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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Communication studies > Research methods
The use of simulation modeling in criminal justice dates back to
the 1970s. Early models were developed to capture the realities of
the criminal justice system, to identify what changes were needed,
and how small changes would affect the overall picture. Significant
time and effort were devoted to these projects and although they
achieved some success, the complex nature of the criminal justice
system and the difficulties associated with improving and
maintaining the models prohibited wide spread adoption in the
field. Some of the problems with early simulation projects were the
lack of data to validate models, the lack of technical skills
needed by staff to design and build the models, and the technical
difficulties with software programming to transform models into
computerized representations.
Narrative Portraits in Qualitative Research offers an analytical approach to qualitative data. Through narrative portraiture, research findings can be contextualised in broader social narratives without losing sight of the unique personal qualities of the research encounter. Drawing a parallel between the artistic work of a portrait maker in depicting a subject - sometimes an object - and the work of the researcher in exploring people's experiences, narrative portraiture invites a close-up into a person's narrated and embodied experience and argues that one of the main research findings in qualitative research is the person themselves; their circumstances, and their life story. The book proposes four approaches to narrative portraiture: (1) a systematic approach to narrative analysis, (2) the use of phronesis in narrative portraiture, (3) the concept of 'imagined portraits' as a collaborative approach between visual arts and social sciences, and (4) the use of 'performative portraits' both as an analytic tool and product for research communication. This book will help qualitative researchers create first-person narratives that will give a glimpse into the participants' lives in a way that is simultaneously deep, concise, and evocative. This book will be suitable for those interested in narrative methods and qualitative research in health care, education, and the social sciences.
Disruptive and creative research methodologies proposed in this book are designed to dismantle neoliberal narratives deployed in tourism studies and wider social sciences. Progressing criticality in tourism studies, this volume showcases cutting-edge contributions ranging from reflexivity, subjectivities, and dreams; to messy emotions in auto-ethnographic accounts of fieldwork; 'motherhood capital' accessing Inuit communities; collective memory work; ethnodrama and creative non-fiction, amongst others. Disruption and creativity are the two ideas around which tourism geographers challenge and begin dismantling hegemonic ideologies in tourism studies. The chapters in this book provide a vantage point from where to disrupt first, before tourism geographers can engender progress and transformation within and outside of the field. In tourism studies in general, and tourism geography in particular, the years of the 2000s have witnessed an emphasis on qualitative methodological research, both in terms of the topics addressed and the types of methodological tools. In many ways, this legitimisation of qualitative work mirrors developments in other areas such as human geography, sociology and anthropology, in which this book is anchored. The authors debate in more depth how tourism studies offer multidimensional, multilogical and multi-emotional approaches to research design. The chapters were originally published as a special issue of the journal, Tourism Geographies.
Original ideas start in a persons mind, but the environment where they operate is crucial for the capture and development of these ideas. Equally important is the interaction with others in developing and evaluating ideas, as a brilliant idea only influences the world if it is put into use. This book hopes to inspire the team leader, innovation manager or research group leader. It deals with the delicate balance of managing and controlling intellectual property in a collaborative environment. Insights on how new inventions can be evaluated are offered. Following the whole cycle of innovation from a creative idea to where a product or service can be put on the market, examples illustrate how an innovative environment can be created and maintained. Strategies and solutions based on the science of team development are presented and leadership models for the different phases of group development are provided. The book will be of interest to researchers, academics, product developers, entrepreneurs, and advanced students in the fields of technology and innovation management and entrepreneurship and small business management but also for leadership.
The last 15 years has seen an explosion of studies that use cognitive science to understand theatre, whilst at the same time theatre-makers are using their artistic practice to address research question. This book looks at the current discourse around these emerging fields.
Exploring the mechanisms underlying performance comparisons, Performance Comparison and Organizational Service Provision investigates how such assessments shape hospitals' service provision and medical professionals' work. With a focus on U.S. health care, this study outlines how medical quality was defined and compared in the hospital sector from the late 19th century to the present. Developing a novel theoretical framework to investigate performance comparisons, several different forms of internal and external performance assessments are contrasted throughout this period. The transformative effects of these comparisons on hospitals' relationships to patients, insurers, regulators, and staff are analyzed and their ramifications for current hospital care are explored. Drawing on this analysis, the book examines the controversial nature of these measures and the struggles among hospital managers, patients, physicians, and policy makers to determine hospital quality. Affording a deeper understanding of how performance comparisons influence organizational service provision, the book will be of interest to researchers in a broad range of fields including organization studies, accountability and evaluation, health care, and policy research as well as practitioners in hospital care and management.
