Charts and other imagery are usable. Yet, despite the The book goes a long way toward bridging that gap by treating the multitude of methodological orientations fairly and without obvious preference for one or another. I feel the text will be relevant and useful for multiple years. The text does not contain any culturally insensitive information as there are hardly any research project examples incorporated. The book is clear and has high readability. But this is easily solved. . Still, I miss the comprehensive list of works cited at the end of the book, which I would add to a text that I create, since an e-text is not limited by the economics of physically-printed books. There were no problems there. The text is divided into logical chapters, and subheadings seem to be appropriate. Given the nature of research method that does not change drastically, content is up-to-date and wont make the text obsolete within a short period of time. On page 77, the author indicates that a survey should begin with non-threatening questions such as demographic information. This text is consistent and detailed in the use of interdisciplinary, social scientific terminology. The chapter refers to mail surveys, which in 2021, are almost obsolete. In particular, types of correlational designs and mixed-methods designs would be important to include. The methods presented should not become obsolete in the near future. However, the text could be made more comprehensive with the inclusion of an effective index and/or glossary. While writing the book, I decided to focus only on essential concepts, and not fill pages with clutter that can divert the students' attention to less relevant or tangential issues. They will make it easy to select sections for assignment or reordering if revising for use. In addition, the author may want to emphasize what alpha is set to 0.05 means. The content is very relevant. For those who want to teach only the philosophy of science or only the research design portion, they can add more details and in-depth discussion to these topics. The textbook is highly coherent, in my view. As the author suggests, certain chapters could be skipped depending on the program. But I use another textbook to more fully cover quantitative topics anyway for my course. No observed issues or concerns related to grammar or mechanics. I would have liked a more nuanced discussion of reliability and validity concepts- introducing the concept of validity as conceptualized by Messick/Kane is needed. The primary reason I did not give this text 5 stars is that the author does not provide a great amount of detail for a lot of the book's sections. Overall, this is a well-organized text. New terms are bolded with clear definition, and sometimes they are illustrated with examples. Show answer Answer I use this book with graduate students in education taking an initial course in education research. I have not noticed many grammatical errors. No problems with typeface, the diagrams and graphs are incredibly useful in breaking down more complex research methods. I have found the book to be clearly written and appropriate for upper-level Health Science undergraduate students. This text covers a wide array of topics relevant to social science research, including some that are not traditionally included but are welcome additions, such as a chapter dedicated to research ethics. It was published in 2012. However, various chapters could also be used alone or as supplement to other materials and excluding chapters not relevant to a particular course should not cause any issues. So long as the author keeps on these develops, this will serve as a useful introductory text for the foreseable future. This text provides an overview of many important issues for my graduate research methods course in education. I think this comprehensiveness may be appropriate for an undergraduate course (with some supplementation), but the text says it is written for a doctoral and graduate students. The authors uses broad social science illustrations that cross disciplines. However, I am pleased with this straight-forward text and will continue to use it as the main text in my course moving forward. The topics are presented in a logical manner. 1. The textbook does not have interface issues. Offering some of the nuts and bolts of research methods earlier in the text and tying them into the more theoretical concepts might help with clarity of flow for the typical graduate student. The content of the book is up-to-date. Professors will need to make sure that their slides include discussion of the degrees of freedom idea and perhaps some discussion on unbiasedness as well. Sometimes there are summaries and bullet points, and other times there arent, so this is not exactly consistent, but it doesnt detract from the overall work. The portions of the text that are less relevant to the course I teach (i.e.
