IN THIS SECTION:

1.) BRIEF

2.) COMPREHENSIVE

BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Chapter 1: Why Do Research?

Chapter 2: Planning A Study

Chapter 3: Becoming An Ethical Researcher

Chapter 4: Sampling, How To Select A Few To Represent The Many

Chapter 5: Measuring Social Life, How Many? How Much? What Type?

Chapter 6: The Survey: Asking People Questions

Chapter 7: The Experiment

Chapter 8: Research With Non-Reactive Measures

Chapter 9: Making Sense Of The Numbers

Chapter 10: Observing People In Natural Settings

Chapter 11: Looking At The Past And Across Cultures

Chapter 12: Writing A Research Report

Appendices

COMPREHENSIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Chapter 1: Why do research?

On What Basis Do You Make Decisions?

How Do We Know What We Know?

What is Empirical Social Research?

Fit the Question You Want to Answer With a Type of Social Research

Steps in the Research Process

What have you learned?

Applying what you learned.

Chapter 2: Planning a Study

Picking a Study Topic

Conducting a Review Past Studies

Focusing on a Research Question

The Research Proposal

Chapter 3: Becoming an Ethical Researcher

The Ethical Imperative

Scientific Misconduct

Ethical Issues Involving Research Participants

Ethics and the Sponsors of Research

Politics of Research

Value-Free and Objective Research

Chapter 4: Sampling, How to select a few to represent the many

How and Why do Samples Work?

Focusing on at a specific group: four types of non-random samples

Coming to Conclusions about Large Populations

Three Specialized Sampling Techniques

Inferences from a Sample to a Population

What Have You Learned?

Chapter 5: Measuring Social Life, How Many? How Much? What Type?

Why Measure?

Making Aspects of the Social World Visible

Measuring with Numbers or Words

How to Create Good Measures: Reliability and Validity

A Guide to Quantitative Measures

How to create an Index

How to create a Scale

What have you Learned?

Chapter 6: The Survey: Asking People Questions

What is a Social Survey?

How to Conduct a Survey

Writing Good Survey Questions

Effective Questionnaire Design Tips

Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Survey Formats

Survey Interviewing

Chapter 7: The Experiment

Doing Experiments in Everyday Life

What Questions Can You Answer with the Experimental Method?

Why Assign People Randomly?

Do You Speak the Language of Experimental Design?

Experimental Validity Inside and Out

What You Can See In Experimental Results with Comparison

How to be Ethical in Experiments
What did you Learn?

Chapter 8: Research With Non-Reactive Measures

Analyzing Physical Evidence for Clues About Social Life

Revealing the Content Buried Within Communication Messages

Mining Existing Statistical Sources to Answer New Questions

Answering New Questions Using Survey Data Collected by Others

Conducting Ethical Non-Reactive Research

Chapter 9: Making Sense of the Numbers

What to do once you have the numbers

How to Describe Quantitative Results

Inferring from Statistics

Conclusion

Chapter 10: Observing People in Natural Settings

What is Field Research?

Studying People in