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This new addition to the Applied Social Research Methods series is unrivalled, it is written by leaders in the growing field of rigorous, comparative techniques.
In the first volume of its kind, a collection of top policy scholars combine empirical and methodological analysis in the field of comparative policy studies to provide compelling insights into the formulation, implementation and evaluation of policies across regional and national boundaries.
Some 20 years after the emergence of configurational theory as a key perspective in organization studies in the 1990s, this approach has yet to deliver on its promise. While we know that configurations the relative arrangement of parts and elements - matters, empirical research on configurations is just beginning to deliver on its promise.
Research Methods in the Social Sciences is a comprehensive yet compact A-Z for undergraduate and postgraduate students undertaking research across the social sciences, featuring 71 entries that cover a wide range of concepts, methods, and theories. Each entry begins with an accessible introduction to a method, using real-world examples from a wide range of academic disciplines, before discussing the benefits and limitations of the approach, its current status in academic practice, and finally providing tips and advice for readers on when and how to apply the method in their own research. Wide ranging and interdisciplinary, the text covers both well-established concepts and emerging ideas, such as big data and network analysis, for qualitative and quantitative research methods. All entries feature extensive cross-referencing, providing ease of navigation and, pointing readers to related concepts, and to help build their overall understanding of research methods.
This handbook provides a clear examination of case-oriented research. It defines case-based social research as a subfield of methodology.
"This book offers a hands-on introduction and teaching resource for students, users, and teachers of Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA; Ragin, 1987, 2000, 2008b). Given its superior ability to model certain aspects of complexity, QCA has made inroads into virtually every social science discipline and beyond. Software solutions for QCA have also been developing at a fast pace. This book seeks to reduce the time and effort required when we first encounter the logic of not just a new method but also new software. It offers a genuinely simple, intuitive, and hands-on resource for implementing the state-of-the-art protocol of QCA using R, the most advanced software environment for QCA. Our book has an applied and practical focus"--
This bright, engaging title provides a thorough and integrated review of comparative-historical methods. It sets out an intellectual history of comparative-historical analysis and presents the main methodological techniques employed by researchers, including: - comparative-historical analysis, - case-based methods, - comparative methods - data, case selection and theory. Matthew Lange has written a fresh, easy to follow introduction which showcases classic analyses, offers clear methodological examples and describes major methodological debates. It is a comprehensive, grounded book which understands the learning and research needs of students and researchers.
Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An Introduction to Research Design and Application is a comprehensive guide to QCA. As QCA becomes increasingly popular across the social sciences, this textbook teaches students, scholars, and self-learners the fundamentals of the method, research design, interpretation of results, and how to present findings.
A revolutionary textbook introducing masters and doctoral students to the major research approaches and methodologies in the social sciences. Written by an outstanding set of scholars, and derived from successful course teaching, this volume will empower students to choose their own approach to research, to justify this approach, and to situate it within the discipline. It addresses questions of ontology, epistemology and philosophy of social science, and proceeds to issues of methodology and research design essential for producing a good research proposal. It also introduces researchers to the main issues of debate and contention in the methodology of social sciences, identifying commonalities, historic continuities and genuine differences.
In this guidebook, we have a powerful contribution to social science methodology in a context where methodology is contested, and is therefore political: different methodologies can produce quite different results or findings using the same evidence. The evidence in Ragin and Fiss s book is survey data. Ragin s has developed for 25 years a way to bridge the case study method and the large n statistical study. He calls it the set analytic method --making use of fuzzy sets to bridge the divide between quantitative and qualitative methods. Paradoxically, the fuzzy set is a powerful tool because it replaces an unwieldy, "fuzzy" instrumentthe variable, which establishes only the positions of cases relative to each other, with a precise onedegree of membership in a well-defined set. Now, with Intersectional Inequality, Ragin and his coauthor, Peter Fiss, show how the method works in application to a very mainstream sociological research topic. That topic, the use of IQ and school achievement tests as predictors of life chances, is advanced here by viewing cases intersectionally, i.e., in terms of the different ways they combine causally relevant conditions. The specific controversy they take up is the famous Bell Curve book of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein which argued that IQ is influenced by both inherited and environmental factors. Controversy has gone on for 20 years over which variable has the strongest impact on life changes: education, or test scores, or family background. The centrality, now more than ever, of education to American social and economic policy, compels close re-examination of traditional methods (and the blind spots of the so-called net-effects approach). By use of this sophisticated qualitative comparative analysis, Ragin and Fiss underscore the importance of racial differences in addressing social inequality in America today."