Selecting Research Methods

Selecting Research Methods provides advice from prominent social scientists concerning the most crucial steps for planning and undertaking meaningful research: selecting the methods to be used. Contributors to the collection address methodological choices in four stages: design, sampling, coding and measurement, and analysis. The volumes provide an integrated approach to methodological choice in two ways. First, the contributions range from the early decisions about design options through the concluding choices about analyzing, interpreting, and presenting results. Second, the collection is integrated because it addresses the needs of projects that collect qualitative evidence, quantitative data, or both.

Volume 1 concerns design choice; the articles focus on selecting designs that are effective for answering research questions and achieving the goals of the researcher. Volume 2 is on sampling and includes, in addition to sampling from populations, advice on choosing methods for recruiting informants for interviews, selecting sites for participant observation, and assigning subjects to control and experimental groups. Volume 3 reviews options for coding and measurement; it emphasizes methodological choices that enable researchers to study concepts in ways that enhance the reliability and validity of the research. Finally, the articles included in Volume 4 review the range of choices available among methods to analyze results and interpret the meanings of evidence.