This book is unique in the sense that it presents a broad and dynamic research narrative, which is filled with phenomena, issues and challenges facing researchers in various disciplines, cultural contexts, linguistic and ethical discourses. The content of the book is addressing three overarching research issues: What are the diverse challenges, opportunities, and limitations different cohorts of individuals face? Why and how do these cohorts respond to these challenges, opportunities, and limitations? How, where, when, and why do researchers interact with these challenges and what have they learned from their investigations? One of the strengths of this edited book is, each of the contributors has explored these three issues from a somewhat unique perspective, but collectively they provide a rich discourse and milieu around the purpose of research and how and why it is conducted and interpreted within a contemporary multimodal context. Across all the chapters the contributions have focused on the process of researching and as a consequence there are two recurring discourses identified.The first discourse relates to conducting the research and involves topics, such as methodology, ethics, research populations, assessment, data, and linguistic complexity. The second discourse is around the researchers, because they are the lens through which their research is conceived, guided, articulated, and interpreted. For too long now, too many books about research, particularly social science related research, have been locked into a narrow discourse around the benefits of either qualitative or quantitative research methods. While this topic is explored in this text, it is not dominated by this one, rather artificial dichotomy. What is exciting about the book is its diversity and the range of dichotomies that are explored and the range of contexts and issues that are reviewed. There is a strong narrative quality throughout the chapters where the voice of the researchers and their purpose is amplified. The book is of special interest to research-orientated students as well as to those who want to learn more about conducting research in a challenging discourse of diverse paradigms.

The book "Conducting Research in a Changing and Challenging World" edited by Drs. Thao L and Quynh L, is unique in the sense that it presents a broad and dynamic research narrative, which is filled with phenomena, issues and challenges facing researchers in various disciplines, cultural contexts, linguistic and ethical discourses. The content of the book is addressing three overarching research issues: What are the diverse challenges, opportunities, and limitations different cohorts of individuals face? Why and how do these cohorts respond to these challenges, opportunities, and limitations? How, where, when, and why do researchers interact with these challenges and what have they learned from their investigations? One of the strengths of this edited book is, each of the contributors has explored these three issues from a somewhat unique perspective, but collectively they provide a rich discourse and milieu around the purpose of research and how and why it is conducted and interpreted within a contemporary multimodal context. Across all the chapters the contributions have focused on the process of researching and as a consequence there are two recurring discourses identified. The first discourse relates to conducting the research and involves topics, such as methodology, ethics, research populations, assessment, data, and linguistic complexity. The second discourse is around the researchers, because they are the "lens" through which their research is conceived, guided, articulated, and interpreted. For too long now, too many books about research, particularly social science related research, have been locked into a narrow discourse around the benefits of either qualitative or quantitative research methods. While this topic is explored in this text, it is not dominated by this one, rather artificial dichotomy. What is exciting about "Conducting Research in a Changing and Challenging World" is its diversity and the range of dichotomies that are explored and the range of contexts and issues that are reviewed. There is a strong narrative quality throughout the chapters where the voice of the researchers and their purpose is amplified. The book is of special interest to research-orientated students as well as to those who want to learn more about conducting research in a challenging discourse of diverse paradigms

This essay sheds light on the different types of research studies that researchers can conduct, reveals the best type of research study to conduct, demystifies the benefits of conducting research studies, and delineates the challenges of conducting research studies. There are an exorbitant amount of disparate types of research studies that a researcher is at liberty to conduct. Conducting a research study can require a substantial amount of hard work on the researcher’s end. Conducting a research study can also be a highly time-consuming pursuit on the researcher’s end. The amount of financial resources that are expended to conduct a research study can vary from research study to research study. Conducting a research study can yield high costs primarily because prospective participants are reticent about partaking in a research study unless they will be duly remunerated for participating in a research study. Offering prospective participants sizeable compensation for partaking in a research study entices people to partake in a research study. Partaking in research studies can present brobdingnagian inconveniences for participants, especially in contexts in which participants are expected to drive to distant research facilities in order to partake in research studies over a prolonged period of time. There are a myriad of disparate types of research studies that can be conducted in order to uncover new research findings that can further expand the vast libraries of scholarly literature if these new research findings are reported in the articles of the vast libraries of scholarly literature. Research studies should aim to not only address the overarching research questions, but should also aim to provide insightful contributions to the vast libraries of scholarly literature. Research studies, for instance, that provide qualitative insights and quantitative insights appertaining to a phenomenon are able to enrich the understanding of a phenomenon among readers and are able to usher in insightful contributions to the vast libraries of scholarly literature if these research findings are reported in the articles of the vast libraries of scholarly literature. Some of the different types of research studies that can be conducted by researchers encompass observational studies, correlational studies, quasi-experimental studies, and experimental studies. Case studies are popular type of observational study. When conducting observational studies, researchers make empirical observations about participants. When conducting observational studies, researchers also desist from attempting to influence the participants of the observational study. In other words, when conducting observational studies, researchers refrain from interacting with the participants of the observational study. This is because researchers prefer for their empirical observations about participants to be natural and not have them be affected by a researcher’s interactions with the participants of the observational study. Case studies are able to shed insight about cases. In other words, a case study will often delineate changes in a situation over a prolonged period of time that affects a cohort of people. A case study is able to report a meticulously detailed account appertaining to a specific phenomenon. Throughout the lengthy time window that the case study is being conducted, changes can occur to a situation that affect a cohort of people over a prolonged period of time. These changes to a situation that transpire over a prolonged period of time that affect a cohort of people are expected to be reported in a case study. Readers of case studies are interested in learning how changes to a situation that transpire overtime affect a cohort of people. Phenomena that transpire in real-life can be the subject matters for case studies to shed insights on in contexts in which they affect a cohort of people as they change overtime. Case studies can alternatively shed insights on a person’s development over a prolonged period of time. Throughout the lengthy time window that the case study is being conducted, a person can change over a prolonged period of time as he undergoes developmental changes. A person’s developmental changes over a prolonged period of time is expected to be reported in a case study in contexts in which the case study aims to track a person’s developmental changes overtime. Readers of case studies are interested in learning how a person’s developmental changes can affect his life overtime.

