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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social research & statistics
This is the first edited volume in the communication field to
examine parent-child interaction. It creates a framework for future
research in this growing area -- family communication, and more
specifically, parent-child communication -- and also suggests new
areas of communication research among parents and children --
cultural, work-related, taboo topics, family sex discussions,
conflict, and abuse. Chapter authors provide thorough coverage of
theoretical approaches, new methods, and emerging contexts
including lesbian/gay parent-child relationships. In so doing, they
bring a communication perspective to enduring problems of
discipline, adolescent conflict, and physical child abuse.
The "Advances in Personality Assessment Series" began in the early
1980s to facilitate the rapid dissemination of important new
developments in theory and research on all aspects of personality
assessment. Impressed with the extensive research on test
development and validation that was going on at that time, the
editors were concerned with the limited publication resources
devoted to personality assessment. With this series, they hoped to
provide a publication opportunity and resource for reports of
personality assessment research and/or clinical practice that might
not conveniently fit in journal format because of length, focus, or
content.
This book provides a thorough summary of the means currently available to the investigators of Artificial Intelligence for making criminal behavior (both individual and collective) foreseeable, and for assisting their investigative capacities. The volume provides chapters on the introduction of artificial intelligence and machine learning suitable for an upper level undergraduate with exposure to mathematics and some programming skill or a graduate course. It also brings the latest research in Artificial Intelligence to life with its chapters on fascinating applications in the area of law enforcement, though much is also being accomplished in the fields of medicine and bioengineering. Individuals with a background in Artificial Intelligence will find the opening chapters to be an excellent refresher but the greatest excitement will likely be the law enforcement examples, for little has been done in that area. The editors have chosen to shine a bright light on law enforcement analytics utilizing artificial neural network technology to encourage other researchers to become involved in this very important and timely field of study.
The Good Research Guide provides practical and straightforward guidance for those who need to conduct small-scale research projects as part of their undergraduate, postgraduate or professional studies. The 7th edition covers topics in a clear, user-friendly style outlining the key points and explaining why they are important. The new edition has been updated throughout and has additional material on topics such as social media research, online surveys, image-based research and participatory action research. It also features new chapters on how to prepare for a research project, with specific guidance on: * how to undertake a literature review * how to write a research proposal * how to ensure the research is ethical * how to locate the project within a research paradigm Full of practical advice and valuable examples, this is the go-to book for students looking to improve their research skills. "Having this book at your side is like having your hand held from start to finish and every decision in between... I very much welcome a new edition for my students" Melanie Nind, Professor of Education, University of Southampton and Co-director, National Centre for Research Methods, UK "Comprehensively updated, this book remains the indispensable student guide to the research process... It's not just good, it's great!" Dr Tom Clark, Lecturer in Research Methods, The University of Sheffield, UK "The text is informative, concise, and attractive. Each chapter presents sections in an easy-to-read format with further reading ideas and link ups to the numerous topics covered throughout the book." Dr Alaster Scott Douglas, Reader in the School of Education, University of Roehampton, UK Martyn Denscombe is Emeritus Professor at De Montfort University. He has a research background in the fields of sociology, education and business studies and has published widely on research methods in the social sciences.
To recapitulate, Greeks differ from Independents and from the academy's value priorities, but for the most part these differences derive from antecedent charac teristics. Moreover, there are some grounds for speculating that these anteced ent differences reflect fundamental temperamental differences (extraversion and gregariousness mediated by social interaction, as opposed to interaction through ideas). Only to a limited degree does the Greek "system" appear to adversely affect the acquisition and assimilation of the academy's value priori ties; i.e., students as a whole, Greek and Independent alike, appear to become more independent, liberal, socially concerned, and culturally sophisticated by graduation. However, the Greek system's effect on the behavior of Greeks is more trou bling, an effect largely mediated by the use and abuse of alcohol and the relative absence of direct institutional supervision. Assuming the retention of the Greek system, then, the promotion of the acad emy's agenda appears dependent on (a) an understanding and accommodation of the personal characteristics of Greeks, using appropriate pedagogical meth ods to advance the academy's educational objectives, and (b) both educational and administrative/regulatory efforts to control the use and abuse of alcohol. With or without the Greek system, the advancement of the academy's agenda involves these considerations, since the characteristics of students as a whole encompass the characteristics emphasized among Greeks."
