eBook downloads, eBook resources & eBook authors
An innovative textbook introducing a variety of social science methodologies applicable to a range of social and political science disciplines.
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 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.
Offering pragmatic guidance for planning and conducting a meta-analytic review, this book is written in an engaging, nontechnical style that makes it ideal for graduate course use or self-study. The author shows how to identify questions that can be answered using meta-analysis, retrieve both published and unpublished studies, create a coding manual, use traditional and unique effect size indices, and write a meta-analytic review. An ongoing example illustrates meta-analytic techniques. In addition to the fundamentals, the book discusses more advanced topics, such as artifact correction, random- and mixed-effects models, structural equation representations, and multivariate procedures. User-friendly features include annotated equations; discussions of alternative approaches; and "Practical Matters" sections that give advice on topics not often discussed in other books, such as linking meta-analytic results with theory and the utility of meta-analysis software programs. ÿ
This book, Applied Social Sciences: Social Work, is a collection of essays specific to the field of social work. The approach is both holistic (assessment of social work, burnout, counselling, history of social work, migration, models of excellence in social work, unemployment, workaholism) and atomistic (child attachment, children’s rights, coping strategies and associated work – family conflict, emotional neglect, monoparental families, physical abuse, positive child disciplining, psychological abuse, rehabilitation of delinquent minors, social inclusion of youth, etc). The types of academic readership it will appeal to include: academic teaching staff, doctors, parents, psychologists, researchers, social workers, students, and teachers in the field of social work, who wish to improve personally and professionally. It may also be useful to all those who interact, one way or another, with the human factor.
If you want to learn to use R for data analysis but aren’t sure how to get started, this practical book will help you find the right path through your data. Drawing on real-world data to show you how to use different techniques in practice, it helps you progress your programming and statistics knowledge so you can apply the most appropriate tools in your research. It starts with descriptive statistics and moves through regression to advanced techniques such as structural equation modelling and Bayesian statistics, all with digestible mathematical detail for beginner researchers. The book: Shows you how to use R packages and apply functions, adjusting them to suit different datasets. Gives you the tools to try new statistical techniques and empowers you to become confident using them. Encourages you to learn by doing when running and adapting the authors’ own code. Equips you with solutions to overcome the potential challenges of working with real data that may be messy or imperfect. Accompanied by online resources including screencast tutorials of R that give you step by step guidance and R scripts and datasets for you to practice with, this book is a perfect companion for any student of applied statistics or quantitative research methods courses.
To say that complex data analyses are ubiquitous in the education and social sciences might be an understatement. Funding agencies and peer-review journals alike require that researchers use the most appropriate models and methods for explaining phenomena. Univariate and multivariate data structures often require the application of more rigorous methods than basic correlational or analysis of variance models. Additionally, though a vast set of resources may exist on how to run analysis, difficulties may be encountered when explicit direction is not provided as to how one should run a model and interpret results. The mission of this book is to expose the reader to advanced quantitative methods as it pertains to individual level analysis, multilevel analysis, item-level analysis, and covariance structure analysis. Each chapter is self-contained and follows a common format so that readers can run the analysis and correctly interpret the output for reporting.
Social psychology is the scientific study of how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of individuals are influenced by the actual, imagined, and implied presence of others. In this definition, scientific refers to the empirical investigation using the scientific method, while the terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors refer to the psychological variables that can be measured in humans. Moreover, the notion that the presence of others may be imagined or implied suggests that humans are malleable to social influences even when alone, such as when watching videos or quietly appreciating art. In such situations, people can be influenced to follow internalized cultural norms. Social psychology deals with social influence, social perception, and social interaction. The research in this field deals with what shapes our attitudes and how we develop prejudice. The Handbook of Research on Applied Social Psychology in Multiculturalism explores social psychology within the context of multiculturalism and the way society deals with cultural diversity at national and community levels. It will cover major topics of social psychology such as group behavior, social perception, leadership, non-verbal behavior, conformity, aggression, and prejudice. This book will deal with social psychology with a direct focus on how different cultures can coexist peacefully by preserving, respecting, and even encouraging cultural diversity, along with a focus on the psychology that is hindering these efforts. This book is essential for researchers in social psychology and the social sciences, activists, psychologists, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in how social psychology interacts with multiculturalism.
The author draws on examples from a range of disciplines to provide social and behavioural scientists with a toolkit for finding bounds when predicting behaviours based upon nonexperimental and experimental data.
This book is designed to introduce doctoral and graduate students to the process of conducting scientific research in the social sciences, business, education, public health, and related disciplines. It is a one-stop, comprehensive, and compact source for foundational concepts in behavioral research, and can serve as a stand-alone text or as a supplement to research readings in any doctoral seminar or research methods class. This book is currently used as a research text at universities on six continents and will shortly be available in nine different languages.
It seems like most of what we read about the academic social sciences in the mainstream media is negative. The field is facing mounting criticism, as canonical studies fail to replicate, questionable research practices abound, and researcher social and political biases come under fire. In response to these criticisms, Matt Grossmann, in How Social Science Got Better, provides a robust defense of the current state of the social sciences. Applying insights from the philosophy, history, and sociology of science and providing new data on research trends and scholarly views, he argues that, far from crisis, social science is undergoing an unparalleled renaissance of ever-broader understanding and application. According to Grossmann, social science research today has never been more relevant, rigorous, or self-reflective because scholars have a much better idea of their blind spots and biases. He highlights how scholars now closely analyze the impact of racial, gender, geographic, methodological, political, and ideological differences on research questions; how the incentives of academia influence our research practices; and how universal human desires to avoid uncomfortable truths and easily solve problems affect our conclusions. Though misaligned incentive structures of course remain, a messy, collective deliberation across the research community has shifted us into an unprecedented age of theoretical diversity, open and connected data, and public scholarship. Grossmann's wide-ranging account of current trends will necessarily force the academy's many critics to rethink their lazy critiques and instead acknowledge the path-breaking advances occurring in the social sciences today.
