Data Collection and Analysis

The book entitled “Data Collection and Analysis” consists of thirteen chapters in total dealing with different aspects of research data collection and analysis. The objectives of the book are to equip students to understand, evaluate and use evidence in their academic and professional work. The book is designed for students from a wide range of disciplines (including sociology, social psychology, social policy, criminology, health studies, government and politics) and practitioners and readers in a number of applied areas (for example, nurses and other medical practitioners, social workers and others in the caring professions, workers in the criminal justice system, market researchers, teachers and others in the field of education). Chapter-I looks at the issues which logically and generally in practice precede data collection itself, for example what cases to select, and how the study should be designed while Chapter-II dealt with the methods and problems of designing and undertaking sample surveys. The Chapter concludes that the quality of the inferences being made from a sample will be related to both sample size and sampling method (Page: 52). Chapter-III dealt with observational research. It defines the concept observation (Page: 57) and introduced researchers and readers to the different styles and techniques used in observational research. Chapter-IV is concerned with methods of data collection that explicitly involve interviewing or questioning individuals. The Chapter concludes that it is important to define at the outset what the ideal researcher’s objectives should be when assessing and evaluating published research (Page: 117). Chapter-V focuses on statistical sources and databases. It also examines the implications of technological developments for social research (Page: 122). The Chapter concludes that the most obvious consequences of the growth in information services is the growing number of research reports that can be produced based wholly or in part upon existing sources of information (Page: 136). Chapter-VI is studying documentary sources in considering principles to evaluate existing sources as data with focus on documentary sources in the traditional sense of textual documents which are written. Chapter-VII focuses on process that receives scant attention in many research reports: namely, the process of transforming data into variables that can be analysed to produce the information found in the results sections of such reports. In other words the Chapter looks at the extent to which the data on which research arguments are based are not ‘found in the world’, but are constructed by the researcher(s). The Chapter concludes that the majority of data sets are re-coded, re-weighted and ‘manipulated’ or otherwise ‘reinterpreted’ in a parsimonious way during data handling and coding (Page: 179). Chapter-VIII looks at how figures are laid out in tables and graphs. The contents of this Chapter will help researchers and readers to understand any differences between groups or associations between variables which may be important for the argument of the report. At the end of the Chapter it was pointed out that an observed difference or association in a sample does not prove that such a difference or association exists in the population which the sample represents; differences can occur by chance alone, given sampling error (Page: 218). Chapter-IX looks at a range of ways of outlining differences between groups or association between variables, comparing means, laying out figures in tables, computing correlations or working out lines of regression. The Chapter has concentrated mainly on ‘zero-order’ results: the direct relationship between one or more independent variables, one at time and a dependent variable (Page: 260). Chapter-X looked at the extension of statistical analysis to situations where we need to take account of more than one independent variable: in other words, where researchers need to use multivariate analyses. Chapter-XI looked at some of the strategies used by qualitative researchers for analysing unstructured data. The chapter concentrated in particular on the kind of qualitative data analysis that has been codified by Glaser and Strauss (1967) as grounded theorising, since this represents probably the most common approach in use today. Chapter-XII concerned with the use of documents in social research. The range of documents upon which social scientists have drawn includes diaries, letters, essays, personal notes, biographies and autobiographies, institutional memoranda and reports, and governmental pronouncements as in Green Papers, White Papers and Acts of Parliament. The Chapter conclude that critical research