Book Description

As the new subtitle indicates, the book emphasizes the logic of methods to provide the student a solid basis for future methodology changes, enhancing the integrated approach of the previous edition. Among the author’s many goals are for users to: understand research’s contribution to knowledge building as a social process through which findings become accepted as knowledge; acquire the background to read, analyze, and understand research using a variety of approaches as well as the hallmarks necessary to evaluate each method; and realize that the responsibility for ethical research is fundamentally theirs and that value choices are involved, beginning with the choice of research problem. Updates to the new edition include an extensive example of the use of the computer in the literature search and a new chapter on the reflective researcher. The expanded treatment of qualitative research includes the pros and cons of using software in qualitative analysis. Conceptual analysis, an important concept missing from the second edition, has returned by request because of its widely employed logic in both qualitative and quantitative methods. The author has acknowledged the troublesome nature of the concepts internal validity and external validity and has more clearly defined these important foundational concepts as Internal Integrity and External Generality. Useful tools to facilitate learning include additional reading lists, important terms and concepts, tips on effective research methods and hallmarks of methods, application problems and exercises, a glossary, and an appendix on writing a research proposal. A Web site is available with auxiliary learning enhancements and updates.