Many economic and social surveys are designed as panel studies, which provide important data for describing social changes and testing causal relations between social phenomena. This textbook shows how to manage, describe, and model these kinds of data. It presents models for continuous and categorical dependent variables, focusing either on the level of these variables at different points in time or on their change over time. It covers fixed and random effects models, models for change scores and event history models. All statistical methods are explained in an application-centered style using research examples from scholarly journals, which can be replicated by the reader through data provided on the accompanying website. As all models are compared to each other, it provides valuable assistance with choosing the right model in applied research. The textbook is directed at master and doctoral students as well as applied researchers in the social sciences, psychology, business administration and economics. Readers should be familiar with linear regression and have a good understanding of ordinary least squares estimation.
Designed for professionals and graduate students in the
personality/social, military, and educational psychology, and
assessment/evaluation communities, this volume explores the state
of the art in motivational research for individuals and teams from
multiple theoretical viewpoints as well as their effects in both
schools and training environments.
In this first book of the series Survey Methods in Educational Research, we have brought together leading authors and scholars in the field to discuss key introductory concepts in the creation, implementation, evaluation and dissemination of survey instruments and their resultant findings. While there are other textbooks that might introduce these concepts adequately well, the authors here have focused on the pragmatic issues that inevitably arise in the development and administration process of survey instruments. Drawing from their rich experiences, the authors present these potential speed bumps or road blocks a survey researcher in education or the social sciences might encounter. Referencing their own work and practice, the authors provide valuable suggestions for dealing with these issues "your advisor never told you about." And all of the recommendations are aligned with standard protocols and current research on best practices in the field of research methodology. This book is broken into four broad units on creating survey items and instruments, administering surveys, analyzing the data from surveys, and stories of successful administrations modeling the entire research cycle. Each chapter focuses on a different concept in the survey research process, and the authors share their approaches to addressing the issues. These topics include survey item construction, scale development, cognitive interviewing, measuring change with self-report data, translation issues with surveys administered in multiple languages, working with school and program administrators when implementing surveys, a review of current software used in survey research, the use of weights, response styles, assessing validity of results, and effectively communicating your results and findings ... and much more. The intended audience of the volume will be practitioners, administrators, teachers as researchers, graduate students, social science and education researchers not experienced in survey research, and students learning program evaluation. In brief, if you are considering doing survey research, this book is meant for you
This second edition of Design of Observational Studies is both an introduction to statistical inference in observational studies and a detailed discussion of the principles that guide the design of observational studies. An observational study is an empiric investigation of effects caused by treatments when randomized experimentation is unethical or infeasible. Observational studies are common in most fields that study the effects of treatments on people, including medicine, economics, epidemiology, education, psychology, political science and sociology. The quality and strength of evidence provided by an observational study is determined largely by its design. Design of Observational Studies is organized into five parts. Chapters 2, 3, and 5 of Part I cover concisely many of the ideas discussed in Rosenbaum's Observational Studies (also published by Springer) but in a less technical fashion. Part II discusses the practical aspects of using propensity scores and other tools to create a matched comparison that balances many covariates, and includes an updated chapter on matching in R. In Part III, the concept of design sensitivity is used to appraise the relative ability of competing designs to distinguish treatment effects from biases due to unmeasured covariates. Part IV is new to this edition; it discusses evidence factors and the computerized construction of more than one comparison group. Part V discusses planning the analysis of an observational study, with particular reference to Sir Ronald Fisher's striking advice for observational studies: "make your theories elaborate." This new edition features updated exploration of causal influence, with four new chapters, a new R package DOS2 designed as a companion for the book, and discussion of several of the latest matching packages for R. In particular, DOS2 allows readers to reproduce many analyses from Design of Observational Studies.
