Social Research

British scholars David (sociology, U. of Liverpool) and Sutton (quantitative methods, social sciences and social work, U. of Plymouth) update their 2004 textbook for students of social sciences, and handbook for people working in the field, most often in the public sector, who must conduct or commission research. Giving equal weight to qualitative and quantitative approaches, they provide a solid foundation of knowledge and a framework for conducting small-scale research projects. For some, this will be all they ever need, and for others it can provide a stepping stone to more advanced and specialized texts. The topics include literature searching and reviewing, focus groups, collecting public and private textual and visual data, survey design, coding qualitative data, semiotic and narrative forms of discourse analysis, describing and exploring relationships between two variables, and data management techniques. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)