Review of Research Methods in the Social Sciences w/Data Disk (Windows) (Hardcover)

This is the sixth edition, which means that the still probably useful fifth and previous editions are now good for landfill duty.The price is hefty. (Why don't textbook publishers offer financing?) That said, this isa usable book, one that the reader might be tempted not to sell after classis over.The research and statistics chapters are well-written and placedin logical order.The material is comprehensive, and strikes a nicebalance between not being too technical without being too elementary.Whatappealed to me was the by-the-numbers approach, with numerous listsembedded in the text throughout.(For example, if there are seven factorsto consider in reference to the internal validity of a research design,they are boxed off and numbered, after being discussed in the text.)Thebook comes with a disk containing a 1996 general survey of social scienceissues.This is provided by way of example, and is referenced at the endof most chapters as a real-world example and 'how to' guide to researchmethedology and design.Nonetheless, you can do as I did, and read withoutusing the disk (I used it once), and still come away with completeunderstanding. This book is also free of the filler that crowds andobscures useful information in the garden variety textbook. This bookwould have gotten five stars, had it not been for the authors' annoyinghabit of using liberal examples.In a social science research text,reference to politically sensetive issues is to be expected.What annoysis that virtually every example, whether derived from real life, or anadmittedly ficticous example, is given a liberal slant.If the factorsbeing researched are education and political orientation, then liberalismcorrelates with higher education (read: conservatives are dummies).If thesubject is nominal variables, the example is party affiliation in adistrict where Democrats outnumber Republicans two-to-one.In other words,the examples serve the standard orthodoxies of our time.Don't expect tosee any on race and abortion, or the use of guns to deter crime.Thatsaid, since the main users of this book are college students, and as suchare getting much heavier doses of campus radicalism and causes du jour,this book's bias is relatively mild.If you are going to study researchmethodologies, you could do much worse than this text. -Lloyd Conway



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