Social Research Methods

I. INTRODUCTION TO SOCIAL RESEARCH. 1. The Logic of Social Research: Ruling out Rival Hypotheses. 2. Ethics: Protecting Human Subjects and Research Integrity. 3. Finding, Using, and Writing Research Reports: Library Usage and Report Style. II. THEORY AND MEASUREMENT (CONSTRUCT VALIDITY). 4. Theory: Tentative Explanations. 5. Measurement Theory: Toward Validity and Reliability. 6. Types of Measures: Finding and Using Them. III. SAMPLING: SURVEYS AND INFERENCE (STATISTICAL INFERENCE VALIDITY). 7. Survey Data Collection: Issues and Methods in Sample Surveys. 8. Inferential Statistics: Drawing Valid Conclusions from Samples. IV. EXPERIMENTAL AND NONEXPERIMENTAL DESIGNS (INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL VALIDITY). 9. Designing Research for Internal Validity. 10. True Experimentation: External Validity and Experimental Construct Validity. 11. Quasi-Experimentation: When Multiple Groups and Random Assignment Are Not Possible. 12. Correlational Methods: Controlling Rival Explanations Statistically. 13. Qualitative Research: Participant Observation. V. DRAWING CONCLUSIONS. 14. Interpreting Research: Overview of Research Design and Review Methods. 15. Applied Social Research. Appendix A: Social Research and the Internet. Appendix B: Statistics Review. Glossary. References. Name Index. Subject Index.