Drawing on a rich variety of participatory action research methods including ethnographic observation, artefact collection, focus groups, and interviews, this volume explores the transformational potential of development programs which actively involve marginalized groups. Foregrounding the experiences of women migrant workers in Beirut, the text reveals how direct participation in NGO-led, community programs and education empowers women to create counter-cultural communities and spaces for learning and activism. The text ultimately combines aspects of critical pedagogy, spatial analysis, and Third World feminisms to propose a critical subaltern praxis for research, development, and teaching. It will appeal to scholars and researchers with interests in research methods in education, migration, equality and human rights and the anthropology of education.
In Engaging in Narrative Inquiry, Second Edition, D. Jean Clandinin, a pioneer in narrative research, updates her classic formulation on narrative inquiry, clarifying, extending, and refining methods. This updated edition looks at changes and developments in the field since the publication of the first edition in 2013, exploring how narrative inquiry explores human lives through a narrative lens that honors experience as a source of important knowledge and understanding. The book includes several exemplary cases with the author's critique and analysis of the work. The following are new to this edition: New exemplary cases, including Menon's autobiographical narrative inquiry as the starting point for framing a research puzzle and justifying a study, Chung's account of a study that begins with living alongside participants, and a paper from Swanson's autobiographical narrative inquiry An expanded discussion of the philosophical grounding of narrative inquiry An expanded discussion of relational ethics in narrative inquiry that highlights links to a relational ontology An updated account of the field of narrative inquiry that highlights future directions, including the necessity of response groups, and questions of responsibility and community The increasing interest in narrative inquiry as research methodology across disciplines makes this book an essential guide and an excellent text for graduate courses in qualitative inquiry, education and nursing research, sociology, and all courses in autobiographical and narrative research and inquiry.
Capstone projects have long been used in other disciplines but are now being seen within psychology courses. This textbook is a one-stop-shop for anyone looking to undertake a capstone project or other final project. In a friendly and collaborative style, this book guides the student through everything they need to know to ensure a successful capstone or other final project.
Research Methods: A Practical Guide for Students and Researchers is a practical guide on how to conduct research systematically and professionally. The book begins by distinguishing between causal and interpretive sciences. It then guides the reader on how to formulate the research question, review the literature, develop the hypothesis or framework, select a suitable research methodology, and analyze both quantitative and qualitative data.The book uses classic examples as exemplars. It also uses many examples from different disciplines and sectors to demonstrate and showcase the inter-connections and wider applications of research tools.The book emphasizes integration. It does not merely provide a smorgasbord of research designs, data collection methods, and ways to analyze data. Instead, it shows how one could formulate research strategies given the outcomes the researchers are required or tasked to deliver.The revised edition includes three new chapters on time series (including spatial models), machine learning, and meta-analysis. In addition, existing chapters have been expanded to include more examples, digital research, and new material.
This book explores how, why and when hermeneutic phenomenology can be used as a methodology in health and social research. Providing actual examples of doing robust hermeneutic phenomenology and a focus on praxis, the book demonstrates how philosophical or theoretical notions can inform, enrich and enhance our research projects. The chapters offer examples of many different research designs and interpretive decisions in order to illustrate the unbounded and creative nature of this type of inquiry, whilst also demonstrating the trustworthiness of the scientific processes adopted. The chapter authors invite the reader on a unique journey that highlights how they made individual and tailored decisions throughout their projects, emphasising the challenges and joys they encountered. This book is a valuable resource for all students and academics who wish to explore the meaningfulness of human lived experiences across the multitude of phenomena in health and social care.
