This book offers students in the social sciences simply stated, direct guidance in defining problems for research and in organizing and conducting a research program. It addresses basic questions about topic selection, interviewing, surveys, documentation, and other research methods.

This book offers students in the social sciences simply stated, direct guidance in defining problems for research and in organizing and conducting a research program. Confronting philosophical and practical problems, it will serve both graduate and undergraduate students well, providing the former with assistance in preparing their theses and informing the latter on how to develop research papers. Dr. Feldman addresses basic questions about topic selection, interviewing, surveys, documentation, and other research methods. While his emphasis is on comparative research, any student pursuing field research in political science, sociology, anthropology, geography, social psychology, and other branches of the social sciences will find the book helpful. The concentration on data collection, rather than analysis, will make it particularly useful for those undertaking a research project for the first time.

This book is a study of the joint British and French construction of Concorde, and their separate projects to build new international airports in London (the repeatedly abandoned third airport) and Paris (Charles de Gaulle). Conventional explanations of these projects, all of which can be seen as 'failures' in some sense, contrast French professional and rational planning expertise with the amateurishness of the British. Professor Feldman challenges such stereotypes, arguing instead that policy failures in the two countries can be explained in terms of political instability. His book is unique in developing such detailed, controlled case studies for the comparison of political systems, and offers new insights into public policy-making in Britain and France.