This book is a collection of essays that explore commonalities and contrasts between strategy in armed conflict and strategy in public health. The first part uses the asymptotic limit theorems of information and control theories to study strategy as an exchange of messages between adversaries, in the context of underlying power relations. The 'messages' to be exchanged are constructed from an 'alphabet' of tactics available to each contender, in a large sense. The second part of the book explores four case histories from this perspective, ranging across agribusiness-generated pandemics, through tuberculosis and COVID-19. The final chapter attempts a strategic synthesis applicable more specifically to public health than to the remarkably - and disturbingly -- close parallel of armed conflict. Taking a unique approach to public health tactics and strategy this volume will be of interest to social epidemiologists, public health economists, public policy scientists, as well as public health researchers and practitioners.
This book shows how phenomenology of the social sciences differs from positivistic approaches, and presents Schutz's theory of relevances--a key feature of his own phenomenology of the social world. It begins with Schutz's appraisal of how Husserl influenced him, and continues with exchanges between Schutz and Eric Voegelin, Felix Kaufmann, Aron Gurwitsch, and Talcott Parsons. This book presents, for the first time, Schutz's incisive criticisms of T.S. Eliot's theory of culture.
Focusing particularly upon normative social action, this text is divided into five sections, each with a theme. The first section deals with collective memory with a study of German collective memory. This central theme is explored through examinations of other aspects of society: cultural studies; the university and intellectuals; regional studies and family life. The section on regional studies contains essays on ethnic conflict in Italy and environmental issues in the Basque country.
This open access book proposes a conceptual framework for understanding measurement across a broad range of scientific fields and areas of application, such as physics, engineering, education, and psychology. It addresses contemporary issues and controversies within measurement in light of the framework, including operationalism, definitional uncertainty, and the relations between measurement and computation, and describes how the framework, operating as a shared concept system, supports understanding measurement’s work in different domains, using examples in the physical and human sciences. This revised and expanded second edition features a new analysis of the analogies and the differences between the error/uncertainty-related approach adopted in physical measurement and the validity-related approach adopted in psychosocial measurement. In addition, it provides a better analysis and presentation of measurement scales, in particular about their relations with quantity units, and introduces the measurand identification/definition as a part of the "Hexagon Framework" along with new examples from the physical and psychosocial sciences. Researchers and academics across a wide range of disciplines including biological, physical, social, and behavioral scientists, as well as specialists in measurement and philosophy appreciate the work’s fresh and provocative approach to the field at a time when sound measurements of complex scientific systems are increasingly essential to solving critical global problems.
What are the implications of caring about the things we research? How does that affect how we research, who we research with and what we do with our results? Proposing what Joan C. Tronto has called a 'paradigm shift' in research thinking, this book invites researchers across disciplines and fields of study to do research that thinks and acts with care. The authors draw on their own and others' experiences of researching, the troubles they encounter and the opportunities generated when research is approached as a caring practice. Care ethics provides a guide, from starting out, designing and conducting projects to thinking about research legacies. It offers a way in which research can help repair harms and promote justice.
This volume aims to review some of the recent developments and trends that seem especially relevant to any attempt to understand near-term-future possibilities; to consider what a variety of knowledgeable people are saying about changes and developments that could occur; and to relate the possibilities to needs and opportunities for human factors research. Human factors, in this case, includes not only the implications of human capabilities and limitations for the design of equipment and machines intended for human use, but also applied psychology in a more general sense. In particular, it is taken to involve social systems as well as physical ones, the interaction of people with the environment as well as with machines, the facilitation of communication between people as well as between people and computers, and the design of policies and procedures as well as the design of equipment. The author's intention is to focus on anticipated problems -- including opportunities as well as difficulties -- and ask how human factors research might contribute to solutions. It is assumed that there are ways in which such research could be useful in addressing societal problems that the profession has not yet realized and that these are more likely to be recognized in the future if the community is actively seeking to identify them.
This work examines the reasons why anthropologists have not used the camera as a research instrument or film as a means of communicating ethnographic knowledge. It suggests that images and words in this discipline operate on different logical levels; that they are hierarchically related; that whereas writings may encompass the images produced by film, the inverse of this cannot be true. The author argues for this position further by suggesting that the visual is to the written mode as "thin description" (giving a record of the form of behaviour) is to "thick description" (giving an account of meaning). -- .
