussed are often not straightforward at all, and no easy comparison can be made with the natural sciences, although this is not impossible. The methodology in the social sciences has the same role as technology and lab techniques in the natural sciences as these need to be developed rapidly to account for the increasing complexity of the natural objects to be studied. The methodologies in the social sciences need to go through an intense period of critique, reflection, and reformulation to consider the complexity of social issues under investigation. Therefore, the area of social sciences research and methodologies should continually be studied to advance the field. Approaches and Processes of Social Science Research presents new research methodologies in the social science field and aims at providing a broad introduction to the methodology of social research in its main theoretical foundations as well as in its practical applications. Readers will develop a critical thinking attitude about social problems which in turn will sharpen their analytic approach to research. This book includes four main parts: philosophical perspectives, strategies for conducting research, common approaches for handling and collecting data, and critical aspects of research writing throughout the process. While highlighting topics such as critical theory in research, ethical issues, research processes, data analysis, and more, this book is ideal for researchers in the social sciences and practitioners, stakeholders, academicians, and students interested in deepening their understanding of the ideas and the practices of social science research.

This volume explores the use and relevance of qualitative methods for the study of quality of life. It analyzes the role of qualitative researcher and the role of the context and the culture in quality of life studies. It presents the use of qualitative methods in real projects carried out in specific fields: geography, health, community studies, labor life and yoga. Finally, the book proposes the use of mixed methods that are considered as the third methodological approach in social research. The main purpose of using qualitative methods is to understand what it means for participants to be involved in certain events, situations and actions. Such methods help understand the context in which participants act and the influence of that context on their actions. The decision to use a particular methodology implies a philosophic, theoretical and political decision. Qualitative methodology constitutes an approach that is essential for understanding people's experiences of well-being and discovering new issues related to quality of life.

Joining the debate about the role of scholarship and research at American universities, this book examines contemporary academic issues, such as the evolution of postmodern concepts of scholarship, scholarship in the late age of print, and incentives for promoting grant writing and scholarly publishing. Contributors, including provosts, faculty development professionals, administrators, editors, and scholars, debate the impact of the German system of research-based graduate study and its faith in the ideal of pure research on American scholarship. Several contributors contend that the legacy of privileging pure research over applied research and pedagogy provides an inadequate model today. Teaching, conducting applied research, and writing works for broad audiences are undervalued, they claim, at many universities. As scholarship becomes more specialized, scholarly writing has become so specialized that few outside the specific discipline can read or understand it.

This volume continues the challenge to the concept of pure research and atheoretical teaching. Contributors demonstrate how postmodern theories and social and economic problems are working to explode the myth of disinterested research. The book goes on to analyze how academics can grapple with the social, political, moral, and pedagogical issues confronting society. It also considers the impact of new technologies, such as online databases and electronic journals, on scholarship. Current research suggests that only 10 to 20 percent of the nation's faculty produce the scholarly literature. This volume explores the changes that could help faculty find their voices as scholars, researchers, and grant writers.

As the shift in the racial and ethnic composition of the united States continues, students, researchers, and others will find it important to understand the differences between--and similarities among--racial groups. This volume compiles a broad range of statistical data on important topics across various racial groups. Gathered from authoritative sources, this information offers statistical comparisons on timely subjects, including: educational goals, attitudes about employment, leisure pursuits, marital happiness, attitudes about contraception, religious beliefs, arrest rates, and political party preferences.

Global University Rankings explores the novel topic of global university rankings and their effects on higher education in Europe. The contributions in this volume outline different discourses on global university rankings and explore the related changes concerning European higher education policies, disciplinary traditions and higher education institutions. The first global university rankings were published less than a decade ago, but these policy instruments have become highly influential in shaping the approaches and institutional realities of higher education. The rankings have portrayed European academic institutions in a varying light. There is intense reflexivity over the figures, leading to ideational changes and institutional adaptation that take surprisingly similar forms in different European countries. The contributions in this book critically assess global university rankings as a policy discourse that would seem to be instrumental to higher education reform throughout Europe.

