Using Documents in Social Research


Book Description

A comprehensive, yet concise, introduction to the use of documents as tools within social science research.




Using Documents


Book Description

Using Documents presents an interdisciplinary discussion of human communication by means of documents, e.g., letters. Cultural scientists, together with researchers from media science and media engineering, analyze questions of document modeling, including a document’s contexts of use, on the basis of cultural theory. The research also concerns the debate on the material turn in the fields of cultural studies and media studies. Looking back on existing work, texts on written communication by the philosopher and sociologist Georg Simmel and by an interdisciplinary French group of authors under the pseudonym Roger T. Pédauque are taken as a starting point and presented afresh. A look ahead to the future is also attempted. Whereas the modeling (including technical modeling) of documents has to date largely been limited to the description of output forms and specific content, the foundations are laid here for including documents’ contexts of use in models that are grounded in cultural theory.




Using Documents in Social Research


Book Description

A comprehensive, yet concise, introduction to the use of documents as tools within social science research.




Doing Excellent Social Research with Documents


Book Description

In today’s society we increasingly create and consume written content and images. This includes a range of sources, from social media posts to records held within organisations, and everything in between, including news articles, blogs, shopping lists and official government documents. Critically reading these ‘documents’ can help us to understand a huge amount about society. Doing Excellent Social Research with Documents includes guidance on how to ‘read between the lines’, and provides an overview of six research projects which use documents as data. Chapter 8 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.







Creating Research and Scientific Documents Using Microsoft Word


Book Description

Research fuels innovation—and with this focused guide to Microsoft Word, you can help increase your team’s collaborative power and effectiveness, and bring new research to life. Writing proposals, reports, journal articles, theses, and other technical documents as a team poses unique challenges, not the least of which is consistent presentation and voice. You must also manage the formatting and accuracy of figures, equations, and citations, and comply with the style rules of external publications. In this book you’ll learn from the authors’ extensive experience managing the authoring and publication of technical content, and gain specific practices and templates you can apply right away. Focuses on the unique challenges of writing and producing documents in an academic or commercial R&D setting Demonstrates how to use Microsoft Word to increase the quality of collaborative document preparation—including formatting, editing, citations management, commenting, and version control Includes downloadable templates that help automate creation of scientific documents Offers best-practices guidance for writing in teams and writing in the scientific genre




Mission Improbable


Book Description

How does the U.S. Post Office plan to deliver mail after atomic Armageddon? How do oil industry executives intend to collect 10 million gallons of oil spilled in the Gulf of Alaska? How do regulators try to convince people that everyone can be evacuated from congested Long Island after a nuclear power plant destroys itself? Lee Clarke enters the world of managers and experts to find out how governments and corporations plan for massive disaster when they have no clue as to how to go about it. He argues that managers create plans that are "fantasy documents," rhetorical tools that are used to convince audiences that experts are in charge and that all is well. Provocative and written for a general audience, Mission Improbable makes the case that society would be safer, smarter, and fairer if organizations would admit their limitations.




Pedagogical Documentation in Early Years Practice


Book Description

Pedagogical documentation is a vital method of assessing and observing young children, and is a practice that enables practitioners, families and children to learn alongside each other. This book draws on the projects and experiences of senior researchers from nations including Australia, Canada, Sweden, Singapore, the UK and the USA to highlight multiple approaches to pedagogical documentation. Topics explored include: using video in pedagogical documentation making the most of outdoor learning environments developing pedagogical documentation within curriculum frameworks the relationship with Early Years transitions the potential of pedagogical documentation for leadership enactment. The book offers guidance, support and inspiration to practitioners and researchers on how to implement meaningful and sustainable child-focused observation in early years contexts.




bookdown


Book Description

bookdown: Authoring Books and Technical Documents with R Markdown presents a much easier way to write books and technical publications than traditional tools such as LaTeX and Word. The bookdown package inherits the simplicity of syntax and flexibility for data analysis from R Markdown, and extends R Markdown for technical writing, so that you can make better use of document elements such as figures, tables, equations, theorems, citations, and references. Similar to LaTeX, you can number and cross-reference these elements with bookdown. Your document can even include live examples so readers can interact with them while reading the book. The book can be rendered to multiple output formats, including LaTeX/PDF, HTML, EPUB, and Word, thus making it easy to put your documents online. The style and theme of these output formats can be customized. We used books and R primarily for examples in this book, but bookdown is not only for books or R. Most features introduced in this book also apply to other types of publications: journal papers, reports, dissertations, course handouts, study notes, and even novels. You do not have to use R, either. Other choices of computing languages include Python, C, C++, SQL, Bash, Stan, JavaScript, and so on, although R is best supported. You can also leave out computing, for example, to write a fiction. This book itself is an example of publishing with bookdown and R Markdown, and its source is fully available on GitHub.




Qualitative Inquiry in Clinical and Educational Settings


Book Description

This highly readable text demystifies the qualitative research process—and helps readers conceptualize their own studies—by organizing the different research paradigms and traditions into coherent clusters. Real-world examples and firsthand perspectives illustrate the research process; instructive exercises and activities build on each other so readers can develop their own proposals or reports as they work through the book. Provided are strategies for selecting a research topic, entering and exiting sites, and navigating the complexities of ethical issues and the researcher's role. Readers learn how to use a range of data collection methods—including observational strategies, interviewing, focus groups, e-mail and chat rooms, and arts-based media—and to manage, analyze, and report the resulting data. Useful pedagogical features include: *In-class and field activities to apply qualitative concepts. *Discussion questions, proposal development exercises, and reflexive journal activities. *Exemplary qualitative studies and two sample proposals. *Cautionary notes, or "Wild Cards," about possible research pitfalls. *Tables that summarize concepts and present helpful tips.