Getting Started: An Introduction to Research Methods, 1st edition

Published by Pearson (March 23, 2011) © 2011

  • Martin Tolich University of Otago
  • Carl Davidson Research First
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Title overview

Getting Started: An Introduction to Research Methods follows on from the successful introductory text Social Science Research in New Zealand (Davidson and Tolich 1999, 2003).

The text is aimed at university and polytechnic students who are approaching research methods for the first time. The text will also be of interest to those who wish to develop their social science research skills.

Key areas covered by this text include: an introduction to social science research, common uses and different research methods, research design, sampling methodologies and qualitative and quantitative techniques, research best practice and ethics, and writing up results.

To supplement the text the authors have also developed instructor resources: a series of PowerPoint™ slides and an instructor manual linked to each chapter.

Student Resources:

Legal Notes - Instructors

Table of contents

Contents About the contributors
Foreword
Acknowledgements

1 How to read this book
Goal One: The book outline
Goal Two: Research methods and the proposal assignment
Goal Three: Multiple audiences – who should read this book?

2 The world of social research
Seeing the world in a different light
Why understanding research methods is easier than you ever imagined
‘One’ pathway for research

3 A philosophical primer
Turtles all the way down?
The scientific dream
The challenges to science
The nature of scientific proof and belief
Why science is privileged
The relationship between research and science
Social science: competing worldviews
A subjective new pathway
Where the book is heading: research and philosophy – a pragmatic view

4 Getting started
The value of literature reviews
Introducing the literature review process
Library search for relevant sources
Sifting the sources to and the most relevant research
Assembling the summary notes into an annotated bibliography
A free-writing detour

5 Designing research
Inductive and deductive relationships between theory and research
Linearity versus iterative research
Validity and reliability
Writing the literature review
Closing the loop: generating your research hypothesis

6 Sampling
Qualitative research, and non-probability samples
Surveys and probability samples
The sampling frame

7 Survey research
What is a survey?
The varieties of survey research
Strengthening survey response rates
What are the weaknesses of survey research?

8 Constructing and asking good survey questions
Open-ended or closed questions
Designing good survey questionnaires

9 Focus-group research
The strengths of focus groups
The limitations of focus groups
Types of participant
Running a focus group

10 Writing and asking focus-group questions
Writing focus-group questions
Beware of great focus-group questions

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