Research that has been presented primarily by quantitative research can benefit from the voice of the participants and the added value of the different perspective that qualitative research can provide. The purpose of mixed methods research is to draw from the positive aspects of both research paradigms to better answer the research question. This type of research is often used in schools, businesses, and non-profit organizations as they strive to address and resolve questions that will impact their organizations. Applied Social Science Approaches to Mixed Methods Research: Emerging Research and Opportunities is an academic research publication that examines more traditional and common research methods and how they can be complimented through qualitative counterparts. The content within this publication covers an array of topics such as entrepreneurship, social media, and marginalization. It is essential for researchers, academicians, non-profit professionals, business professionals, and higher education faculty, and specifically targets master or doctoral students committed to writing their theses, dissertations, or scholarly articles, who may not have had the benefit of working on a traditional research team.

Product information not available.

A volume in Studies in the History of Education Series Editor: Karen L. Riley, Auburn University at Montgomery How do people use education to respond to change? How do people learn what is expected of "good citizens" in their communities? These questions have long concerned educational historians, civic educators, and social scientists. In recent years, they have captured national attention through high-profile education reform proposals and civic initiatives. The historian who reviews the relevant literature, however, will discover something odd: most of it focuses on schooling, despite the fact that, prior to the middle of the twentieth century, formal schooling played only a small (but significant) part in most people's lives. What other educational forces and institutions bring civic ideals to bear upon minds and hearts? This question is rarely raised. At issue is a conceptual problem: we, today, tend to equate "education" with "schooling." Do county fairs and farmers' associations have anything to do with civic education? Drawing insights from debates at the time of the "founding" of the history of education as a branch of modern scholarship, this author asserts that they do. Using the life of county fairs, farmers' associations, and farmers' institutes as its central thread, this book explores how prominent town-dwellers and leading farmers tried to use agricultural improvement to grow towns and to shape civic sensibilities in the rural Midwest. Promoting economic development was the foremost concern, but the efforts taught farmers much about their "place" as "good citizens" of industrializing communities. As such, this study yields insights into how rural people of the nineteenth century came to accept the ideal that "town" and "country" were interdependent parts of the same community. In doing so, it reminds educators and historians that much education and learning - particularly of the civic sort - takes place beyond the schoolhouse.

This handbook provides a comprehensive historical account of the field of Quality of Life. It brings together theoretical insights and empirical findings and presents the main items of global quality of life and wellbeing research. Worldwide in its scope of topics, the handbook examines discussions of demographic and health development, the spread of democracy, global economic accounting, multi-item measurement of perceived satisfaction and expert-assessed quality of life and the well-being of children, women and poor people. It looks at well-being in specific regions, including North and Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern and Western Europe. In addition to contributions by leading and younger authors, the handbook includes contributions from International Organizations about their own work with respect to social reporting.

This book identifies the strengths and weaknesses of different methodological approaches to research in communication and social change. It examines the methodological opportunities and challenges occasioned by rapid technological affordances and society-wide transformations. This study provides grounded insights on these issues from a broad range of proficient academics and experienced practitioners. Overall, the different contributions address four key themes: a critical evaluation of different ethnographic approaches in researching communication for/and social change; a critical appraisal of visual methodologies and theatre for development research; a methodological appraisal of different participatory approaches to researching social change; and a critical examination of underlying assumptions of knowledge production within the dominant strands of methodological approaches to researching social change. In addressing these issues through a critical reflection of the methodological decisions and implications of their research projects, the contributors in this book offer perspectives that are highly relevant for students, researchers and practitioners within the broad field of communication for/and social change.

Michael Grimes looks at the voluminous scholarly literature published by American social scientists in the twentieth century and provides an overview and critique of the major theories, conceptualizations, and measurements of class inequality. No book published since the late fifties has had such scope. This volume assembles a framework for interpreting and understanding the changing character of the theories and methodologies used by scholars to study class inequality based on two schools of social theory--order and conflict--each with different assumptions about human nature and society, and about the unique role(s) that class plays in society. Grimes contends that theoretical perspectives result from the interaction of the unique biographies of theorists with the sociohistorical, ideological, and disciplinary settings within which they work, and that the relative popularity of perspectives on the subject within the discipline has varied over time as the setting has changed.

