Customer Reviews

The Basics of Social Research

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was dreading taking this required course in collge, "Methods of Social Research." This was the required text and it has made my life easier. I could actually understand the concepts. I highly recommend this text book.

I really have to compliment Babbie on taking a potentially dry subject and making it fun. Not only is this book a very complete and easy to understand introduction to research methods, but it is also, at times, downright funny. I highly recommend this book. I gained a deeper understanding of research methods by reading The Basics of Social Research and Babbie's unique writing style made me want to learn more.

I have used this book in my research methods course. While Babbie uses MANY examples which are helpful (not sure about the previous reviewer mentioning comedy b/c there is none) he also gets bogged down using personal examples that are NOT helpful. There is one section in particular where Babbie uses a personal example in the form of crosstabs which is so difficult to follow that I couldn't even understand it. I have tried to get away from the text but it appears that the market is saturated with mediocre research methods texts. I have tried Understanding Research which is miserable and will be trying How It's Done next semester in an effort to find a better text than the Babbie text. Hence, while Babbie's text is imperfect, it is better than many other texts out there!

I use this book for my method class for a long time. The content of the book is good. it does a good job of explaining complex concepts. The problem is that the book keeps having new editions in just a few years even if the content has little update, and each new edition has a higher price for my students. This practice creates unnecessary financial burden for my students. Now I have to think about dropping this book for my future teaching.

Honestly, I have very mixed feelings about this text. As a text-book, it's really not suitable for anything beyond an introductory class offered to freshman. I feel bad about saying that, but I found that Babbie went so out of his way to simplify and reduce the pain of social research that he really diluted his wealth of knowledge. I am using this book for a 300 level sociology course, and I find myself getting upset at how much I have to dig through anecdotes and inflated explanations to get to the information. On the flip side of that coin, I think Babbie conveys some really valuable information; it's simply obscured by a lack of brevity.

Personally, I like to keep some of my textbooks like this to use while I'm at work, but I don't think Babbie will make the cut. If you understand some of the concepts of social research (i.e. you've ever had a statistics course), it's somewhat elementary. There are also a lot of definitions and concepts that are hard to reference... something that could be fixed by a more robust glossary or index.

Pros:
Easy to follow - concepts explained in depth.
Steady, albeit slow pace.
Good graphics (also up to date photos).
Good chapter intros (with solid explanations of what you are going to get into).
Good chapter summaries (with a rehashing of the major topics covered).
Specific discussions of (largely free) social research analysis software.
Relevant discussion of research paradigms

Cons:
Slow, difficult to read simply because the information is spread out so much.
Needs a better glossary.
Needs to contain the discussion of particular topics better rather than diluting them.

The deciding factor in this book should be audience. If this your students first exposure to research and analytical social science concepts go for it. If students are addressing this topic later in their academic career and are at a point where they've developed some baseline of knowledge (even if through proximity alone), this may be below their level. It's not necessarily a lack of information that causes the book to be suitable as an introductory text, but more its manner of conveyance.

This was a required text for a class in social research design-- one of those courses I had to take recently. While Dr Babbie may be okay for the 'nuts and bolts' of doing social research, he was inexcusably sloppy in his handling of abstract concepts, theories, and underlying principles of social research and of the social sciences in general. Where he delves into discussing epistemologic concepts underlying the practice of social science, he is both sloppy and wrong. I found his handling of questions of "what is knowledge", "what is reality", etc, to be frightfully scattered. Babbie apparently falls in with the skeptics who believe that there is NO real knowledge, it's all made up and what we agree it is. If this were in fact the case, one wonders why Babbie tries to explain research at all-- after all, it's all made up, so it's whatever BS we want to be.... which is the impression you'd get if you tried following Babbie's explanations of principle and theory. Not a good way to teach a course.

Another prime example is his discussion of "pre-modern", "modern" and "post-modern" views of reality... Babbie really should have done a little very basic review on the literature before writing those sections-- his explanation of the modernist view of reality isn't the modernist view, it's the classic "realist" argument from epistemology/metaphysics debates, and his "post-modernist" explanation is the classic "idealist" argument... something which dates back at least as far as Hume and Berkeley (1700s), not really "post-modernist" at all. One would have expected a distinguished professor to know that, and to be able to explain knowledge, ideas, truth, reality, in some other way than it's all made up crap. Or perhaps he should have known better than to get into discussions that are clearly beyond his ability to explain to undergraduates.

Lousy textbook-- if you're stuck with it like I was, my condolences.

I am using this textbook for a research methods class. It is useful and an easier read so the material isn't as "dry" as it could be! I don't mind reading it.

I'm sure almost everyone buying this is buying it for a class, but it's actually a pretty good textbook. It was easy to sit down and read. Usually I get bored about 10 pages into a chapeter and have to stop for a while, but this is written in almost a narrative style which makes it easy to read. If you put all your reading off until before exam time, you'll actually be able to cram this book without too much difficulty. Also, it was nice that chapters were relatively short, about 25-30 pages each.

This is so clear and so interesting, it's impossible not to get caught up in it and easy to forget that it's a textbook.