This book introduces the fundamentals of research methods and how they apply to the discipline of urban and regional planning. Written at a level appropriate for upper-level undergraduate and beginning master's level students, the text fills a gap in the literature for textbooks on urban planning. Additionally, the book can be used as a reference for planning practitioners and researchers when analyzing quantitative and qualitative data in urban and regional planning and related fields. The volume does not assume advanced knowledge of mathematical formulas. Rather, it begins with the essentials of research methods, such as the identification of the research problems in planning, the literature review, data collection and presentation, descriptive data analysis, and report of findings. Its discipline-specific topics include field research methods, qualitative data analysis, economic and demographic analysis, evaluation research, and methods in sub-disciplines such as land use planning, transportation planning, environmental planning, and housing analysis. Designed with instruction in mind, this book features downloadable materials, including learning outcomes, chapter highlights, chapter review questions, datasets, and certain Excel models. Students will be able to download review questions to enhance the learning process and datasets to practice methods.
This is the first detailed account of the emergence of sociology and related social sciences in France. It emphasizes three social and intellectual groupings in the period from 1880 to 1914: the social statisticians who grew out of governmental ministries, the Durkheimians who were consistently housed in the university, and the "international sociologists" around Rene Worms, in neither ministries nor the university. Unlike most histories of ideas, it portrays the institutional developments that encouraged, discouraged, and rechanneled different styles of research."
Written to reveal statistical deceptions often thrust upon
unsuspecting journalists, this book views the use of numbers from a
public perspective. Illustrating how the statistical naivete of
journalists often nourishes quantitative misinformation, the
author's intent is to make journalists more critical appraisers of
numerical data so that in reporting them they do not deceive the
public. The book frequently uses actual reported examples of
misused statistical data reported by mass media and describes how
journalists can avoid being taken in by them. Because reports of
survey findings seldom give sufficient detail of methods on the
actual questions asked, this book elaborates on questions reporters
should ask about methodology and how to detect biased questions
before reporting the findings to the public. As such, it may be
looked upon as an elements of style for reporting statistics.
This book contains the Proceedings of a Conference held on 7-9 January 1970 in Amsterdam on the problems and perspectives of Yugoslav workers' self management. The Yugoslav writers were selected according to the criteria that they are competent in their field and that they have different viewpoints in their assessment of the system. We hope that the threefold purpose of this book will be attained, namely to provide a clearer insight for the Western reader into the Yugoslav system; secondly to confront Yugoslav society with the ques tions asked and the criticism voiced here with regard to the practice of workers' selfmanagement; and, lastly, to pay a modest tribute to the 20th anniversary of Yugoslav workers' self management. To be sure, the range of subjects treated in Amsterdam might seem to be rather wide, but one should bear in mind thaI this was unavoidable in the first large-scale confrontation of two different social systems outside Yugoslavia. Although the language used in this book may not always correspond with the official standards, we trust that the published texts will be easily readable for the benevolent reader."
This text presents the basic concepts of modern cognitive psychology in a succinct and accessible manner. Empirical results, theoretical developments, and current issues are woven around basic concepts to produce coherent accounts of research areas. Barsalou's primary goal is to equip readers with a conceptual vocabulary that acquaints them with the general approach of cognitive psychology and allows them to follow more technical discussions elsewhere. In meeting this goal, he discusses the traditional work central to modern thinking and reviews current work relevant to cognitive science. Besides focusing on research and theory in cognitive psychology, Barsalou also addresses its fundamental assumptions. Because the cognitive approach to psychology is somewhat subtle, often misunderstood, and sometimes controversial, it is essential for a text on cognitive psychology to address the assumptions that underlie it. Therefore, three of the eleven chapters address the "meta- assumptions" that govern research and theory in cognitive psychology. These meta-chapters provide a deeper understanding of the content areas and a clearer vision of what cognitive psychologists are trying to accomplish. The remaining eight "content" chapters cover the central topics in cognitive psychology. This book will be of value to a variety of audiences. Ideal for researchers in computer science, linguistics, philosophy, anthropology, and neuroscience who wish to acquaint themselves with cognitive psychology, it may also be used as a text for courses in cognitive science and cognitive psychology. Lay readers who wish to learn about the cognitive approach to scientific psychology will also find the volume useful.
