| |
| |
| List of Figures and Tables | |
| |
| |
| Preface | |
| |
| |
| Acknowledgments | |
| |
| |
| |
| When Should We Trust What We Know? Why Research Methods? | |
| |
| |
| Time-Based Knowing: Traditional Knowledge | |
| |
| |
| Credential-Based Knowing: Authoritative Knowledge | |
| |
| |
| More Risky Knowledge Sources: Common Sense and Intuition | |
| |
| |
| Science as a Trustworthy Way of Knowing | |
| |
| |
| Goals of Research | |
| |
| |
| Using Research Methods to Become Critical Consumers of Information | |
| |
| |
| |
| Ethics: It's the Right Thing To Do | |
| |
| |
| Research Should Not Cause Harm to Subjects | |
| |
| |
| Researchers Should Obtain the Informed Consent of Subjects | |
| |
| |
| Researchers Should Respect Subjects' Privacy | |
| |
| |
| Researchers Should Avoid Conflicts of Interest | |
| |
| |
| Ethical Reporting: The Whole Truth and Nothing but the Truth? | |
| |
| |
| Reinforcing the Ethical Route: Institutional Review Boards | |
| |
| |
| Ethical Fusion | |
| |
| |
| |
| Some Perfectly Valid Points: Measurement, Internal, and External Validity | |
| |
| |
| Measurement Validity | |
| |
| |
| Internal Validity | |
| |
| |
| External Validity | |
| |
| |
| Conclusions | |
| |
| |
| |
| Measure By Measure: Making the Abstract Concrete | |
| |
| |
| Concepts and the Research Process | |
| |
| |
| Bringing Theory Down to Earth | |
| |
| |
| Conceptualization | |
| |
| |
| Operationalization | |
| |
| |
| Levels of Measurement | |
| |
| |
| Operational Definitions | |
| |
| |
| Conclusion | |
| |
| |
| |
| If It Glitters Is It Gold? Assessing Measures | |
| |
| |
| Facing Off Our Measures | |
| |
| |
| Content Validity | |
| |
| |
| Criterion Validity | |
| |
| |
| Construct Validity | |
| |
| |
| Reliability Checks | |
| |
| |
| Testing, Testing, Testing for Reliability | |
| |
| |
| Multiple-Forms | |
| |
| |
| Split-Half Technique | |
| |
| |
| Noise and Bias | |
| |
| |
| Measuring Up and Out | |
| |
| |
| |
| One Thing Leads to Another: Causal Analysis | |
| |
| |
| Causal Models: Nomothetic and Idiographic | |
| |
| |
| Causal Requirements | |
| |
| |
| Causal Analysis and Research Design | |
| |
| |
| Causal Analysis and Survey Research | |
| |
| |
| Causality and Field Research | |
| |
| |
| Conclusions | |
| |
| |
| |
| Designing Ideas: Research Strategies | |
| |
| |
| It's All in the Timing | |
| |
| |
| Cross-Sectional Research Designs | |
| |
| |
| Longitudinal Research Designs | |
| |
| |
| Units of Analysis | |
| |
| |
| Conclusions | |
| |
| |
| |
| An Informative Few: Sampling | |
| |
| |
| Obstacles to Representative Samples | |
| |
| |
| A Representative Sample: Take a Chance | |
| |
| |
| Non-Probability Techniques | |
| |
| |
| Estimating Sampling Error | |
| |
| |
| Just a Sampling of the Issues | |
| |
| |
| |
| Our Inquisitive Nature: The Questionnaire | |
| |
| |
| The Way We Word | |
| |
| |
| The Structure of Questions: Closed- and Open-Ended Questions | |
| |
| |
| Putting It Together | |
| |
| |
| Pre-Testing | |
| |
| |
| Return to Sender: The Special Challenge of the Mailed Questionnaire | |
| |
| |
| Delivering Questions Electronically | |
| |
| |
| Ask and You Shall Receive | |
| |
| |
| |
| Talking Heads: The Interview | |
| |
| |
| Conversational Exchange | |
| |
| |
| Developing an Unstructured Guide | |
| |
| |
| The Interview Schedule | |
| |
| |
| Covering Sensitive Topics | |
| |
| |
| Phone Home | |
| |
| |
| The More the Merrier: Focus Groups | |
| |
| |
| Training Issues | |
| |
| |
| Tools of the Trade | |
| |
| |
| The Final Word | |
| |
| |
| |
| Watch and Learn: Field Research | |
| |
| |
| Location, Location, Location...and More | |
| |
| |
| Fieldwork Tasks | |
| |
| |
| Informal Interviews | |
| |
| |
| Notes | |
| |
| |
| Files | |
| |
| |
| The Validity of Field Research | |
| |
| |
| |
| Getting Organized: Descriptive Statistics | |
| |
| |
| How Did We Get to this Point? | |
| |
| |
| Getting Organized | |
| |
| |
| Summarizing Descriptions | |
| |
| |
| Picture This | |
| |
| |
| SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) | |
| |
| |
| |
| Beyond Description: Inferential Statistics | |
| |
| |
| The Normal Curve | |
| |
| |
| Repeat After Me | |
| |
| |
| The Sampling Distribution | |
| |
| |
| Putting It Together | |
| |
| |
| Some Concrete Examples | |
| |
| |
| Bringing It Home | |
| |
| |
| References | |
| |
| |
| Web Resources | |
| |
| |
| Index | |