Social Research Methods - Textbooks

Brilliantly attuned to the demands placed on researchers, this book considers how students, academics and professionals alike can save time and stress without compromising the quality of their research or its outcomes.

Using two key visual pedagogical tools, this book shows you how to produce vibrant and stimulating in-depth qualitative research that draws on data readily available via the internet. Concise, practical and jam-packed with valuable tips, this book will enable you to complete a successful desk-based research project you can be proud of.

Building substantially on the earlier, landmark text, What Works? (Policy Press, 2000), this book brings together key thinkers and researchers to provide a clearly-structured review of the aspirations and contemporary realities of evidence-informed policy and practice.

Written in an accessible, practical and jargon-free style, this useful book informs and inspires researchers by showing readers why, when, and how to use creative methods in their research.

Co-authored by an international team of experts across disciplines, this important book is one of the first to demonstrate the enormous benefit creative methods offer for education research. It illustrates how using creative methods, such as poetic inquiry, theatre and animation, can support learning and illuminate participation and engagement.

This reader on the theory and practice of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity provides a thorough grounding on the subject. With reviews, commentaries and examples of excellence in aspects including development, funding, evaluation and dissemination, it shows the potential of the approaches and lays the foundations for future scholarship.

This book provides social science researchers with both a strong rationale for the importance of thinking reflexively and a practical guide to doing it. The first book to build on Pierre Bourdieu's reflexive work, it combines academic analysis with practical examples and case studies. The book will be of interest to researchers and students.

Presenting the latest thinking in the field, this book bridges a major gap in knowledge by considering both theoretical and practical issues relating to community research methodologies.

This is the first book to connect digital media technologies in digital sociology to traditional sociological and offers a much needed overview of it. It includes problems of the digital age in relation to inequality and identity, making it suitable for use for a global audience on a variety of courses.

Over the past decades ‘photovoice’ has emerged as a participatory and creative research method where participants capture and discuss their reality through photographs. This unprecedented ‘how-to’ book takes novice and experienced researchers through the practicalities and ethics of applying this approach.

This practical handbook is aimed at students who are new to phenomenograpy - a popular research method for its versatility in understanding people’s perceptions. Enabling readers to decide on the appropriateness of the phenomenographic approach for their own research project, it equips them with the necessary tools to embark on their journey.