This book is devoted to the reintroduction of the remarkable approach to sociological inquiry developed by Harvey Sacks. Sacks's original analyses - concerned with the lived detail of action and language-in-interaction, discoverable in members' actual activities - demonstrated a means of doing sociology that had previously seemed impossible. In so doing, Sacks provided for highly technical, detailed, yet stunningly simple solutions to some of the most trenchant troubles for the social sciences relating to language, culture, meaning, knowledge, action, and social organisation. In this original collection, scholars working in a range of different fields, including sociology, human geography, communication and media studies, social psychology, and linguistics, outline the ways in which their work has been inspired, influenced, and shaped by Sacks's approach, as well as how their current research is taking Sacks's legacy forward in new directions. As such, the collection is intended to provide both an introduction to, and critical exploration of, the work of Harvey Sacks and its continued relevance for the analysis of contemporary society.
Understanding legal rules not as determinants of behavior but as points of reference for conduct, this volume considers the ways in which rules are invoked, referred to, interpreted, put forward or blurred. It also asks how both legal practitioners and lay participants conceive of and participate in the construction of facts and rules, and thus, through decisions, defenses, pleas, files, evidence, interviews and documents, actively participate in law's life. With attention to the formulation of notions such as person, evidence, intention, cause and responsibility in the course of legal practices, Legal Rules in Practice provides the outlines of a praxiological anthropology of law - an anthropology that focuses on words, concepts and reasoning as actively used to solve conflicts with the help of legal rules. As such, it will appeal to sociologists, anthropologists and scholars of law with interests in ethnomethodology, rule-based conduct and practical reasoning.
Participatory Case Study Work shows academic co-researchers how to adapt and implement their methods so that data collection and analysis is authentically participatory. At the heart of this text is advocating a participatory approach to case study work, with co-construction as a catalyst for shared understanding and action in advancing ageing studies. Whilst case study research has a relatively long tradition in the canon of research methodologies, little attention has so far been paid to the importance and value of participatory case study work. This is surprising as its egalitarian and democratic value-base naturally lends itself to the co-production and co-creation of personal and collective theory drawn directly from lived experience. The book brings together over 15 years' worth of participatory case study work in ageing studies in which the editors have been actively involved as either front-line researchers or as supervisors to PhD and MPhil studies adopting the methodology, and from where each of the contributors is selected. Real-life case examples are shared in the main chapters of the book and they provide direction as to how learning can be applied to other settings. The chapters also contain key references and recommended reading. This volume will appeal to undergraduate and postgraduate students as well as postdoctoral researchers interested in fields such as research methods, qualitative methods, ageing studies and mental health studies.
In an age of increasingly fragmented migration, consumption, and globalisation, how do diasporic individuals navigate their ethnic identities? Diasporas, Weddings and the Trajectories of Ethnicity investigates the ways that Chinese Singaporeans shape their Chineseness through wedding rituals and artefacts. Proposing a framework of ethnic identity as a journey, this book will Interrogate the processes underlying diasporic ethnicity-making through weddings. Offer new concepts of transdiasporic space, ethnic tastes, and aesthetic dissonance. Explore the intersections between commercialism, ethnicity, and socio-economic divides. Map the micro-social ramifications of ethnic and racial policy in Singapore. As a former professional wedding photographer, Terence Heng brings a sociological lens to the scripted and spontaneous arena of social interactions that is the wedding day. By combining ethnographic observation, photography, and poetry, Heng reveals the many decisions and demands that underscore Singaporean Chinese weddings, offering novel insights into the roles of the bridal couple, their social networks, and the wedding industry.
This book introduces the notion of culinary capital to investigate socialisation and school mealtime experiences in an academy school based in the UK. Drawing on interviews collated from children, teachers and staff within the school, the text sheds light on food insecurity in society and schools as being major issue in educational policy. The book examines schools as a microcosm for society with school food space being the playground for socialisation. It shows how forms of culinary capital can be extended in the school dining hall where social space is negotiated with notions of inclusion and exclusion during mealtime. The book uses gender, class and race to understand the school dining hall as a space where culinary capital can be exchanged and learnt. Thorough research accompanied by ethnographic visuals, field notes and observations, it also explores the sensory impact of school gardens. As such the book will be of interest to students, teachers, school leaders, educators and policy makers in the fields of Education, Sociology, Social Policy and Food Studies.
