Understanding Research

<p><u>IN THIS SECTION:</u></p> <p>1.) BRIEF</p> <p>2.) COMPREHENSIVE</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p><u>BRIEF TABLE OF CONTENTS:</u></p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 1: Why Do Research? &nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 2: Planning A Study</p> <p>Chapter 3: Becoming An Ethical Researcher</p> <p>Chapter 4: Sampling, How To Select A Few To Represent The Many&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 5: Measuring Social Life, How Many? How Much? What Type?&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 6: The Survey: Asking People Questions&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 7: The Experiment&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 8: Research With Non-Reactive Measures&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 9: Making Sense Of The Numbers&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 10: Observing People In Natural Settings&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 11: Looking At The Past And Across Cultures</p> <p>Chapter 12: Writing A Research Report</p> <p>Appendices</p> <p><br><br><u>COMPREHENSIVE TABLE OF CONTENTS:</u></p> <p><br>Chapter 1: &nbsp;Why do research? </p> <p>On What Basis Do You Make Decisions?</p> <p>How Do We Know What We Know?</p> <p>What is Empirical Social Research?</p> <p>Fit the Question You Want to Answer With a Type of Social Research</p> <p>Steps in the Research Process</p> <p>What have you learned?</p> <p>Applying what you learned.</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 2: Planning a Study</p> <p>Picking a Study Topic</p> <p>Conducting a Review Past Studies</p> <p>Focusing on a Research Question</p> <p>The Research Proposal</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 3:&nbsp;Becoming an Ethical Researcher </p> <p>The Ethical Imperative</p> <p>Scientific Misconduct</p> <p>Ethical Issues Involving Research Participants</p> <p>Ethics and the Sponsors of Research</p> <p>Politics of Research</p> <p>Value-Free and Objective Research</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 4: Sampling, How to select a few to represent the many</p> <p>How and Why do Samples Work? </p> <p>Focusing on at a specific group: four types of non-random samples</p> <p>Coming to Conclusions about Large Populations</p> <p>Three Specialized Sampling Techniques</p> <p>Inferences from a Sample to a Population</p> <p>What Have You Learned?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 5: Measuring Social Life, How Many? How Much? What Type?</p> <p>Why Measure?</p> <p>Making Aspects of the Social World Visible</p> <p>Measuring with Numbers or Words</p> <p>How to Create Good Measures: Reliability and Validity</p> <p>A Guide to Quantitative Measures</p> <p>How to create an Index</p> <p>How to create a Scale</p> <p>What have you Learned?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 6: The Survey: Asking People Questions</p> <p>What is a Social Survey?</p> <p>How to Conduct a Survey</p> <p>Writing Good Survey Questions</p> <p>Effective Questionnaire Design Tips</p> <p>Advantages and Disadvantages of Different Survey Formats</p> <p>Survey Interviewing</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 7: The Experiment</p> <p>Doing Experiments in Everyday Life</p> <p>What Questions Can You Answer with the Experimental Method?</p> <p>Why Assign People Randomly?</p> <p>Do You Speak the Language of Experimental Design?</p> <p>Experimental Validity Inside and Out</p> <p>What You Can See In Experimental Results with Comparison</p> <p>How to be Ethical in Experiments<br>What did you Learn?</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 8: Research With Non-Reactive Measures</p> <p>Analyzing Physical Evidence for Clues About Social Life</p> <p>Revealing the Content Buried Within Communication Messages</p> <p>Mining Existing Statistical Sources to Answer New Questions</p> <p>Answering New Questions Using Survey Data Collected by Others</p> <p>Conducting Ethical Non-Reactive Research</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 9: Making Sense of the Numbers</p> <p>What to do once you have the numbers</p> <p>How to Describe Quantitative Results</p> <p>Inferring from Statistics</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>&nbsp;</p> <p>Chapter 10: Observing People in Natural Settings</p> <p>What is Field Research?</p> <p>Studying People in </p>