Some of them, such as the first chapter, is historical and philosophical, but not essential to understanding social science research methods. I describe the text as comprehensive, because if my students got a basic grasp of all of the concepts in the book, they'd be well positioned to continue on to more advanced research courses (though the text is less valuable as a reference than more comprehensive introductory texts). I am pleased with the coverage in the text; it includes the history and foundations of research, as well as chapters on ethics and a sample syllabus. It will also stand against the test of time as research methods do not change drastically. As mentioned below, bookmarks would improve navigation of the pdf file. This makes the book quite comprehensive in that the book could WebEducational Research: Competencies for Analysis and Applications (Gay L. R.; Mills Geoffrey E.; Airasian Peter W.) Methods of data collection, representation, and analysis. There is also a sample syllabus in the appendix which could be useful when setting up a course. For instance, at least one chapter should be on nonparametric statistics and their applications on research studies, while another chapter should be on research paper writing (e.g., what should be included in the Introduction, Methods, Results, Discussion, and so on). (p. 24). . (p. 44). One of the book's touted selling-points is its focus on phases of research that precede data collection. This text introduces social science doctoral students to the research process. the discussion of sampling in Chapter 8) without needing to provide all of the chapters. The chapter structure, framework, and style are consistent. I have found this text to be accurate, error-free and unbiased. There are a few important topics missing, however. Aside from these minor issues, this text is a great resource and I recommend it. It is free of technical jargon and is meant to provide the essentials of social science inquiry and research considerations. I did notice a discrepancy in Figure 5.1, where single case study is plotted on the graph as high in external validity, but the rest of the text frequently brought up case studies (especially single case studies) having the difficulty with generalizability which should have low external validity. Project Planner. Terms were used consistently throughout the text. Reviewed by Huili Hao, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina Wilmington on 5/21/18, This book provides an introductory and broad review of some of the key topics in social science research including research theories, research design, data collection, data analysis and research ethics Students from different disciplines in I assign the chapters in an alternative order and students have not had problems with this. The table of contents (chapter listing) makes it easy to find content. I think this book would complement other research texts without causing too many difficulties in terminology or arrangement. The writing was very crisp, and to the point. The fact that there are 16 chapters mean that the book could support 16 separate class sessions - that is, just enough to orient classroom discussion for an entire semester. ), as well as data analysis. Surveys Transactional Interviews. Charts and images appear appropriately sized and undistorted and the text is free from navigation problems. Dr. Bhattacherjee does a fine job of defining terms concisely. read more. Well, not just to stop my students from constantly complaining about the high price of text books, but also because I believe that scientific knowledge should not be constrained by access barriers such as price and availability. The chapters are consistent in both terminology and framework. There are no major problems with the books interface. There isn't a discussion of threats associated with the four types of validity. It should be noted that there is more of a focus on Moreover, mixed methods and qualitative visual and social media platform research needs to be discussed. This is a sensible and logical structure for the book, and nothing seems out of place. This is minor, but if students are new to reading Chi-square tables they may not detect the error and believe interpreting a Chi-square table is different than interpreting a typical data table. The interface is fine. Like documentary research, content analysis is the study of recorded information, or information which has been recorded in texts, media, or physical items. It should be noted that there is more of a focus on quantitative research. Also, having links from the table of contents to chapters would be helpful. Including some of the important subsections of the chapters would also improve navigation of the pdf version of the book. The organization is fine. The title of Chapter 7 is misleading. To take another example, the author presents the formulae for the variance and standard deviation on p. 122 with the customary n-1 in the denominator. No concerns about inclusivity or offensiveness. Again, this book can serve as an compact introduction in a graduate research methodology class for students across the social sciences, but it would work best in conjunction with deeper and more discipline specific materials prepared by the professor. New and cutting-edge strategies of data collection and theory-testing do emerge, of course, but these are probably best delivered to students in the form of discipline-specific books or articles that could be assigned to complement this textbook, which deals more with foundations than it does with current debates. Instructors and disciplines within the social sciences vary widely in terms of their expectations of students in an introductory It presents the information in a clear and concise way. Arguably, research and its underlying processes are mostly mechanical (or at least standardized), meaning it is possible for individual researchers to violate cultural, ethnic, racial, or other boundaries, but the underlying science is generally unconcerned with those issues. read more. The text is internally consistent. It seems that there should be a way to document if this is the latest version of the text. The concise Reviewed by Virginia Chu, Assistant Professor, Virginia Commonwealth University on 4/11/17, The text offers an introductory overview to scientific research for PhD and graduate students in social sciences. The division of the text into the following sections: theoretical foundations, concepts in research design, data collection and data analysis, make it easy for instructors to structure a course and assign readings based on these main foundational areas.
With the use of additional reading assignments (as he provides in his sample syllabus), this book could be a great base for further usage. More social science based examples on specific research designs, experimental research would be great. It is unlikely that instructors will want to assign only part of a given chapter. For example, chapters are grouped into four sections: Introduction to Research, Basics of Empirical Research, Data Collection, and Data Analysis. I downloaded the PDF version of the textbook and find it easy to read offline. The book does not include either an index or a glossary, which is unfortunate for anyone who wants a paper version. Comments, criticisms, or corrections to any of the existing content will also be gratefully appreciated. Students would be more likely to read assigned chapters and understand the material presented if the examples were relevant to their profession. (Note: The scale is confusing. The chapter also does not present how the research design and threats to validity are interconnected. Further, chapters within major sections are sequential, such as chapters on Science and Scientific Research, followed by Thinking Like a Researchers, followed by The Research Process. The text contains some grammatical errors but the errors are minor and do not distract the reader. This ties in with my comments on consistency. Reviewed by Kelly Pereira, Assistant Professor, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro on 12/5/16, This text offers a comprehensive overview of social science research methods appropriate for advanced undergraduate and graduate students. Furthermore, there is no mention of the ethical issues related to social media research. 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