Part I of the book assesses the diverse perspectives on class inequality of early American sociologists. Part II examines the rise of functionalism within American sociology and its subsequent application to the issue of class inequality. Two conflict perspectives on inequality--labeled neo-Weberian and neo-Marxist theories--are discussed in Part III, while Part IV provides a summary and concludes that there is evidence of a convergence of sorts among contemporary perspectives on class inequality within the discipline. The colume is organized to facilitate use by graduate students and advanced undergraduate students as well as by professional social scientists--particularly sociologists.

A volume in International Advances in Education: Global Initiatives for Equity and Social Justice Series Editors: Elinor L. Brown, University of Kentucky, Rhonda Craven, University of Western Sydney, and George McLean, Catholic Universities of America. Religion and spirituality make critical contributions to an inclusive vision for the welfare of minorities, the marginalized and other disadvantaged groups in societies and cultures around the globe. Religious movements and spiritual traditions work to improve social outcomes for disenfranchised groups by enriching educational, political, and social agendas, and by providing a wide variety of justice-driven programs and services. Values underpinning these services include the dignity of the human person, the sanctity of human life, the foundational role of families and communities, the transformative power of learning, and the advancement of shared personal and social rights and responsibilities. These values act as a counter-balance to other attitudes and values that may impede pro-social cohesion and development. Drawing on diverse religious and spiritual perspectives and traditions, this new volume provides exciting and enriching examples of theory, research and practice that directly contribute to our understanding of how religion and spirituality promote and facilitate social justice and equity in diverse social and cultural contexts - with a particular focus on educational settings, contexts, processes and outcomes. Religious communities invest heavily in schools, colleges and universities in the belief that these educational institutions enable them to inculcate into their membership the kinds of moral values and qualities that lie at the heart of their spiritual teachings. Looking beyond the sacred-secular impasse, religious organisations attempt to provide a "education for life" which draws from both the scientia of science and the sapientia of religion and spirituality. These depth-dimensions provide the pool of values which enable citizens to enact equity, mercy and justice in society in the name of God and for the sake of humanity. The chapters which comprise this volume demonstrate the possibility of a healthy integration between religion and education from a truly global, transdisciplinary and ecumenical perspective. From contexts within Asia, Africa, the USA and Australia, and from disciplines ranging from ethics to social work, from health to educational curriculum, from personal identity to community-consciousness; this volume makes a unique contribution to the theory and practice of the educational and religious inter-face. It is a contribution which holds a great deal of promise for being pro-humanitas.

This accessible text presents a comprehensive and integrated scheme for preparing research designs and research proposals for students in the social sciences. The book is concerned with planning social research projects rather than how to conduct them and in the process it connects the techniques of research with key methodological issues in the social sciences.

The author places particular emphasis on the formulation of research questions and the selection of appropriate research strategies (logics of enquiry) to answer them. He argues that other design decisions, such as the selection of data sources and methods of data collection and analysis, must be made in the light of the particular ontological and epistemological assumptions associated with each research strategy.

The basic requirements for research designs and research proposals are laid out at the beginning of the book, followed by discussion of the major design elements, and the choices that need to be made about them. Four sample research designs at the end of the volume illustrate the use of the research strategies. The need to achieve consistency in design decisions is stressed throughout the book. The author includes a critical review of some controversial issues, including the use of quantitative and qualitative methods, the role of case studies, the appropriateness of triangulation, the relevance of representative samples, and the limited role for tests of significance.

This book will be essential reading for all social researchers, but particularly for postgraduate students. It is a companion to Blaikie's "Approaches to Social Enquiry,"

This volume includes contributions selected after a double blind review process and presented as a preliminary version at the 45th Meeting of the Italian Statistical Society. The papers provide significant and innovative original contributions and cover a broad range of topics including: statistical theory; methods for time series and spatial data; statistical modeling and data analysis; survey methodology and official statistics; analysis of social, demographic and health data; and economic statistics and econometrics.

This book offers insights into key research-based strategies that can help to alleviate global challenges faced by both individuals and groups in society. Focusing on conducting qualitative research, the chapters highlight an approach for understanding human thoughts and actions, and examining how things actually function in society. Explaining both the theoretical and practical aspects of doing qualitative research, the book uses examples from real-world research projects to emphasise how to conduct qualitative research in the social sciences. Pranee Liamputtong draws together contributions covering qualitative research in cultural and medical anthropology, sociology, gender studies, political science, criminology, demography, economic sciences, social work, and education. Each chapter discusses the essence of a discipline before examining the contribution of qualitative enquiry and then interrogating traditional qualitative research methods as well as emerging or innovative methods. This will be an invigorating read for students and scholars of the social sciences. Its combination of theoretical and practical insights will also be essential for qualitative researchers.

