Customer Reviews

Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research [With CDROM]

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

 

 

After looking over several prominent textbooks for my undergraduate research methods course, I decided to use this one. I appreciate the difficulty of trying to convey the wide range of philosophical and methodological approaches within sociology to students, and I think the introductory chapters accomplish this reasonably well-though of course in a somewhat simplified form.

Weaknesses: Because the chapters refer to examples from previous chapters (a good thing, mostly), it is a bit difficult to rearrange the order in which you teach the chapters.

I suspect many social science instructors would sidestep some of the previous reviewer's concerns about "hard science." That said, the section on quantitative analysis tries to do too much in too few pages. I don't plan on using it.

The book was very through and detailed. The professor I had raved about it and has been using this book for years. It is a very easy read and is not as graduate study as I thought it would be. This book is usually meant for Junior Level students in college or universities. If you want to know about our social justice grab and read. A little lengthy!

This book was useful for the course I was taking. It contents a lot of valuable information and uses enough examples to explain situations and topics.

The book teaches you the more advanced level of using tools for social world. In Investigating the Social World: The Process and Practice of Research (The Pine Forge Press Series in Research Methods and Statistics), I learn to use statistics in my research method.

This textbook is a introduction to social science research and statistics. It suffers the same plight as most textbooks, by trying to be all things to all people. In doing so, some concepts become convoluted and confusing, or "clear as mud". Too many studies and examples are offered as part of the main text that would do better shoved into an appendix. The main problem that students of social science research will find again and again is the fact that that quantitative aspects are based on solid background in math and statistics. The rest of social science is, for all practical purposes, a pseudo science, much of the time nothing more than fuzzy talk and Monday morning quarterbacking of the social order.
I strongly recommend a basic course in statistics first. However, this text serves to ease social science students into quantitative analysis, while making the social science aspects still seem almost on par with hard science. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Now if only I could become a professional reviewer for this kind of literature. Julian, MBA, MLS(in progress)