This book sets out duoethnography as a method of research, reflective practice and as a pedagogical approach in English Language Teaching (ELT). The book provides an introduction to the history of duoethnography and lays out its theoretical foundations. The chapters then address duoethnography as a research method which can be used to explore critical and personal issues among ELT teachers, discuss how duoethnography as a reflective practice can aid teachers in understanding themselves, their colleagues or their context, and demonstrate how duoethnography can be used as a pedagogical tool in ELT classrooms. The chapters are a range of duoethnographies from established and emerging researchers and teachers, which explore the interplay between cultural discourses and life histories with a focus on ELT in Japan.
Doing Statistical Analysis looks at three kinds of statistical research questions - descriptive, associational, and inferential - and shows students how to conduct statistical analyses and interpret the results. Keeping equations to a minimum, it uses a conversational style and relatable examples such as football, COVID-19, and tourism, to aid understanding. Each chapter contains practice exercises, and a section showing students how to reproduce the statistical results in the book using Stata and SPSS. Digital supplements consist of data sets in Stata, SPSS, and Excel, and a test bank for instructors. Its accessible approach means this is the ideal textbook for undergraduate students across the social and behavioral sciences needing to build their confidence with statistical analysis.
Mixed Methods Perspectives on Communication and Social Media Research addresses the need for a discipline-cum-methodology-tailored book that navigates the current research spectrum of communication and social media ("CommSocMed"). It examines contemporary and relevant issues that intertwine the expansive spheres of CommSocMed. Authored by professionals with extensive academic and in-depth research and industry experience, the book highlights research-based themes that mirror qualitative and quantitative methodologies vis-a-vis socio-cultural, political, educational, and organisational issues and challenges. The first two sections present the mutually interwoven disciplines of CommSocMed where research works cover a comprehensive range of designs such as narrative analysis, case study, recombinant memetics, discourse analysis, visual semiotics, ethnography, content analysis, feminist theory, descriptive-survey, descriptive-correlational, model-building/testing, experimental, and mixed methods. The third section is a concluding segment which synthesises all the scholarly contributions in this volume. This book will serve as an authoritative reference for mixed methods research in CommSocMed and will be highly relevant reading for academics, researchers, postgraduate students and undergraduates in communication (for example, instructional communication, marketing communication, organisational communication, political communication, strategic communication), social media, and social sciences.
Mixed Methods Perspectives on Communication and Social Media Research addresses the need for a discipline-cum-methodology-tailored book that navigates the current research spectrum of communication and social media ("CommSocMed"). It examines contemporary and relevant issues that intertwine the expansive spheres of CommSocMed. Authored by professionals with extensive academic and in-depth research and industry experience, the book highlights research-based themes that mirror qualitative and quantitative methodologies vis-a-vis socio-cultural, political, educational, and organisational issues and challenges. The first two sections present the mutually interwoven disciplines of CommSocMed where research works cover a comprehensive range of designs such as narrative analysis, case study, recombinant memetics, discourse analysis, visual semiotics, ethnography, content analysis, feminist theory, descriptive-survey, descriptive-correlational, model-building/testing, experimental, and mixed methods. The third section is a concluding segment which synthesises all the scholarly contributions in this volume. This book will serve as an authoritative reference for mixed methods research in CommSocMed and will be highly relevant reading for academics, researchers, postgraduate students and undergraduates in communication (for example, instructional communication, marketing communication, organisational communication, political communication, strategic communication), social media, and social sciences.
Showcasing fuzzy set theory, this book highlights the enormous potential of fuzzy logic in helping to analyse the complexity of a wide range of socio-economic patterns and behaviour. The contributions to this volume explore the most up-to-date fuzzy-set methods for the measurement of socio-economic phenomena in a multidimensional and/or dynamic perspective. Thus far, fuzzy-set theory has primarily been utilised in the social sciences in the field of poverty measurement. These chapters examine the latest work in this area, while also exploring further applications including social exclusion, the labour market, educational mismatch, sustainability, quality of life and violence against women. The authors demonstrate that real-world situations are often characterised by imprecision, uncertainty and vagueness, which cannot be properly described by the classical set theory which uses a simple true-false binary logic. By contrast, fuzzy-set theory has been shown to be a powerful tool for describing the multidimensionality and complexity of social phenomena. This book will be of significant interest to economists, statisticians and sociologists utilising quantitative methods to explore socio-economic phenomena.