This book is a practical, step-by-step introduction to microsimulation in demography. It shows how to use Modgen, a powerful and free microsimulation platform built by Statistics Canada. The authors' hands-on explanation of model development will help readers make their own. The book teaches how to create and run a simple cohort model with a single fixed-rate event, and builds upon this concept. It introduces how to develop both a single state life table as well as a multiple increment-decrement life table using the tools provided by Modgen. The authors illustrate how to easily upgrade an existing model by adding new modules and new dimensions as determinants of a risk already modeled. The integration of a fertility module and a base population allows the user to bring new actors into the simulation and transform a cohort-based model into a population-based one. The final addition of an international migration module allows the user to accomplish fully open, multi-regional projections. This accessible introduction will be of interest to researchers and students in population studies and other social sciences. It will also appeal to anyone interested in the computational modeling of population dynamics.

'Soft' Counterinsurgency reviews the promise and actual achievement of Human Terrain Teams, the small groups of social scientists that were eventually embedded in every combat brigade in Iraq and Afghanistan. The book, based on interviews with both HTT personnel and their military commanders, examines the military's need for sociocultural information, the ethical issues surrounding research carried out in combat zones, and the tensions between military and social science organizational cultures. The account provides a close, detailed account of HTT activities, a critical reflection on the possibilities of creating a 'softer, ' less violent counterinsurgency, and the difficulty of attempting to make war more 'intelligent' and discriminating.

This is the first book to compare eight LDFs by different types of datasets, such as Fisher's iris data, medical data with collinearities, Swiss banknote data that is a linearly separable data (LSD), student pass/fail determination using student attributes, 18 pass/fail determinations using exam scores, Japanese automobile data, and six microarray datasets (the datasets) that are LSD. We developed the 100-fold cross-validation for the small sample method (Method 1) instead of the LOO method. We proposed a simple model selection procedure to choose the best model having minimum M2 and Revised IP-OLDF based on MNM criterion was found to be better than other M2s in the above datasets. We compared two statistical LDFs and six MP-based LDFs. Those were Fisher's LDF, logistic regression, three SVMs, Revised IP-OLDF, and another two OLDFs. Only a hard-margin SVM (H-SVM) and Revised IP-OLDF could discriminate LSD theoretically (Problem 2). We solved the defect of the generalized inverse matrices (Problem 3). For more than 10 years, many researchers have struggled to analyze the microarray dataset that is LSD (Problem 5). If we call the linearly separable model "Matroska," the dataset consists of numerous smaller Matroskas in it. We develop the Matroska feature selection method (Method 2). It finds the surprising structure of the dataset that is the disjoint union of several small Matroskas. Our theory and methods reveal new facts of gene analysis.

This collection discusses and illustrates how educational research is affected by the economic, institutional and physical contingencies of its time, and in our time even increasingly is driven by them. It is argued that the antidote to this is, however, not to aspire to 'thought itself', but instead to do justice to its own rootedness in the 'material', including textuality. From an historical point of view such an innovative approach can itself revamp the material scholarly culture and the way it is represented. The chapters address a variety of topics such as the cultural heritage of the school desk, the significance of images for research into long-term educational processes, the way iconic signs function, and how modes of enquiry relate to the materiality of education. Attention is also given to standards for reporting on educational research studies and how these limit the scope and communication and moreover shape researchers, to the forms of citation practices as substantially influencing methods and content, and to the centrality of conversation not just as the means to an end but as what matters; further to representational and to non-representational theories for educational research. Some examples are drawn from the area of arts-based educational research, from mathematics education, and from the discourse on universities.