This book's purpose is to enable educational researchers to make
better use of the huge longitudinal and cross-sectional data files
that are now readily available. Of value to experienced researchers
and undergraduates alike, the book focuses primarily on the
planning and design of research rather than implementation of data
base information. Its chapters address a variety of vital questions
including:
The essential handbook for doing historical research in the twenty-first century The Princeton Guide to Historical Research provides students, scholars, and professionals with the skills they need to practice the historian's craft in the digital age, while never losing sight of the fundamental values and techniques that have defined historical scholarship for centuries. Zachary Schrag begins by explaining how to ask good questions and then guides readers step-by-step through all phases of historical research, from narrowing a topic and locating sources to taking notes, crafting a narrative, and connecting one's work to existing scholarship. He shows how researchers extract knowledge from the widest range of sources, such as government documents, newspapers, unpublished manuscripts, images, interviews, and datasets. He demonstrates how to use archives and libraries, read sources critically, present claims supported by evidence, tell compelling stories, and much more. Featuring a wealth of examples that illustrate the methods used by seasoned experts, The Princeton Guide to Historical Research reveals that, however varied the subject matter and sources, historians share basic tools in the quest to understand people and the choices they made. Offers practical step-by-step guidance on how to do historical research, taking readers from initial questions to final publication Connects new digital technologies to the traditional skills of the historian Draws on hundreds of examples from a broad range of historical topics and approaches Shares tips for researchers at every skill level
Tradition recognises five social sciences: anthropology, economies, social psychology, sociology, and political science. But who knows what is going on in all five disciplines? Social scientists from one discipline often know little or nothing about the progress made by social scientists from another discipline working on essentially the same social problem. Sometimes, even of a neighbouring discipline is terra incognita. the methodology The problem becomes worse when we widen the remit to natural scientists and engineers. I have found little evidence myself that they see themselves as standing on the other side of an unbridgeable golf between two cultures. They observe the intellectual excesses of those few 'newage' social scientists who see themselves fighting a 'science war', but the ignorance of these innumerate critics is so apparent in their grossly naive attacks on natural science, that they are not taken seriously. However, although natural scientists appreciate that most social science is genuine science, they seldom know much about how and why it is done as it iso This can lead to serious inefficiencies in areas in which the traditional frontiers between social and natural science are melting away. An example is the frontier between the economies of imperfeet competition and evolutionary biology. Reversing the usual bias, the evolutionary biologists commonly know little mathematics, and hence find the game theory literature hard to read, with the result that they often spend their time re-inventing the wheel.
The anti-causal prophecies of last century have been disproved. Causality is neither a relic of a bygone nor another fetish of modern science; it still occupies a large part of the current debate in philosophy and the sciences. This investigation into causal modelling presents the rationale of causality, i.e. the notion that guides causal reasoning in causal modelling. It is argued that causal models are regimented by a rationale of variation, nor of regularity neither invariance, thus breaking down the dominant Human paradigm. The notion of variation is shown to be embedded in the scheme of reasoning behind various causal models: e.g. Rubin s model, contingency tables, and multilevel analysis. It is also shown to be latent yet fundamental in many philosophical accounts. Moreover, it has significant consequences for methodological issues: the warranty of the causal interpretation of causal models, the levels of causation, the characterisation of mechanisms, and the interpretation of probability. This book offers a novel philosophical and methodological approach to causal reasoning in causal modelling and provides the reader with the tools to be up to date about various issues causality rises in social science. "Dr. Federica Russo's book is a very valuable addition to a small number of relevant publications on causality and causal modelling in the social sciences viewed from a philosophical approach." (Prof. Guillaume Wunsch, Institute of Demography, University of Louvain, Belgium)" |
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