With a triadic perspective, this autoethnographic narrative explores the temporal, situated nature of interactions between the author as an adoptee with her adult adopted children as well as those between herself and her birth father and mother. The epiphanic adoptive family narratives that are foregrounded seek to deepen and challenge understanding of how kinship affinities are experienced. The autoethnographic narratives are written in a critical, evocative style which is valuable for two reasons. Firstly, the processes of reflexive self-introspection, self-observation and dialogue with relational others have established a critical connection between recognising and responding to kinship affinities and personal growth. Secondly, lying at the intersection of the self and other this narrative contributes to deepening insights around epistemic in/justice in adoptive kinship. This book will be of interest to educators and scholars of adoption in offering an insider perspective on unique family relationships as well as how the author undertakes critical evocative autoethnography. Adoptees, adoptive parents, and birth parents will also find the narratives in Part II of this book of particular interest in informing an understanding of kin relationships and how these may be subject to change over time.
Repurposing Legacy Data: Innovative Case Studies takes a look at how data scientists have re-purposed legacy data, whether their own, or legacy data that has been donated to the public domain. Most of the data stored worldwide is legacy data-data created some time in the past, for a particular purpose, and left in obsolete formats. As with keepsakes in an attic, we retain this information thinking it may have value in the future, though we have no current use for it. The case studies in this book, from such diverse fields as cosmology, quantum physics, high-energy physics, microbiology, psychiatry, medicine, and hospital administration, all serve to demonstrate how innovative people draw value from legacy data. By following the case examples, readers will learn how legacy data is restored, merged, and analyzed for purposes that were never imagined by the original data creators.
Narrative Portraits in Qualitative Research offers an analytical approach to qualitative data. Through narrative portraiture, research findings can be contextualised in broader social narratives without losing sight of the unique personal qualities of the research encounter. Drawing a parallel between the artistic work of a portrait maker in depicting a subject - sometimes an object - and the work of the researcher in exploring people's experiences, narrative portraiture invites a close-up into a person's narrated and embodied experience and argues that one of the main research findings in qualitative research is the person themselves; their circumstances, and their life story. The book proposes four approaches to narrative portraiture: (1) a systematic approach to narrative analysis, (2) the use of phronesis in narrative portraiture, (3) the concept of 'imagined portraits' as a collaborative approach between visual arts and social sciences, and (4) the use of 'performative portraits' both as an analytic tool and product for research communication. This book will help qualitative researchers create first-person narratives that will give a glimpse into the participants' lives in a way that is simultaneously deep, concise, and evocative. This book will be suitable for those interested in narrative methods and qualitative research in health care, education, and the social sciences.
Comparative Case Studies: New Designs and Directions extends the comparative case study methodology established by Bartlett and Vavrus and employed in many areas of social research, especially in education. This volume unites a diverse, international group of education scholars whose work exemplifies the affordances and constraints of the comparative case study (CCS) approach and offers new theoretical and empirical directions for researchers. In 11 engaging chapters, experts in comparative education, early childhood education, peace education, refugee education, special education, and teacher education discuss their use of the CCS approach to produce new ways of knowing and to address challenges of multi-scalar and multi-sited research. The first section, Conceptualizing Cases and Case Selection, emphasizes the importance of carefully selecting cases during different phases of research while continuously reflecting on how these choices influence the findings. The second section, Balancing Specificity and Generalizability, addresses the challenge of balancing the need for rich, deep data while including multiple sites. The third section, Enabling Processual Analysis across Sites and Scales, demonstrates the fit between the CCS approach and qualitative research that unfolds over time and space. Addressing the Transversal Axis, the fourth section, showcases research with a strong temporal dimension. The final section, New Directions, suggests inspiring and innovative methods. Offering rich methodological examples and provocative discussion questions, this volume will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students in education and research design courses, and to scholars and policymakers in diverse fields seeking to design studies of complex phenomena at different sites and scales. |
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