Understanding research / W. Lawrence Neuman.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Why do research? -- 2. Planning a Study -- 3. Becoming an Ethical Researcher -- 4. Sampling, How to select a few to represent the many -- 5. Measuring Social Life -- 6. The Survey: Asking People Questions -- 7. The Experiment -- 8. Research With Non-Reactive Measures -- 9. Making Sense of the Numbers -- 10. Observing People in Natural Settings -- 11. Looking at the Past and Across Cultures -- 12. Writing A Research Report --

1. Why do research? -- On What Basis Do You Make Decisions? -- How Do We Know What We Know? -- What is Empirical Social Research? -- Fit the Question You Want to Answer With a Type of Social Research -- Steps in the Research Process -- What have you learned? -- Applying what you learned. -- -- 2. Planning a Study -- Picking a Study Topic -- Conducting a Review Past Studies -- Focusing on a Research Question -- The Research Proposal -- -- 3. Becoming an Ethical Researcher -- The Ethical Imperative -- Scientific Misconduct -- Ethical Issues Involving Research Participants -- Ethics and the Sponsors of Research -- Politics of Research -- Value-Free and Objective Research -- -- 4. Sampling, How to select a few to represent the many -- How and Why do Samples Work? -- Focusing on at a specific group: four types of non-random samples -- Coming to Conclusions about Large Populations -- Three Specialized Sampling Techniques -- Inferences from a Sample to a Population -- What Have You Learned? -- -- 5. Measuring Social Life, How Many? How Much? What Type? -- Why Measure? -- Making Aspects of the Social World Visible -- Measuring with Numbers or Words -- How to Create Good Measures: Reliability and Validity -- A Guide to Quantitative Measures -- How to create an Index -- How to create a Scale -- What have you Learned? -- -- 6. The Survey: Asking People Questions -- What is a Social Survey? -- How to Conduct a Survey -- Writing Good Survey Questions -- Effective Questionnaire Design Tips -- Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Survey Formats -- Survey Interviewing -- -- 7. The Experiment -- Doing Experiments in Everyday Life -- What Questions Can You Answer with the Experimental Method? -- Why Assign People Randomly? -- Do You Speak the Language of Experimental Design? -- Experimental Validity Inside and Out -- What You Can See In Experimental Results with Comparison -- How to be Ethical in Experiments -- What did you Learn? -- -- 8. Research With Non-Reactive Measures -- Analyzing Physical Evidence for Clues About Social Life -- Revealing the Content Buried Within Communication Messages -- Mining Existing Statistical Sources to Answer New Questions -- Answering New Questions Using Survey Data Collected by Others -- Conducting Ethical Non-Reactive Research -- -- 9. Making Sense of the Numbers -- What to do once you have the numbers -- How to Describe Quantitative Results -- Inferring from Statistics -- Conclusion -- -- 10. Observing People in Natural Settings -- What is Field Research? -- Studying People in the Field -- Preparing For a Field Study -- Starting the Research Project -- Being in the Field -- Strategies for Success in the Field -- Observing and Collecting Data -- The Field Research Interview -- Leaving the Field -- Writing the Field Research Report -- Ethics and the Field Researcher -- Focus Groups -- -- 11. Looking at the Past and Across Cultures -- What is Historical-Comparative Research? -- How to do a Historical-Comparative Research Study -- Researching the Past -- Research to Compare Across Cultures -- Being an Ethical H-C Researcher -- -- 12. Writing A Research Report -- Why Write a Report? -- The Writing Process -- The Quantitative Research Report -- The Qualitative Research Report -- The Research Proposal -- Undergraduate Research -- -- Appendix 1. Sample Annotated Research Paper -- Appendix 2. Leading Academic Journals by Subject.

"Understanding Research is an accessible and visually-appealing introduction to research. Whether students become producers or consumers of research, this text shows them that the subject is both interesting and highly relevant for their lives and professional work."--Publisher's website.