This book provides an up-to-date overview of demographic analysis and methods, including recent developments in demography. Concepts and methods, from the nature of demographic information through data collection and the basics of statistical measures and on to demographic analysis itself are succinctly explained. Measures and analyses of fertility, mortality, life tables, migration and demographic events such as marriage, education and labour force are described while later chapters cover multiple decrement tables, population projections, the importance of testing and smoothing demographic data, the stable population model and demographic software. An emphasis on practical aspects and the use of real-life examples based on data from around the globe make this book accessible, whilst comprehensive references and links to data and other resources on the internet help readers to explore further. The text is concise and well written, making it ideally suited to a wider audience from students to academics and teachers. Students of demography, geography, sociology, economics, as well as professionals, academics and students of marketing, human resource management, and public health who have an interest in population issues will all find this book useful.

Beere has produced a new edition of her Women and Women's Issues: A Handbook of Tests and Measurements. Based largely on a search of the PsychLIT and ERIC databases from January 1978 to December 1988, the volume includes information on 211 tests and measures pertaining to gender roles and attitudes towards gender. . . . Particularly useful are chapter reviews of the literature in which the author reviews the quality of available research. Recommended for college and university libraries.

"Choice"

This handbook stems, in part, from the author's previously published "Women and Women's IssueS." Realizing that a book published in 1979 could no longer provide researchers with the up-to-date information they require regarding measures to use in research, Beere set out to revise and update her work. In the process, she soon discovered that the measures identified through her search of the literature produced since her first book was published far exceeds the number that can be realistically described in a single handbook. Thus, she has undertaken a two-volume guide, the first of which, "Gender RoleS," describes only those measures pertaining to gender roles and attitudes toward gender-related issues. Gender roles are broadly defined to include adults' and children's gender roles, gender stereotypes, marital roles, parental roles, employee roles, and multiple roles. A total of 211 measures are included.

In addition to 67 scales still in use that were described in her earlier book, Beere includes scales that are relevant, have evidence of their reliability and/or validity, and are used in more than one published article or ERIC document. If a scale does not satisfy these criteria, but its development is the focus of an article or ERIC document, it is included, as are scales that are unusual or pertain to a topic that would otherwise receive inadequate coverage in this handbook. The scale descriptions follow a standard format that includes the following information: title; author or authors as listed in the earliest publication mentioning the scale; earliest date that the scale is mentioned in a publication; profile of variable being measured; type of instrument; description; sample items; previous and appropriate subjects; scoring information; a description of the development of the measure; information regarding reliability and validity; and a listing of published studies that use the measure. This important new handbook promises to make several important contributions to gender-related research. It will make it easier for researchers to locate quality instruments appropriate for their research, discourage the proliferation of substandard or redundant measures, set some minimal standards for measures used in gender role research, and encourage more research regarding gender roles. All social science libraries will want to find a place for it in their reference collections.

This book applies a range of ideas about scientific discovery found in contemporary philosophy of science to psychology and related behavioral sciences. In doing so, it aims to advance our understanding of a host of important methodological ideas as they apply to those sciences. A philosophy of local scientific realism is adopted in favor of traditional accounts that are thought to apply to all sciences. As part of this philosophy, the implications of a commitment to philosophical naturalism are spelt out, and a correspondence theory of truth is defended by showing how it helps explain various features of scientific practice. The central chapter of the book presents a broad theory of scientific method that comprises the detection of empirical phenomena and their subsequent understanding by constructing explanatory theories through the use of abductive methods. This theory of scientific method is then used as a framework to reconstruct the well-known qualitative method of grounded theory, and to present a systematic perspective on clinical reasoning and case formulation. Relatedly, an abductive or explanationist understanding of methods is employed to evaluate the knowledge credentials of evolutionary psychology. In addition, the conceptual and methodological foundations of a variety of quantitative methods are examined. Exploratory factor analysis and tests of statistical significance are given special attention.

The number of homeless people in America has continued to grow at an alarming rate since the 1970s. Yet many members of the general public still have far more questions than answers about the magnitude and implications of this complex social problem and the reasons for its persistence. Now the answers can be found in "Homelessness in America," the most current, comprehensive, and authoritative volume available on this subject. Focusing on the broad social issue of homelessness, the book's 19 essays offer in-depth examinations of policy-related issues by noted social workers, researchers, advocates, and other experts in the field. Chapter topics include the causes and prevention of homelessness, national and local advocacy movements, the local regulation of public space, and current policies on employment, income maintenance, and housing. Up-to-date statistics and tables are included along with an extensive bibliography and an appendix listing national or state advocacy organizations.