The Practice of Social Research -12/E.

Known as the gold standard of research methods texts, THE PRACTICE OF SOCIAL RESEARCH, 12th Edtion, is a comprehensive, straightforward introduction to the field of research as practiced by social scientists. This best-selling text emphasizes the research process by showing readers how to design research studies, introducing the various observation modes in use today, and answering questions about research methods--such as how to conduct online surveys and analyze both qualitative and quantitative data. THE PRACTICE OF SOCIAL RESEARCH provides the tools readers need to apply social research concepts inside the classroom and out, and as both researchers and consumer

Basics of Communication Research

This book is organizedinto three main parts. Part 1 examines introductory issues of interest to both quantitavely oriented and qualitatively oriented producers/consumers. Chapter 1 introduces readers to the domain of communication, discussing the kinds of issues addressed by communication researchers and how students can access published communication research. Chapter 2 offers an overview of the research process, providing a step by step discussion of the major kinds of decisions that face researchers as they plan a study. Chapter 3 discusses four of the major sets af assumptions in which communication research is grounded: the positivist paradigm, the system paradigm, the interpretive paradigm, and critical paradigm. Chapter 4 emphasizes the role of logic and reasoning in the research process. Chapter 5 presents an in depth discussion of the ethics that guide communication research. Part 2 of the book is devoted to issues and methods of particular relevance to producers/consumers of quantitatively oriented communication research. Chapter 6 continues the Babbie tradition of a lucid discussion of conceptualization and operationalization. Chapter 7 is devoted largely to probability based sampling methods, although nonprobability sampling methods are previewd for a return performance in part 3 of the book. Chapter 8 is devoted to standardized questionnaires and interviews. Chapter 9 discusses pre experiments, quasi experiments, and classic experiments. Chapter 10 provides detailed treatment of the two text analysis methods most commonly found in communication research. Chapters 11 and 12 fuction as an introductory “primer” of sorts to descriptive and inferential statistics. Part 3 shifts our attention issues and methods relevant to producers/consumers of qualitative communication research. Participant observation takes many forms, and these are presented and illustrated in chapter 13. Chapter 14 presents unstructured and semi structured interviewing. Chapter 15 examines how qualitative researchers study naturally occurring communication messages and symbols what we call social texts. Chapter 16 can be thought of as the qualitative counterpart of chapter 11 and 12

I wanted to feel the way they did: Mimesis as a situational dynamic of peer mentoring by ex-offenders

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Deviant Behavior on 10/10/2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01639625.2016.1237829Despite growing enthusiasm for peer mentoring as a criminal justice intervention, very little is known about what actually happens within these relationships. Drawing on an ethnographic study of peer mentoring in the North of England this article will foreground the concept of inspiration” in these settings. It will argue that Rene Girard’s theory of mimesis offers a framework with which to analyze role modeling in mentoring relationships and that a Girardian reading also offers interesting insights into the unresolved problem of the origins of personal change

Alfabetización mediática y co-innovación en la microempresa: primeras evidencias para España

Media literacy and co-innovation in microenterprises: first evidence in Spain.- The inexorable progress of ICT has brought about radical changes in the social and business world. In this context, new pat-terns of communication and participation, especially since the advent of Web 2.0, and the widespread use of smartphones by the whole population, are particularly striking. In this situation, it is essential to establish what kind of personal skills related to the efficient use of media can be useful from a business perspective, and how these media literacy skills can be aligned with other factors, such as innovation, that determine the competitiveness of companies. In this paper, we analyze the media skills of workers and their connections to the innovation processes in microenterprises. With this analytical objective, exploratory fieldwork has been done in a sample of 154 professionals working in Spanish microenterprises

The Practice of Social Research

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