Globalisation has become a rewarding but challenging fact of life for scientific and scholarly researchers. Intellectually, they work with shared understandings of their areas of research and research methods. Professionally, responsibility and best practices are subject to many different rules and standards that vary across disciplines, countries, and cultures. They know how to measure and study the objects of their research but are often less sure of what constitutes the responsible practice of research or research integrity.The World Conferences on Research Integrity provide a forum for an international group of researchers, research administrators from funding agencies and similar bodies, research organisations performing research, universities and policy makers to discuss and make recommendations on ways to improve, harmonise, publicise, and make operationally effective international policies for the responsible conduct of research. The second such conference, held in Singapore in July 2010, focused on challenges and responses. Where is integrity in research today most significantly challenged and what is being done to address these challenges? This volume brings together a selection of presentations and key guidelines and statements emerging from the Conference.

To do quality research, many social scientists must travel to far-flung parts of the world and spend long stretches of time living in places they find unfamiliar and uncomfortable. No matter how prepared researchers think they are, everyone encounters unexpected challenges in the course of their work in the field. In Doing Global Fieldwork, the political scientist Jesse Driscoll offers a how-to guide for social scientists who are considering extended mixed-methods international fieldwork. He details the major steps in fieldwork planning and execution, from creating a plan, to what happens when political conditions throw up obstacles to research, to distilling and writing up research findings upon return. Driscoll emphasizes the ability to improvise and adapt because in the field, ideas will shift, plans will change, and something will inevitably go wrong. He offers a practical overview of the types of psychological and physical preparation, professionalization, and self-presentation that social scientists conducting research abroad need to prioritize. Driscoll describes the challenges that arise when working in difficult settings, such as war zones, areas of contested sovereignty, and volatile nondemocratic states. He explores the practical and ethical considerations for data collection in these unique situations, including whether and how much to reveal about one’s research and common psychological harms associated with fieldwork. Doing Global Fieldwork is an up-to-date methodological guide for graduate students and social science researchers of all stripes who need blunt, no-nonsense advice about how to make the best of their time in the field.

Doing research is an ever-changing challenge for social scientists. This challenge is harder than ever today as current societies are changing quickly and in many, sometimes conflicting, directions. Social phenomena, personal interactions, and formal and informal relationships are becoming more borderless and disconnected from the anchors of the offline “reality.” These dynamics are heavily marking our time and are suggesting evolutionary challenges in the ways we know, interpret, and analyze the world. Internet and computer-mediated communication (CMC) is being incorporated into every aspect of daily life, and social life has been deeply penetrated by the internet. This is due to recent technological developments that increase the scope and range of online social spaces and the forms and time of participation such as Web 2.0, which widened the opportunities for user-generated content, the emergence of an “internet of things,” and of ubiquitous mobile devices that make it possible to always be connected. This implies an adjustment to epistemological and methodological stances for conducting social research and an adaption of traditional social research methods to the specificities of online interactions in the digital society. The Handbook of Research on Advanced Research Methodologies for a Digital Society covers the different strands of methods most affected by the change in a digital society and develops a broader theoretical reflection on the future of social research in its challenge to always be fitting, suitable, adaptable, and pertinent to the society to be studied. The chapters are geared towards unlocking the future frontiers and potential for social research in the digital society. They include theoretical, epistemological, and ontological reflections about the digital research methods as well as innovative methods and tools to collect, analyze, and interpret data. This book is ideal for social scientists, practitioners, librarians, researchers, academicians, and students interested in social research methodology and its developments in the digital scenario.

The US Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) is a collection of 13 Federal entities charged by law to assist the United States and the world to understand, assess, predict, and respond to human-induced and natural processes of global change. As the understanding of global change has evolved over the past decades and as demand for scientific information on global change has increased, the USGCRP has increasingly focused on research that can inform decisions to cope with current climate variability and change, to reduce the magnitude of future changes, and to prepare for changes projected over coming decades. Overall, the current breadth and depth of research in these agencies is insufficient to meet the country's needs, particularly to support decision makers. This report provides a rationale for evaluating current program membership and capabilities and identifying potential new agencies and departments in the hopes that these changes will enable the program to more effectively inform the public and prepare for the future. It also offers actionable recommendations for adjustments to the methods and procedures that will allow the program to better meet its stated goals.